Updated: February 10, 2026
Reassessing the Boston Massacre and the Path It Paved to Revolution
Long before open hostilities, revolutionary thinking was shaped by Enlightenment ideas, as Dr. Sophia Rosenfeld explains in our program. These intellectual developments—the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and the Age of Revolutions—reshaped how people in Europe and the American colonies thought about authority, governance, and rights.
But Dr. Rosenfeld also emphasize that ideas, intellectual or otherwise, do not by themselves start revolutions. Rather, actions and events ignite revolutions..
So, to fully grasp the American Revolution, we have to look closely at the events that shaped colonial perceptions of and posture toward British authority in the Pre-Revolutionary Era, generally understood as 1763 to 1775. I personally lean toward 1774 as the end of this period, because by 1775 the Revolution had truly begun with open hostilities at Lexington and Concord.
In Analyzing American Revolution, we explore this era through multiple perspectives. I examine the organizational foundation of the Revolution, principally the Committees of Correspondence and later Committees of Safety. Dr. Robert Gross examines the lead-up to Lexington and Concord, and Dr. Dael A. Norwood explores the China trade that underpinned the Boston Tea Party. I will link both interviews here when they publish.
This interview with Dr. Serena Zabin about the Boston Massacre contributes to the program by showing how moments of tension and conflict illuminate broader patterns in colonial life—linking social networks, civic organization, and decision-making across communities.
Here’s how I’ve structured this post:
- Part I: What really happened on the night of March 5, 1770? Paul Revere’s propaganda that shaped our perceptions.
- Part II: Boston Massacre on Trial: How John Adams Defended the British and Bostonians
- Part III (this post): Breaking Up an Imperial Family — British Living Among Bostonians and Dr. Zabin’s Contribution to the Ken Burns Documentary
Rethinking the Boston Massacre with Dr. Serena Zabin
The Boston Massacre of 1770 is often remembered as a straightforward story of British soldiers firing on innocent colonists, but in this interview, Dr. Serena Zabin reexamines the event through the lens of people’s choices, social networks, and political tension.
Dr. Zabin explores how ordinary and elite colonists interpreted, responded to, and acted upon these events. She also enhances our understanding of how ordinary British soldiers, as well as officers and government elites, reacted to this rupturing event. She further reassesses whether revolutionary action was inevitable.
By tracing the choices, agency, and civic engagement of everyday people, she shows how revolutionary sentiment took root in practice—through social networks, community decision-making, and collective judgment—long before battles erupted at Lexington and Concord.
In essence, the Boston Massacre was more than a moment of violence; it was a subtle revolution of choice and action, unfolding in Boston streets and taverns, which Dr. Zabin thoughtfully brings to life in this interview.
Dr. Zabin in this interview.
About My Guest – Dr. Serena Zabin
Dr. Zabin is a professor of history and the Liberal Arts at Carleton College.
She is the Vice President of the Teaching Division of American Historical Association, a distinguished fellow in Early American History at the Huntington Library for 2024-25, and a former president of Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.
Her research focuses on Early America and Public History, subjects about which he has published extensively, including the following books:
- Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York,
- The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741: Daniel Horsmanden’s “Journal of the Proceedings” with Related Documents, and
- The Boston Massacre: A Family History, which received the 2024 George Washington Book Prize and is the focus of this interview.
Dr. Zabin is the 199th guest scholar of the History Behind News Program, and Analyzing American Revolution is a special series of our program.
To learn more about Dr. Zabin, you can visit her academic homepage.
Transcript of My Interview with Dr. Zabin
The notes below are excerpts from the edited transcript of my November 2026 interview with Dr. Zabin. You can watch the full interview in the video immediately below, and for convenience, I’ve also linked specific video clips to their corresponding sections in the transcript.
The Boston Massacre as a Family History
Adel: Dr. Zabin, as we were closing the last segment, I said, in this segment, I’m going to talk about the full story with you.
And to do that, I want to start with the title of your book, and I’ll read it: The Boston Massacre: A Family History.
How is the Boston Massacre a family history? That’s a new one.
Dr. Zabin: So it’s a family history in two ways, both, I’d say, actually and sort of metaphorically.
So the actual part is connected to the part I was talking about in the first segment when I said those soldiers had been living in Boston for 17 months, and they knew many of the people on the street.
So, it turns out that when the British, or these four regiments show up, which is about 2,000 men come to Boston in 1768, they come with a number, we don’t exactly have a precise number, but somewhere like 750 maybe women, largely married to some of these soldiers, and even more children, probably over 1,000 children.
And so there are all these families that end up crammed into Boston, and Boston at this point, there’s no Back Bay yet, or the Back Bay actually is water, right? It’s just a one inch, excuse me, a one square mile peninsula.
And so you’ve got 16,000 people, you’ve got another 2,000 guys, maybe another 1,000 women, 750 women crammed into this town.
They all have to find places to live. They end up living, which is another story that I can unfold if you want it. They end up all living on the peninsula, not really in barracks.
They live in a lot of people’s spare rooms, they live in their sheds, the army rents what warehouses they can find and other spaces like that. But overflowing-
Adel: They don’t have separate quarters of their own. Is that what you’re saying?
British Living Among Bostonians
Dr. Zabin: Exactly. Yeah.
So the issue about the quarters is there were quarters, there were barracks, but they’re out in the harbor on what’s still called Castle Island, and they had been refurbished for the Seven Years’ War, as you said, which had only ended less than a decade before, with Massachusetts tax money. And the Massachusetts Selectmen were very clear that they thought that’s where the soldiers should go. If they’re going to come to Boston, they should stay in the barracks that were built for the British Army.
Left: Castle William on Castle Island. Fortifications were destroyed by the British during their 1776 evacuation of Boston
Rebuilt by Americans; surveyed by Paul Revere. Renamed Fort Independence in 1799, with John Adams attending the ceremony. Right: Fort Independence, Castle Island, Boston Harbor, 1942 (WWII). Both images are in the Public Domain.
And the Quartering Act, as it existed in 1768 and until indeed 1774, the Quartering Act said very clearly soldiers needed to be placed first in existing barracks, and then if there’s not enough room, then they’d go into pubs, into public houses, and only after that can they be put into private homes. And the Selectmen told both the governor and the officers that they needed to follow the Quartering Act, and the governor and the officers wanted the soldiers in town. They want them right in the middle to put down all these riots that are happening in front of the governor’s house.
Adel: And confirm this for me, if you would, please. What we call Castle Island, I’m somewhat familiar with Boston, you can drive to it, it’s just part of Boston. It’s like connected.
But it was really an island back then, right?
Dr. Zabin: Yes. I mean, you could, at low tide, indeed, there’s a seven-mile hike that you can take through a lot of mud, and you can walk or you can row three miles if the tide is higher.
So, it’s there, but it’s not convenient for putting down a riot, right?
It’s a staking ground, right? For putting people who are then going to go somewhere else.
But it’s not, if they’re going to go fight in Canada, it’s fine.
But it’s not really great if what you’re trying to do is urban policing with troops, right?
So, the Selectmen tell the officers, if you try to requisition space in Boston, we will get you here, we’ll get you booted out of the army. It is a direct violation of the Quartering Act.
And the Governor spends a lot of time grumbling about how everybody thinks that they’re a lawyer. But in fact, the army gives in and the compromise they come up with after a couple of months of having soldiers camping out in Boston Common and places like that is they end up renting spaces from Bostonians. It’s like turning Boston into one huge Airbnb, right?
So they rent, so Bostonians are renting every spare room they have, every shed, every cellar.
And certainly, every warehouse, anything they can. And so, soldiers are living through, and their families, right? And all of these women and children are living all over Boston.
Love, Marriage, and Daily Life Before the “Massacre”
And Boston at this point actually is majority female in part because Massachusetts had sent so many men to fight in the Seven Years’ War.
They actually lose a huge chunk of their young men. So there are a lot of unmarried women, some of whom are from Boston, some of whom come to Boston. It’s one of the few places women can work for wages to look for husbands.
And they see all these men and they’re like, oh, you know what? There’s a lot more husband material here all of a sudden.
So a lot of these single women, including some of the daughters of Sons of Liberty, right? Are really enthusiastic about this influx of young men, right? And they, in fact, meet and have children and some get married, not always in that order. Who knows? They’re sometimes in that order.
But the church records show about 40 marriages between soldiers and civilians. And there certainly were more that were not done in churches. And then there’s at least 100 baptisms of children in local churches, often with godparents who include local civilians.
So they make these kind of fictive families, right? That’s what a godparent is.
So soldiers and then when soldiers desert, certainly they often end up marrying the women they meet. So they create families.
They literally create families when they come. So that’s the actual, literal piece of the family history.
Adel: Before we go to the second one, when I asked you about family history, you said there are two aspects to it.
So one that you just shared with me, but before we go to the second one, this is such a mixed up and slash kind of messed up stories.
Like these people, it’s like they go to Trader Joe’s together, you know what I mean? Does that make sense?
I know that sounds funny when I say it, but that’s literally what it is. These soldiers, before they’re put on the red uniform, they see all these people.
Heck, they may even invite them to dinner.
Dr. Zabin: Exactly. There are certainly diaries full of people talking about all their dinner parties.
They absolutely do invite them to dinner. And then the less salubrious ones, we have court records that show that. They couple them, put together some little theft rings together, right? They’re doing burglaries and all sorts of things.
Adel: Things that would happen in a big town. Okay, wow.
The second point, you said there are two aspects to this. What’s the second point?
A Broken Imperial Family?
Dr. Zabin: Exactly. The second one, which is less literal as a family, has to do really with an 18th century idea about the government as family.
This is a longstanding belief that the King is like the head of the family, right? And that the people underneath are like the parents, the nobles are, and then the commoners and all the subjects are the King’s children, right? And they owe loyalty to the king like they would to their father.
George III
King of Great Britain and Ireland
Portrait, 1768, by Nathaniel Dance-Holland (Public Domain)
Click for image backstory.
And that language, we know that language of the mother country, all of those pieces, right?
Which is all these family metaphors, which explain the relationships that people are supposed to, the political relationships that people are supposed to have with Britain.
And in fact, what happens with the shooting, right? And then what will become the massacre is those family bonds start to look a lot less pleasant than they were, right? People start to look around, they think, oh, this is what it means to be part of the empire. This is what it feels like to be in this kind of family, in this imperial family.
So, when that shooting happens, and then the soldiers have to leave, families physically get broken apart, right, in different ways. Because, of course, soldiers who have married, they might, the person that they married may decide to stay in Boston. And so they sort of self-divorce, that way the family splits up.
Sometimes the wife decides to travel with the army and leave behind, right, her natal family, this little piece of Boston, right, embedded in the British army.
Sometimes the men decide to stay, right, they sort of, which the army calls desertion, they call, you know, sort of keeping their family intact. But, you know, so they physically break apart.
A Bad Divorce
Dr. Zabin: But really, I think of the Boston Massacre actually is what I call a bad divorce, right?
It feels like the beginning of the breakdown of the imperial family. And people understand it in those terms, having seen what it means to make and break families in the British empire. Hmm.
Adel: Now that you explain it this way, the title of your book completely makes sense, Dr. Zabin.
Two small questions in the context of everything we’ve talked about.
This may be a nothing, but when these four regiments leave, there goes the rental income for all the properties there?
Dr. Zabin: Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that is mostly true.
Two of them leave the summer before, actually.
Adel: Two regiments.
Dr. Zabin: Yeah, two regiments. Because it looks like things are calming down.
One of those regiments had never really made it into Boston anyway.
But it, you know, so there’s a little sense that it’s going to get, you know, for some people, there’s a little sense that things are going to contract, right, for them economically. They talk about that.
Most Bostonians, having made some money out of the army, are happy to see it leave, right? They think that, everybody thinks it’s a good idea for the army to leave, with the exception of the Governor.
He’s the one who’s, and especially the governor who is there before Hutchinson, who leaves in 1769, at the end of 1769, a guy named Francis Bernard.
He’s still anxious.
He wants the troops to stay. But both the civilians and the officers absolutely want troops out of Boston. They are just waiting for a disaster.
And they think every day they’re there, you know, is another roll of the dice. And the sooner they can get people out, you know, the greater the likelihood that this is not going to ruin anyone’s career.
Adel: The other question I had, I said, I had a couple of small questions.
And this one could actually be a huge question. But I just want to sort of confirm, I don’t want to monopolize more of your time, too much of your time anyway, is this, were the troops in the Boston Massacre British, as in from Scotland, as in Great Britain, as in Scotland and England, sort of the union of Great Britain, or were they Irish?
Dr. Zabin: Absolutely.
Yes. So in fact, a lot of so they’re mixed, of course. And the two regiments that are left in Boston in 1770, one of them is from the 14th is drawn largely from Britain, actually, you know, from, as you say, actually, a lot of it from England.
A British Soldier, 29th Regiment of Foot (c. 1742). British soldiers of the Boston Massacre belonged to this regiment. (Public Domain)
But the 29th had been stationed in Ireland and had done a lot of recruiting in Ireland. So especially in Northern Ireland, because Catholics were not allowed to join the army. Right.
They were thought of as too traitorous. So, you know, so this is only the Protestant part of Ireland, right, Northern Ireland.
And but there are lots of Irish men and women who come as part of the 29th Regiment.
Dr. Serena Zabin and Ken Burns’ The American Revolution
Adel: I see. Um, let’s talk about something that you’ve done. And it’s going to be a huge event for us history nerds.
I’m raising my hand here. And I think a lot of people know, I shouldn’t say for us history nerds, I think a lot of people. And that’s the Ken Burns documentary.
What was your contribution to that series?
Dr. Zabin: So it’s a 12-hour gorgeous film. It’s incredible. Um, yes.
So they reached out to me, the directors, a couple of, um, I should say a couple of years ago after they’ve been working on it for quite a while.
Adel: I understand they’ve been working on it since 2015. That’s one of the things.
Dr. Zabin: Exactly.
Yeah. Right. Or, you know, I don’t know how active all of that working on it was, but they certainly had done a lot of the work by the time they reached out to me, which was 22 or 23.
Um, but they read my book and they said, Oh, what we really love are stories of course. Right. And you know, your work is full of stories.
That’s how I approach the writing of history. And so they, um, they asked if they could talk with me about, you know, whether I could give them some leads.
They wanted, you know, people to try to follow through this long 12-hour, um, story, right.
They were like, Oh, there, you know, can you give us some names? But as we chatted, we actually just had a really great time. And so by the end of the Zoom conversation, um, the two directors who are talking to, um, his two co-directors, um, so invited me to come and they said, well, why don’t you come and we’ll film you and we’ll see what happens. Right.
You know, we have a lot of cutting left to go. And, um, so they sent me this huge list of questions and said, these are some of the topics we’re thinking about that we’d love some detail to fill in, you know, various beats sort of through this 12 hours. Yeah.
And I was terrified. I thought it was like my exams or something. So I prepared, I stayed up too late.
I was super anxious. I wasn’t very good in front of a camera. It took them a while.
“The American Revolution”, a PBS documentary series by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. Image included for commentary in connection with Dr. Serena Zabin’s role as a historical expert on the series.
Adel: Oh, I doubt that. You’re great in front of a camera. Yeah.
Dr. Zabin: I’m going to say the first hour was pretty stiff and then, but they said we have all day, you know, and so as time went on, I got into it, we had more fun.
And so, um, then last year when they started showing clips, I was at a conference and Ken Burns was showing some of the American historical association. Oh, there I am. And so I learned I made it in.
Adel: That is awesome. Well, I certainly look forward to watching you there and just seeing the whole series.
Just One Point
Adel: If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about the Boston massacre after everything we’ve talked about, what would that one point be?
Dr. Zabin: I think it’s that the stories that the Sons of Liberty want us to hear are often very loud, right?
They spent a lot of time yelling and that drowns out some of these other voices of people who really mattered.
These women who traveled with the army, right? These young men who decided to marry local women and that those stories about the ways in which people who are living in the colonies and people who would come to the colonies, right? Forced there really by the British administration that the connections that they made with each other and the connections that they broke were as much a part of the making of the American Revolution and sort of all of the big politics and big speeches that the Sons of Liberty also made.
Adel: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Dr. Zabin, thank you so much for educating me and our audience about the American Revolution and to our audience.
If you know of any history that could provide more perspective about the American Revolution, please share it with us and tell us what’s your perspective.
Thank you so very much. This was wonderful.
Dr. Zabin: Thank you for having me.
Discover more about the Boston Massacre, its trials and aftermath, and broken imperial family in Parts I and II:
What really happened on the night of March 5, 1770? Paul Revere’s propaganda that shaped our perceptions.
Boston Massacre on Trial: How John Adams Defended the British and Bostonians
About the Featured Image
The featured image brings together images of Dr. Zabin and Adel Aali from the interview, superimposed on the Betsy Ross flag, alongside cover image of Dr. Zabin’s book The Boston Massacre: A Family History, with the following text banner: How the Boston Massacre Was A Family History!
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Analyzing American Revolution (AAR) is a special series podcast production of the History Behind News program. In this series, 33 professors (and counting) analyze the American Revolution from 33 different angles through in-depth interviews with host Adel Aali.
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