Paul Revere’s Depiction of the Boston Massacre – Confusion and Conspiracies

Paul Revere’s 1770 engraving of the Boston Massacre. Visit AARevulotion.net for more images and interviews of scholars of the American Revolution with host Adel Aali.

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part III Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre is one of the most famous images from 18th-century America—but it is not a neutral snapshot of what happened. And that’s really the place to start: this is not a photograph of a street scene. It’s a story. Revere wasn’t trying […]

In the Boston Massacre, Did British Soldiers and Colonists Know Each Other?

The featured image depicts the Boston Massacre, showing people in Boston and British soldiers intermingled during the shooting—unlike Paul Revere’s famous 1770 engraving, which portrays them as clearly separated by thick plumes of gunshot smoke. Alonzo Chappel’s 1878 depiction is generally considered more historically accurate. In our program, we examine the purpose and propaganda motivations behind Revere’s engraving in conversation with Dr. Serena Zabin, linked below.

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part II One of the most revealing and underappreciated layers of the Boston Massacre story is just how socially entangled British troops and Boston residents were before the shooting on King Street. It’s easy to imagine a rigid divide — angry townsfolk on one side and “British soldiers on the […]

Boston Massacre Reconsidered: Dr. Serena Zabin Interview, Part III

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!

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 […]

Boston Massacre Reconsidered: Dr. Serena Zabin Interview, Part II

The featured image brings together images of Dr. Serena and Adel Aali from the interview, superimposed on the Betsy Ross flag, alongside a portrait of John Adams (c. 1766) by Benjamin Blyth, with the following text banner: The Boston Massacre on Trial. 

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 […]

Boston Massacre Reconsidered: Was It A Massacre?

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: Everything Changed — For Boston and America.

Introduction In this interview: “But really, what I came to realize is that the, you know, the things that we can know, are not necessarily the things that the parties at the time cared about hiding.” Watch this section in the video below (00:25:24). Was the Boston Massacre inevitable? For its time, was it truly […]

Boston Massacre Reconsidered: Dr. Serena Zabin Interview, Part I

The featured image brings together images of Dr. Serena and Adel Aali from the interview, alongside Paul Revere's 1770 engraving of the Boston Massacre, with the following text banner: "March 5, 1770: What Really Happened?"

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 […]