The Boston Massacre: A Permanent Rupture in the Imperial Family
Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part V The Boston Massacre can be understood as a kind of “family history”—and not just metaphorically. It was lived, quite literally, in the homes, streets, and relationships of Boston itself. When the Army Brought Its Families When British regiments arrived in 1768, they didn’t come alone. Alongside roughly 2,000 […]
The Boston Massacre Trial: Politics & Performance?
Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part IV If the shooting on King Street was chaos, the trials that followed were something else entirely—carefully staged, deeply political, and just as consequential. From the start, this wasn’t only about guilt or innocence. It was about perception—who could claim the moral high ground, not just in Boston, but […]
Paul Revere’s Depiction of the Boston Massacre – Confusion and Conspiracies
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?
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 […]
Was the Boston Massacre Really a “Massacre”?
Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part I When we think of the Boston Massacre—which likely reflects what we learned in school and college—the word “massacre” immediately stands out. It evokes tragedy. It carries weight. It paints the British as ruthless tyrants who slaughtered innocent American colonists. But the reality is far more complicated. In part […]
Boston Tea Party: Why China Mattered to the American Revolution
Introduction In this interview: “I should also say that part of what’s going on in the colonies, and part of what, you know, intersects with the revolution is that colonists are inveterate smugglers…” Watch this section in the video below (00:11:37). Most Americans don’t immediately link China to the Revolution—but trade with East Asia was […]
Boston Massacre Reconsidered: Dr. Serena Zabin Interview, Part III
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
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?
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
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 […]
