The Boston Massacre: A Family History

Serena Zabin

HarperCollins, Feb 18, 2020 - History - 320 pages

“Historical accuracy and human understanding require coming down from the high ground and seeing people in all their complexity. Serena Zabin’s rich and highly enjoyable book does just that.”—Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal

A dramatic, untold “people’s history” of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution.

The story of the Boston Massacre—when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death—is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.

Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs, and sharing baptisms. Becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution.

Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre delivers an indelible new slant on iconic American Revolutionary history.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Othemts - LibraryThing

The Boston Massacre is seen as a precipitating event of the American Revolution, but at the time, no one knew the revolution was coming. People made the incident represent their political ideologies ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - rivkat - LibraryThing

The Boston Massacre, Zabin argues, has been stripped of its context from the very beginning. Even just after it happened, both sides had reasons to deny that the soldiers quartered in Boston had ...

Contents

• 1 Families of Empire 1765: 1
• 2 Inseparable Interests 176667: 17
• 3 Seasons of Discontent 176668: 31
• 4 Under One Roof 1768: 49
• 5 Love Your Neighbor 176970: 79
• 6 Absent Without Leave 176870: 109
• March 1770: 136
• Illustrations: 160
• March 6 1770August 1772: 160
• 9 From Shooting to Massacre OctoberDecember 1770: 191
• Back Matter: 222
• Back Flap: 297
• Back Cover: 298
• Spine: 299

About the author

SERENA ZABIN is a professor of history and director of the American studies program at Carleton College. She is the author of Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York and The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741: Daniel Horsmanden’s Journal of the Proceedings. She is also the codesigner of a forthcoming serious video game about the Boston Massacre, Witness to the Revolution.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Boston Massacre: A Family History
• Author: Serena Zabin
• Publisher: HarperCollins, 2020
• ISBN: 0544911199, 9780544911192
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: History / Military / Revolutions & Wars of Independence; History / United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800); History / United States / State & Local / New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT); Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity