The Boston Massacre

December 1, 2019
The British army was not just a man's profession 250 years ago but instead "a social world of families, friends, and children." A popular British song at the time of the Revolutionary War was called "The Girl I Left Behind Me." As it turns out, writes Zabin (History and American Studies/Carleton Coll.; Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York, 2009, etc.), the British army was in the habit of bringing women along with it, or intermarrying with local populations, so that life in a bivouac was a family affair. For four years, writes the author, one unit lived in Boston "on a peninsula hardly bigger than a square mile." Zabin observes that the old term "camp followers" denigrates the contributions of women to these units who contributed work that was useful and necessary. They were also prolific; as the author notes, "in the years 1768 to 1772, more than a hundred soldiers brought their babies into Boston's churches to be baptized." When the British unit quartered in Boston, late of campaigns in Portugal and elsewhere during the Seven Years' War, was caught up in the chain of rebellious events that culminated in the Boston Massacre, a local defended the soldiers who were on trial for murder. That local was John Adams, who was, at the same time, involved in the first stirrings of the revolution. One witness, Zabin writes, was a Massachusetts woman who knew the soldiers well enough to know their first names--and, indeed, married a member of the regiment less than a month later. By that time, such marriages were no longer points of pride, though, and neither defense nor prosecution raised what might have been interpreted as witness bias because "to do so would have cracked open the pretense to which both sides had tacitly agreed: that an enormous gulf separated soldiers and civilians." A well-written, thoroughly interesting addition to the social history of the American Colonies.

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January 1, 2020

Focusing on the years leading up to the Boston Massacre, Zabin (Dangerous Economies) reveals an intermingling between the inhabitants of Boston and the soldiers stationed there to protect the government from riots as tensions increased. Soldiers were housed right in town, in close proximity to residents who considered them an occupying force. Families were stationed with the soldiers, and many soldiers married into Boston families during the occupation. This intermingling created a charged situation leading up to the massacre, pitting soldiers and family members against one other. Zabin spends little time dissecting the massacre itself, which has been studied in detail by other scholars. Instead, the author focuses on the personal lives of those who contributed to the tensions between soldiers and citizens. VERDICT Zabin has done extensive research into the public records of several Revolutionary era archives and has compiled a compelling history of the Boston Massacre, weaving personal stories together to present a comprehensive view of this turning point incident.--Danielle Williams, Univ. of Evansville

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February 1, 2020
Before the American Revolution split the 13 colonies into revolutionaries and loyalists, towns like Boston had social as well as political connections to the British empire. Zabin (Dangerous Economies, 2010) zooms in on the Boston Massacre and the four years leading up to it, when the British stationed four regiments there, to explore this neglected facet of our history. The massacre occurred within a society in which soldiers and their families had settled in, becoming neighbors, friends or enemies, and, in some cases, husbands or baby daddies to Bostonians. By focusing on individual experiences, especially those of British army wives, Zabin highlights the role of women in this world and emphasizes the personal camaraderie that emerged on all social levels even as the military occupation raised tensions to a breaking point. By recovering such realities, she shows how the trials that followed the Boston Massacre were used as a first step in writing this cross-cultural community out of history, a necessity for revolution. Zabin's engaging history adds nuance and complexity to the political and social aspects of the American Revolution.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)