The Boston Massacre: A Family History

Written by Serena Zabin

Narrated by Andrea Gallo

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 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781980057574

Serena Zabin

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.

Reviews for The Boston Massacre

[othemts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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, whether it was Paul Revere depicting the British army  as butchers, or John Adams defending the troops in court.To provide new perspectives and context to the Boston Massacre, Zabin performs a family approach to the history.  Soldiers assigned to Boston in 1768 often travelled with their family, wives and children who were derisively called "camp followers." Other soldiers married local women.  The Massachusetts women who married into the military were criticized, but Zabin also notes that many of them were still considered upstanding members of society during the revolution.The presence of British troops in the town's streets caused tension as Bostonians were not used to being stopped at checkpoints. Zabin writes that using troops to quell civil disorder was common in the British empire and lead to multiple Boston Massacre-type incidents, even in London, in the previous decades. The arrival of a large number of men in a small town also created another conflict in that soldiers would take on jobs in an already tight labor market.  On the other hand, soldiers rented rooms and bought goods providing needed income for local landlords and retailers.  Some soldiers grew to have neighborly relations with the Bostonians they lived among.Zabin concludes the family analogy with the idea that the Revolution was a divorce.  The strong family ties between Britain and her colonies were severed rather abruptly in the crises that would occur in the coming years.  This work is an excellent approach to understanding the meaning of the Boston Massacre beyond just a marker on the way to revolution.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 brought and made families that implicated them more in the life of the residents than we assume. “Camp followers” were often wives and children, and were a big part of many British soldiers’ lives; providing for them (and the work the wives did) meant that they were much more integrated into civilian life than the militaries based in foreign places we think about today.

[darcia_10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love when an author shows me the humanity behind a historical event, and Serena Zabin does just that with The Boston Massacre.Having grown up in Massachusetts, the Boston Massacre was taught and talked about, but always as a lead-in to the Revolutionary War. We knew it happened, though we never really understood why. The basic lesson was that the British were the bad guys and the Americans the good guys. The two sides clashed and we rebelled. End of story. Which is, of course, a whitewashed version that erases the social influence and human interactions leading up to the event.The truth is a complex story of intertwined British and American families in a small city at the start of a turbulent era. Zabin brings this history to life, introducing us to the people involved and allowing us experience the period as they lived it. Zabin's narrative style is easy to read. This book taught me more than any of the dense textbooks of my school days. And, more importantly, it's an enjoyable read.*I received a review copy from the publisher.*