Serena R. Zabin

This project is a new interpretation of the Boston Massacre, one of the most famous events in America’s pre-Revolutionary history. The British troops that came to Boston in 1768 brought hundreds of women and children with them. Over the four years that followed, these and other soldiers created many more families with local women, and these military families created both connections and conflicts with their local neighbors. The book uncovers the extensive personal interactions between troops (with their families) and townspeople of both sexes and the close, if fraught, relationships that developed. Occupied Boston was a small city where interwoven strands of politics, love, fear, and desire reshaped everything from the town’s streets to the meaning of marriage. The story of how these relationships shaped the American Revolution is the heart of this book.