Thurs 5/7 @ 7:00PM
Robertson Hall 100 (Arthur Lewis Auditorium), Princeton University

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A dramatic, untold “people’s history” of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution. This event is presented by The Department of History’s Revolution Up Close: A Public Lecture Series.

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.

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.

Serena Zabin is the Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. Professor of History and the Liberal Arts 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 serious video game about the Boston Massacre, Witness to the Revolution.

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Revolution Up Close: A Public Lecture Series

This lecture series is presented in connection with Nursery of Rebellion: Princeton and the American Revolution, an exhibit at the Princeton University Library which runs from April 15 to July 12, 2026. Four recent authors offer new perspectives on the American Revolution by zooming in on an individual life, a close-knit community, or a single document.

Supported by a Special Grant from the Humanities Council’s Ruth and Sid Lapidus ’59 Research Fellowships Fund

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This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Department of History, Princeton University’s Humanities Council, the Princeton Public Library, and Labyrinth Books.