The Boston Massacre: A Family History

After 250 years and many previous treatments of the Boston Massacre, Zabin’s innovative study truly breaks new ground by supplying richness and depth to a dimension of this iconic event that had only been sketched earlier. Hiller B. Zobel’s The Boston Massacre (New York, 1970) was a thorough and influential analysis of the episode, shaped by British and loyalist sources, and Eric A. Hinderaker’s Boston Massacre (Cambridge, Mass., 2017) supplied a balanced account, distinguished especially by its assessment of the historical context and memory of the event. Zabin, however, focuses closely on the soldiers who occupied Boston in the months before the deadly conflict of March 5, 1770, thus bringing us closer to the interpersonal aspects of the “massacre” than ever before. She follows the British regiments from their stations in Ireland to Nova Scotia and Boston—a posting preferred over the West Indies or Canada. She explains that officers’ vigorous...