The Coming of the Revolution in Massachusetts

The Coming of the Revolution in Massachusetts
Robert Allison
Suffolk University
January 15, 2013
00:49:46

Did events in the Massachusetts colony make the American Revolution inevitable? The people of Massachusetts had more power over their own government than anyone else in the British empire. As the British crown raised taxes on American goods and soldiers arrived to enforce new polices, the independent minded colonists in Massachusetts became embittered and resentful. Rising tensions transformed into outward expressions of resistance and violent conflict. Robert Allison argues that the economic and political climate in Massachusetts following the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party made the American Revolution an inevitability.

 

About the Speaker

Robert Allison is a professor of history at Suffolk University and the author of The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World 1776-1820 (2000), A Short History of Boston (2004) and Stephen Decatur: American Naval Hero 1779-1820 (2005).

 

In the Institute’s armaments collection is a hanger, or short sword, carried by minute man James Taylor of Pelham, Massachusetts. Learn more about this object and Taylor’s life.