The American Revolution is a profoundly place-based story. In 1775, war ignited in Boston and its surrounding towns, fueled by conflicts over trade, governance, and imperial authority.
But why here? What was it about Boston and Massachusetts that made the region such a tinderbox for revolutionary activity in the late eighteenth century?
Introduction
Maps tie together Revolutionary history and geography. They illuminate connections between the local and the global. They draw us into stories about the diverse ways people understood their own lives and the world around them.
The American Revolution’s early episodes in Massachusetts took place in a very different landscape than the one we live in today. Boston’s distinctive geography shaped the discontent which flared up into radicalism and revolt. It created opportunities for actions and events that neither the colonists nor the British authorities could fully anticipate. After all, the people who took part in the Revolution, and whose lives were willingly or unwillingly shaped by the war, did not yet know that the United States of America lay in the future.
This exhibition unfolds across a series of scales: Empire, Region, City, Landmark, and Nation. These scales offer ways of thinking about size and location that help us understand how places connect, from the expansiveness of empire to the small details of buildings and landmarks. Each of these scales draws attention to different sets of spatial patterns and historical forces.
As the nation marks the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, we invite you to explore how the places of Boston and Massachusetts shaped this era—not merely as the backdrops, but as the TERRAINS OF INDEPENDENCE.
Empire
In the eighteenth century, the British Empire stretched across oceans and continents, with Boston perched at the western edge of the Atlantic world.
Colonial Bostonians identified firmly as British, rather than American. Though New Englanders cultivated a unique system of local governance and religious organization that eschewed hierarchy and operated largely outside of imperial control, colonists still shared a common language, legal traditions, and cultural practices with the people of Great Britain. Most felt closer ties to cities in Europe—like Liverpool and Glasgow—than they did to those in nearby colonies.
The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) brought profound changes to British North America and to colonists’ connections to the empire. Britain acquired vast new territories, including all of the French territory east of the Mississippi River and in Canada, as well as Spanish Florida. From the Great Lakes to the Caribbean, Britain gained access to fur markets and sugar-growing regions. Boston, too, benefitted from these global gains, profiting off an enslaved workforce and its ties to Caribbean plantations.