229 The Townshend Moment

Ben Franklin's World

Within days of the Boston Massacre, Bostonians politicized the event. They circulated a pamphlet about “the Horrid Massacre” and published images portraying soldiers firing into a well-assembled and peaceful crowd.

But why did the Boston Massacre happen? Why did the British government feel it had little choice but to station as many 2,000 soldiers in Boston during peacetime? And what was going on within the larger British Empire that drove colonists to the point where they provoked armed soldiers to fire upon them?

Patrick Griffin, the Madden-Hennebry Family Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and author of The Townshend Moment: The Making of Empire and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, joins us to answer these questions as we continue our 3-episode investigation of the Boston Massacre.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/229

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Complementary Episodes

• Bonus Episode: The Boston Stamp Act Riots of 1765
• Episode 106: The World of John Singleton Copley
• Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773
• Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution
• Episode 186: Max Edelson, The New Map of the British Empire
• Episode 228: Eric Hinderaker, The Boston Massacre

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