For the Peace of the Town: Boston's Politics in the American Revolution, 1776–1787

This thesis examines the local politics of Boston during the Revolutionary War and the years that followed. After the evacuation of the British army in March 1776, Boston continued to face many significant challenges as a result of the war and the political upheaval caused by the Revolution. This thesis particularly focuses on the effects of food shortages and currency depreciation in the town, which caused conflict between Boston’s commercial elite and labouring classes. It argues that while the ideals of the Revolution inspired ordinary Bostonians to challenge the political and economic power of the merchants, ultimately the merchants maintained their authority within the town and Massachusetts more widely. The merchants’ continued supremacy had two main causes: first, Boston’s labouring classes fragmented during the Revolution and thus could no longer unite against merchant power. The town’s leaders encouraged this division among ordinary people through their suppression of plebeian rioting and festivities following brawls with French sailors in 1778. Second, the town’s political elite prevented an alliance from forming between labouring Bostonians and farmers in the countryside by ensuring that the heavy state tax regime conservative elites implemented in the 1780s did not affect Bostonians. This meant the disaffection of farmers in the countryside did not spread to Boston’s labouring people in the 1780s. Merchants also created distance between labouring people in town and country by repeatedly claiming that greedy farmers were the cause of Boston’s woes during and after the Revolutionary War. Understanding how Boston’s commercial elite maintained their power in newly independent America thus contributes to our understanding of how the local politics of the Revolutionary War prevented the incipiently egalitarian visions of labouring people from flourishing in America’s founding period