[...]... increasing the total to approximately two thousand.5 Wives, children, and hangers-on accompanied the troops and enlarged their impact, as did the crews and of cers aboard the ships of war Their presence was an overwhelming and often hostile addition to the town As of the census of 1765, Boston had a total population of 15,520, a number that included slaves, apprentices, and servants, though not the. .. the Council, and a judge of probate in Suffolk County.19 As a merchant and citizen of Boston and Massachusetts, Hutchinson found fault with the new British policies As a royal of ceholder with ambitions and as a guardian of the standing order, he defended the prerogative of the Crown and the sovereignty of Parliament His dilemma was how to reconcile the two His solution was to protest the economic... settlers and traders on the one side and Indians of the Ohio Country on the other would lead to violence There also was the problem of reducing the of cer corps Forced retirement would mean half-pay for many of cers who held seats in Parliament or whose relations did, and George III and Bute were well aware of the potential impact on patronage; and 4 | As If an Enemy’s Country the king, like previous Hanoverian... ministry was treating American colonies, Boston in particular, as alien land, and colonists, Bostonians in particular, recognized the change Their loyalty to England was shaken The immediate issue facing them was how to remove the occupying force The larger issue was the colonies’ place within the empire, and indeed whether there should be a place for them within the empire Boston remained an occupied... Enemy’s Country facing and lapels From the Town House, the two regiments paraded up a few short blocks of mixed residences and shops until they reached the Common By midafternoon the companies of the 59th and the artillery detachment had joined them.4 In all, roughly twelve hundred British soldiers and of cers had landed in Boston In November two regiments from Ireland, the 64th and most of the 65th,... greater than the annual provincial revenues of roughly 100,000 pounds By the end of the war, the average Boston taxpayer faced a 60 percent increase in town and province taxes, a levy that was higher than anywhere else in the empire, including England, and unmanageable for many of Boston s citizens Samuel Adams, a wily politician and perhaps the most compassionate of the town’s tax collectors in the early... 1775, New Englanders were speaking of the conflict not as a revolution but as a civil war Yet a third theme appeared in the cross-purposes of imperial leaders such as General Thomas Gage They also thought of themselves as Whigs, and cherished the traditions of the English Revolution of 1688 Many were deeply divided within themselves And the British troops in Boston were a trial for them as well Edmund... from the French West Indies, where there was an abundance, was essential And there was the additional benefit of the French Caribbean market, a market that provided a favorable trade balance to New Englanders, thus allowing them to purchase other goods elsewhere The duty of six cents a gallon on molasses made the production of rum unprofitable New Englanders therefore had the choice of closing their... that we assume there were no alternatives But neither the occupation nor the American Revolution was inevitable Human will may be limited by the context of the time and the passions of the moment, but it still is powerful Other decisions could have been made; other actions could have been taken This is the story of the choices that were made and the results that followed As If an Enemy’s Country This... of cers And people in many colonies regarded the presence of British troops as an army of occupation Each of these many conflicts caused outbreaks of explosive violence before 1775 This new book by Richard Archer reminds us that many Americans most deeply feared and loathed the tyranny of a standing army in their midst This was specially the case in Boston, where on October 1, 1768, a fleet of British . Adams, and the Election of 1828 Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans As If an enemy’s Country The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution RICHARD. thousand. 5 Wives, children, and hangers-on accompanied the troops and enlarged their impact, as did the crews and of cers aboard the ships of war. Their presence was an overwhelming and often. of themselves as Whigs, and cherished the traditions of the English Revolution of 1688. Many were deeply divided within themselves. And the British troops in Boston were a trial for them as