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.
Yet the financial strains of staging a global war pushed many Bostonians to question their place in the British Empire, as new tax policies and a more persistent military presence infringed on the relative autonomy that they had come to enjoy and expect.