This Week’s History Lesson

For some reason, October was an active month in the 1760s.  You can look through history time lines for some months and find relatively little of consequence.  October, on the other hand, is filled with significant events.

In 1760, on October 25th (351 years ago today) King George III took the throne, beginning a reign of over fifty-nine years that would see the successful (for England) ending of the Seven Years’ War, the revolt of the American colonies, the settlement of Australia, the union of Great Britain with Ireland, and the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo.

Five years later, also on today’s date, the Stamp Act Congress adjourned in New York City, its deliberations ended.  The Congress had been attended by colonial leaders of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina, who wished to discuss a coordinated response by the colonists to the Stamp Duty imposed on the colonies by the Crown and Parliament.  The Congress produced a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” that included resolutions demanding the repeal of the Stamp Act and calling “taxation without representation” a violation of colonists’ basic civil rights.  The Stamp Act riots, which occurred in Boston earlier in the year (August 1765) provide the historical backdrop for THIEFTAKER, the first book of the Thieftaker Chronicles, which will be released by Tor Books in July 2012.

Finally, in October 1768, the British began their military occupation of Boston, landing more than a thousand troops at Boston’s Long Wharf and garrisoning themselves in the city’s public buildings.  The arrival of British regulars — also known as “redcoats” or “lobsterbacks” — in Boston ratcheted up tension between Whigs and loyalists in the city and placed armed soldiers in the midst of an ever-deepening political crisis.  This dangerous dynamic eventually culminated in the Boston Massacre of March 1770.  The landing of the British troops in the fall of 1768 provides the historical backdrop for the second volume of the Thieftaker Chronicles, which is currently in the works.