17–20 November 1747
Boston’s Knowles riot prompts a racial and class denunciation by the town meeting
Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay
Naval impressment under Charles Knowles provoked resistance in Boston. On 20 November, the town meeting disavowed the disturbances and identified the crowd as foreign seamen, servants, Black people and others it disparaged by social rank. At the same time, the meeting supported orderly petitions for relief from impressment.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The hostile description belongs to a town-meeting resolution, not merely a merchants’ statement or a reliable census of participants. It does not identify every Black participant’s legal status or establish a shared emancipation program. The chapter’s two impressment passages are treated as one episode. The starting date follows the documentary account and deposition inventory published by the Colonial Society.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 3; supplied pp. 39–58 and bibliography pp. 690–691, edition/year unidentified
- Boston Town Records, 1742–1757, Report of the Record Commissioners, vol. 14 (1886), p. 127: 20 November 1747 meeting and resolution, scan checked ↗
- Colonial Society of Massachusetts, March Meeting, 1896: account of the Knowles riot, official correspondence and court-deposition inventory ↗