The Anatomy of a Crowd

Abstract

Over the past thirty years, historians of colonial British North America have turned their attention to crowd violence. Most crowds inflicted horrifying, ritualized violence on people and property. Crowds assaulted men and women who committed adultery or bigamy, or who beat their spouses too severely. And crowds attacked anyone who jeopardized people’s health with disease or who used their political and economic power to get rich at the expense of their neighbors. What becomes clear is that colonists adapted the rituals of rough music to various social, political, and economic grievances. Readers usually meet these people as they chased their targets, giving the impression that people formed crowds spontaneously. But some crowds acted more deliberately. In some cases, colonists resorted to violence only after determining what behavior upset them and then how best to address it. The question becomes, then, simply put, how did colonists learn the mobbing time had come?