David Center Lunch: Quartering the British Army in Revolutionary America

The David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society presents Lunch at the Library with John McCurdy, Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University. McCurdy will present his new book Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution. 

In the decades before the Revolution, British soldiers were a common sight in America. They lived in private houses in Trenton, marched up Broadway in New York, and came to blows in Boston. What was it like to live in this world? Drawing on his new book, Professor John McCurdy uses the example of Philadelphia to explain how colonists made room for redcoats by reimagining places like home, city, and empire. They insisted on a right to privacy in their houses and civilian control of troops stationed in their cities, both of which they achieved through the Quartering Act. McCurdy also explores how protests by the Sons of Liberty and events like the Boston Massacre caused the civilian-martial comity to unravel such that Americans ultimately declared the “quartering of large bodies of armed troops among us” to be a reason for independence.

John Gilbert McCurdy is Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University. McCurdy is the author of two books: Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States (Cornell, 2009) and Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution (Cornell, 2019). McCurdy’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Cambridge World History of Violence, and The Journal of Urban History. 

McCurdy received his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004.  He also holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and B.A. from Knox College. McCurdy has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the University of Michigan.

McCurdy has taught at Eastern Michigan University since 2005. He has been nominated for several teaching awards and he received the Faculty Scholarship Award in 2010. He regularly teaches courses in colonial and Revolutionary America, as well as the gender and sexuality. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.