A Selective Listing of Riots in the Revolutionary Era 1760-1775
Richard Maxwell Brown

Similarly William Ander Smith has pointed to an eighteenth-century "mob tradition, which served Englishmen and Scots as an extralegal channel by which to make their grievances known and felt by a government which was more concerned with political brokerage and overseas empire than with internal social stresses. Since concern for English rights and liberties was a concept deeply imbedded in the society, it came to be tacitly accepted by that society that mob violence in defense of those rights or in protest against some major grievances was in itself a legitimate, if not a legal right of freeborn English subjects." - William Ander Smith, "Anglo-Colonial Society and the Mob", quoted by Richard Maxwell Brown, pages 89-90, see below.

Year(s)ColonyLocalityRiot or Riot-producing Event
1760-North Carolina Regulator riots and disturbances
1760New YorkNew York CityAnti-impressment riots (two)
1763-1764Pennsylvania Paxton Boys disturbances
1764New YorkNew York CityAnti-impressment riot
1764New YorkNew York City"Soldiers riot and attempted rescue"
1764Rhode IslandNewportAnti-impressment riot
1764MassachusettsDightonAnticustoms riot
1764Rhode IslandNewportAnticustoms riot
1765PennsylvaniaCumberland CountyRangers riot against Indian traders
1765North CarolinaMecklenburg CountyRiot against land surveyors
1765Rhode IslandNewportAnti-impressment riot
1765-1766VariousVariousAnti-Stamp Act riots
1766New YorkHudson RiverAntirent riots
1766ConnecticutNew LondonRogerene religious movement
1766Massachusetts (Maine)FalmouthAnticustoms riot
1766ConnecticutNew HavenAnticustoms riot
1766VirginiaNorfolkAnticustoms riot
1767VirginiaNorfolkAnti-impressment riot
1768MassachusettsBostonSloop Liberty (anti-customs riot)
1768VirginiaNorfolkSmallpox riot
1767-1769South Carolina Regulator riots and disturbances
1769ConnecticutNew HavenAnticustoms riot
1769ConnecticutNew LondonAnticustoms riot
1769Rhode IslandNewportAnticustoms riot
1769PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaAnticustoms riot
Late 1760sRhode IslandNewportRiots against unfaithful husbands
Late 1760sRhode IslandProvidenceRiots against unfaithful husbands
Late 1760sNew YorkNew York CityRiots against unfaithful husbands
1769-1770New JerseyMonmouth CountyAntilawyer riot
1770Rhode Island Anticustoms turmoil
1770PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaAnitcustoms riot
1770New YorkNew York CityLiberty pole riot
1770MassachusettsBostonBoston Massacre
1770-1774(Vermont) New Hampshire grant riots
1771MassachusettsBostonRiot against whorehouse
1771Rhode IslandProvidenceRiot against tidesman
1771Rhode Island Anticustoms turmoil
1772Rhode IslandProvidence watersBurning the Gaspee (anti-customs riot)
1773MassachusettsBostonBoston Tea Party
1774Rhode IslandProvidenceLicensing question riot
1774Rhode IslandEast GreewichAntitory riot
1774Rhode IslandNewportAnticustoms riot
1775MarylandSassafrass-BohemiaAnticustoms riot
1775Georgia Anticustoms riot

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Violence and the American Revolution by Richard Maxwell Brown
Essays on the American Revolution edited by Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, pages 119-120
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1973