100 Objects #7: The Otis Pamphlet

According to 99% Invisible, James Otis Junior was one of America's most influential yet thoroughly forgotten proto-founding fathers. In seventeen sixty-four, he published an inflammatory pamphlet called 'The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,' which became foundational to colonial arguments against taxation without representation and British imperial overreach. His ideas rippled through the revolutionary movement — yet history almost completely erased him. The pamphlet itself survives as a radical document: Otis argued colonists deserved the same rights as any British subject, a claim that seemed obvious in retrospect but was genuinely scandalous at the time. His personal story is equally wild and tragic, a reminder that revolutions are often shaped by people the revolution forgets.

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