Founded in 1630 on a peninsula called "Shawmut" by the Native Americans who lived there, Boston is named after Boston, England, the town in Lincolnshire from which several prominent first colonists originated. The Puritans who led "Winthrop's fleet" of three ships were not Separatists as were the Pilgrim Fathers who had founded Plymouth. Boston outnumbered Plymouth from the outset, and the city, as the center of Massachusetts Bay Colony, grew rapidly and became wealthy as the primary port for ships bound to Great Britain and the West Indies from the colonies. During the first 200 years, the city was primarily composed of Protestants who originally came from Great Britain.

On March 20, 1760 the "Great Fire" of Boston destroyed 349 buildings.

Boston played a key role in the American Revolutionary War. The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and several of the early battles of the revolutionary war (such as the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Siege of Boston) occurred near the city. During this period, Paul Revere made his famous ride. As a result Boston is known as the Cradle of Liberty and historic sites remain a popular tourist draw to this day.

After the revolutionary war, the city continued to develop as an international trading port, exporting products such as rum, fish, salt and tobacco. It was chartered as a city in 1822, and by the mid-1800s it was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation noted for its garment, leather goods, and machinery industries.

A poem about Boston, attributed to various people, describes the city thus: "And here’s to good old Boston/The land of the bean and the cod/Where Lowells talk only to Cabots/And Cabots talk only to God." But while wealthy colonial families like the Lowells and Cabots (sometimes called the Boston Brahmins) continued to be powerful in the city , by the 1840s waves of new immigrants began to arrive from Europe. These included large numbers of Irish, and Italians giving the city a large Roman Catholic population. It is currently the third largest Catholic community in the United States (after Chicago and Los Angeles).

The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opened in Boston on November 1, 1848.

The Great Boston Fire of 1872 started on Lincoln Street on November 9 and in two days destroyed about 65 acres (260,000 m?) of city, 776 buildings, much of the financial district and caused US$60 million in damage.

1888 German map of Boston

"As a literary centre Boston was long supreme in the United States and still disputes the palm with New York," says Baedeker's United States (1893). "A list of its distinguished literary men would be endless; but it may not be invidious to mention Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Everett, Agassiz, Whittier, Motley, Bancroft, Prescott, Parkman, Ticknor, Channing, Theodore Parker, Henry James, T. B. Aldrich and Howells among the names more or less closely associated with Boston." Most of the great publishing houses of Boston have been acquired or moved, leaving little but the magazine The Atlantic Monthly (founded 1857) and the publisher Houghton Mifflin to bear witness to Boston's former literary glory.

On September 1, 1897 the Boston subway opened as the first underground metro in North America. Today it is affectionately known as "The T" and is run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

The first vaudeville theater opened on February 28, 1883 in Boston. The last one, the Old Howard in Scollay Square, which had gradually evolved from opera to vaudeville to burlesque, closed in 1953.

In 1950, Boston was slumping. Few major buildings were being built anywhere in the city. Factories were closing up, and moving their operations south, where labor was cheaper. The assets Boston had -- excellent banks, hospitals, universities and technical know-how -- were minimal parts of the U.S. economy.

But all that changed in the next 50 years and Boston boomed. Financial institutions got far more latitude, many more people began to play the market, and Boston became a leader in the mutual fund industry. Health care became far more extensive and expensive, and hospitals such as Massachusetts General, Beth Israel Deaconess, and Brigham and Women's became major profit centers in the city. Universities, such as Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University and Tufts University brought thousands of bright students to the area; many stayed and became citizens.

Finally, MIT and other universities became a source of high-tech talent. Many MIT graduates, in particular, founded successful high-tech companies in the Boston area. Powerful politicians such as John F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neill made sure Boston got plenty of federal investment.

In 1974, the city had to deal with a crisis when a federal district court judge, W. Arthur Garrity, ordered busing to integrate the city's public schools. Violence flared in some neighborhoods of the city when some white parents resisted the busing plan, and public schools - particularly high schools - in these and some other city neighborhoods became the scene of considerable unrest. The tension continued throughout the middle third of the 1970s, leading to the term forced busing entering the American political lexicon. Many parents chose to abandon the public school system, opting for private schools instead.

The last person to get across that town in under three hours was yelling "The British are coming! The British are coming!"

—Lewis Black

As of 2005, the city is in the final stages of the Central Artery/Tunnel project, nicknamed the Big Dig. Planned and approved in the 1980s under Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, with construction beginning in 1991, the Big Dig moved the jumble of elevated highway that made up Route 93 underground, produced the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, and will create over 70 acres (280,000 m?) of public parks in the heart of the city. The Big Dig should ease Boston's notorious traffic congestion; however, it is now the most expensive construction project in United States history, and currently the most expensive construction project in the world.

On March 18, 1990, the largest art theft in modern history occurred in Boston. 12 paintings, collectively worth over $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by two thieves posing as police officers. As of 2004 these paintings have not been recovered.

High tech, education, finance and medical research, and health care are key industries and Boston has world-renowned cultural attractions (including the Museum of Fine Arts and two famous orchestras, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestra).

The largest art theft in US history occurred in Boston on March 18, 1990 when 12 paintings, collectively worth $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by two thieves posing as police officers. As of 2004 these paintings had not been recovered.