text:
Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion held by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley, after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American Indians out of Virginia. Thousands of Virginians from all classes (including those in indentured servitude) and races rose up in arms against Berkeley, chasing him from Jamestown and ultimately torching the settlement. The rebellion was first suppressed by a few armed merchant ships from London whose captains sided with Berkeley and the loyalists. Government forces arrived soon after and spent several years defeating pockets of resistance and reforming the colonial government to be once more under direct Crown control.

Bacon's rebellion was the first rebellion in the North American colonies in which discontented frontiersmen took part (a somewhat similar uprising in Maryland involving John Coode and Josias Fendall took place shortly afterward). The alliance between European indentured servants and Africans (a mix of indentured, enslaved, and Free Negroes) disturbed the colonial upper class. They responded by hardening the racial caste of slavery in an attempt to divide the two races from subsequent united uprisings with the passage of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705. While the rebellion did not succeed in the initial goal of driving the Native Americans from Virginia, it did result in Berkeley being recalled to England.

Prelude
Starting in the 1650s, when high tobacco prices encouraged both tobacco planting and immigration, colonists began cutting forests as well as trying to farm tobacco on land already cleared by Native Americans. Whereas decades earlier, Native Americans had been able to trade foodstuffs which they had grown and captured for trade goods, colonists had learned to farm grain and raise livestock for themselves; furs (caught and prepared by natives or frontiersmen) became the new primary trade good. Tensions arose because native croplands were attractive not only to the colonists' generally free-roving pigs (which damaged their crops), but also as easily switched to tobacco. Because colonists' farming methods drained fields of nutrients (both because of erosion and because fertilization was rarely practiced or effective for more than another century), new fields constantly were sought. Furthermore, more emigrants were surviving their indentures, and thus wanted to establish themselves with their new skills as tobacco farmers. In Virginia's Northern Neck (a relatively undeveloped area in the watersheds of the Rappahannock River and Potomac Rivers between cleared and farmed land in southeastern Virginia and cleared and farmed land in eastern Maryland), rather than rent farmland from their former employers, freed indentured servants and other European immigrants began clearing and squatting on land which the Crown had reserved for Native Americans since 1634. However, with the Restoration of the English monarchy following the English Civil War, fewer people chose to emigrate from England to flee that internal conflict. Between the First Anglo-Dutch War and the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Crown adopted Navigation Acts, in particular a new rule that tobacco grown in the colonies could only be sold to English merchants and shipped to England on English ships. Since much colonial tobacco was low quality and usually sold to Dutch traders or to the Continental market, English merchants had an oversupply of tobacco by the mid-1600s and its price plummeted. Thus, while the Dutch had paid three pence per pound for tobacco and a small planter could grow 1000 pounds in a year, English traders would only pay a half penny per pound or less.

Virginia's governor, William Berkeley, had taken office and sailed to the colony shortly before the English Civil War began, and remained in office or with significant power for about 35 years. Berkeley had traveled back to England to fight (unsuccessfully) for King Charles before returning to the colony in 1645 after Natives had massacred settlers in 1644. He led military forces which captured the chief Opechancanough and suppressed the revolt. Berkeley also had a royal monopoly of the important beaver fur trade, and charged fur traders in the interior a license fee for bringing furs which they or Native Americans gathered and which the traders then sold to Berkeley's company. Berkeley grew unpopular after the Dutch were defeated, in part because the tobacco boom had ended, as well as because of the conflict and more personal reasons. Like King Charles, Berkeley refused to call for legislative elections for more than a decade during the English Civil Wars (during part of which Puritan-leaning Richard Bennett, Edward Digges and Samuel Mathews had replaced him as the colony's chief executive during the "Long Assembly"). He also issued large land grants to favorites (of 2000, 10,000 or even 30,000 acres) and was extremely wealthy compared to small planters (owning Green Spring Plantation outside Jamestown, as well as 5 houses in the colonial capital which he mostly rented out, 400 cattle and 60 horses, as well as several hundred sheep, valuable household silver and nearly a thousand pounds sterling worth of grain in storage). Berkeley's favorites often commanded the local militia in various counties, as well as charged quitrents to smaller farmers who cleared and farmed the land on their vast estates. In 1662 Governor Berkeley warned English officials that the low tobacco prices did not even cover freight and customs charges, much less provide a subsistence income for small farmers, who grew discontent, and in 1667 several weather events cause the tobacco crop to fail. Nonetheless, after the Restoration of the monarchy, the king granted English-based favorites the Northern Neck Proprietary and the right to 11 years worth of quitrents in arrears (which seemed like additional taxes). Discontent had become widespread by 1670, when most landless taxpayers lost the right to vote for representatives in the House of Burgesses. One set of aggrieved petitioners met at Lawne's Creek parish church across from Jamestown in December 1673, and in 1674 two rebellions in Virginia failed for want of leaders.

Meanwhile, Susquehannock peoples from Pennsylvania and northern Maryland had been displaced by the peoples aligned with the Iroquois Confederation, and moved south into Maryland (where they were initially welcomed) and Virginia. Secocowon (then known as Chicacoan), Doeg, Patawomeck and Rappahannock natives began moving into the Northern Neck region as they were displaced from Maryland as well as rapidly settling areas of eastern Virginia, and joined local tribes in defending their land and resources. In June 1666, Governor Berkeley told General Robert Smith of Rappahanock County that Native Americans in the colony's northern part could be destroyed, in order to provide a "great Terror and Example and Instruction to all other Indians", and that an expedition against them could be funded by enslaving the women and children and selling them outside the colony. Allowing enslavement of Indians for damages done to frontiersman had been permitted by the General Assembly in the case of John Powell of Northumberland County. Thus, soon colonists declared war on the nearby natives. By 1669, colonists had patented the land on the west of the Potomac as far north as My Lord's Island (now Theodore Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C.). By 1670, they had driven most of the Doeg out of the Virginia colony and into Maryland—apart from those living beside the Nanzatico/Portobago in Caroline County, Virginia.

Motives
Bacon's followers used the rebellion as an effort to gain government recognition of the shared interests among all social classes of the colony in protecting the "commonality" and advancing its welfare. However, not every class's welfare was looked after in this rebellion. Both Native American women and European women played major roles in Bacon's Rebellion as less noted members of society. However, the primary disagreement between Bacon and his followers and Berkeley was in how to handle the Native American population. Berkeley believed that it would be useful to keep some as subjects, stating, "I would have preserved those Indians that I knew were hoeurly at our mercy to have beene our spies and intelligence to find out the more bloudy Ennimies", whereas Bacon found this approach too compassionate, stating, "Our Design [is] ... to ruin and extirpate all Indians in General."

Native American raids
In July 1675, Doeg Indians in Stafford County, Virginia, killed two settlers and destroyed fields of corn and cattle. The Stafford County militia tracked down the raiders, killing 10 Doeg in a cabin. Meanwhile, another militia, led by Colonel Mason and Captain George Brent, attacked a nearby cabin of the friendly Susquehannock tribe and killed 14 of them. The attack ceased only when someone from the cabin managed to escape and confront Mason, telling him that they were not Doegs. On August 31, Virginia Governor William Berkeley proclaimed that the Susquehannock had been involved in the Stafford County attack with the Doeg. On September 26, 1,000 members of Maryland militia led by Major Thomas Trueman marched to the Susquehannock stronghold in Maryland. They were soon joined by Virginia militia led by Col. John Washington and Col. Isaac Allerton Jr. Trueman invited five Susquehannock chiefs to a parley. After the chiefs denied responsibility for the July attacks in Stafford County despite witnesses having noticed Susquehannocks wearing clothing of some murdered settlers, they were killed without trial and despite the parley promises as well as a medal of Lord Baltimore and paper pledge from a former Maryland governor produced by one of the chiefs. Although the tribesmen in the fort continued to resist despite their leaders' unexplained disappearance, many ultimately managed to escape with their wives and children. Maryland authorities impeached Major Trueman, and Governor Berkeley expressed outrage when he heard about the massacre.

In January 1676, Susquehannocks retaliated by attacking plantations, killing 60 settlers in Maryland and a further 36 in Virginia. Other tribes joined in, killing settlers, burning houses and fields and slaughtering livestock as far south as the James and York River watersheds.

Berkeley's forts and Bacon's raiders
After raids in Virginia in February 1676, Berkeley initially called up the Virginia militia under Sir Henry Chicheley and Col. Goodrich to pursue the raiders, but soon recalled that expedition and decided upon a defensive war. The House of Burgesses approved of Berkeley's plan to build and staff eight forts along the frontier with 500 men, provided for the enlistment of friendly natives, and prohibited selling firearms to "savages". When no militia deaths were reported in April and May, Berkeley proclaimed his plan a success, but Bacon's people complained that garrisons could not pursue raiders without the governor's express permission, and meanwhile outlying plantations were burned, livestock stolen, and settlers killed or taken captive. Frontier planters demanded the right to defend themselves. Bacon later attributed these actions to Berkeley's desire not to impede the beaver fur trade, but historians also note that militia were often unwilling to distinguish between friendly and unfriendly natives. Upset at Governor Berkeley's refusal to retaliate against the Native Americans' raids, farmers in Charles City County gathered near Merchant's Hope on the James River, the scene of a massacre in 1622 upon hearing rumors of a new raiding party. Nathaniel Bacon arrived with a quantity of brandy; after it was distributed, he was elected leader.

Against Berkeley's previous order, and as Bacon sought a commission to go and attack Indians, his armed militiamen crossed the Chickahominy River into New Kent County nominally seeking the Susquehannock warriors responsible for recent raids, and so traveled first toward the Pamunkey lands, only to find the people had fled into Dragon Swamp. They then continued westward toward the Seneca Trail, a travel and trading path along the Appalachian Mountains. Governor Berkeley was furious that Bacon's militia had driven the Pamunkeys into hiding and declared the action illegal and rebellious, notwithstanding Bacon's letter ordering payment of monies he owed the governor and reiterating that he had no evil intentions against the government nor him. However, not finding Susquehannocks, Bacon's militiamen turned their back upon settlements and struck south until they came to the Roanoke River and the Occaneechi people in May. After convincing Occaneechi warriors (and their Mannikin allies) to leave their villages and attack the Susquehannock to the west, Bacon and his men refused to pay for those services, but instead demanded provisions and beaver pelts. Not receiving them, they murdered the Occaneechi chief and most of the Occaneechi men, women, and children, which ranged from 100 to 400 people, remaining at the villages, then plundered their larders before proceeding eastward back toward Jamestown. Meanwhile, Berkeley had gathered about 300 men and led them to the falls of the James River (modern day Richmond), but too late to intercept Bacon's forces. So he issued another proclamation declaring Bacon and his followers as unlawful, mutinous and rebellious, and his wife issued her own proclamation that Bacon's promises to provide for his follower's wives and children only promoted vain hopes. Lady Berkeley declared that Bacon owed his trading partner William Byrd I 400 pounds sterling and his cousin Nathaniel Bacon Sr. 200 pounds sterling and that his own father had refused to honor his bills of exchange.

Returning to Jamestown
Upon returning to their lands in Henrico County, Bacon's faction discovered that Berkeley had called for new elections to the House of Burgesses to better address the Native American raids and other matters. Ignoring the sheriff's reading of Berkeley's proclamation against Bacon, voters elected Bacon and his friend Capt. James Crews to represent them in the House of Burgesses. However, when Bacon and 40 of his armed followers attempted to dock their sloop at Jamestown, they were fired on by the fort, and so disembarked under cover of darkness to consult with followers Richard Lawrence and William Drummond at a tavern. However, he was discovered returning to his sloop, chased upriver, and forced to surrender to Capt. Thomas Gardiner of the warship Adam and Eve. Upon being taken to the Governor, Bacon behaved as a gentleman and was granted leniency—parole upon signing a paper promising to refrain from further disobedience to the government, then allowed to plead his submission before the Governor's Council.

Despite most new members being sympathetic to Bacon's grievances, Governor Berkeley at first exerted control over the newly elected House of Burgesses. Berkeley first insisted upon the legislature taking care of Indian business, but a debate as to whether the House would ask for two Councillors to sit with the committee on Indian Affairs never came to a vote, and the Queen of the Pamunkeys demanded compensation for the former war in which her husband had been killed assisting the English as a precondition to furnishing warriors in this conflict, although ultimately the burgesses authorized an army of 1000 men. The recomposed House of Burgesses ultimately enacted a number of sweeping reforms, known as Bacon's Laws discussed below. However, by this time Bacon had escaped Jamestown, telling Berkeley that his own wife was ill, but soon placing himself at the head of a volunteer army in Henrico County, where natives had renewed raids and killed 8 settlers, including wiping out families.

Bacon returned to Jamestown with hundreds of enraged followers demanding "no levies" (meaning no additional taxes nor military conscription). Bacon demanded a military commission to lead forces against the Indians, as well as blank commissions for his officers. Governor Berkeley, however, initially refused to yield to the pressure, rushing out to meet Bacon in the street and declaring him a traitor. When Bacon had his men take aim at Berkeley, he responded by "baring his breast" and told Bacon to shoot him. Seeing that the governor would not be moved, Bacon then had his men take aim at the burgesses viewing the street spectacle from the windows of nearby houses. When the burgesses invited Bacon into their Long Room, the governor yielded and signed the military commissions, as well as wrote the King justifying Bacon's conduct. The assembly in Bacon's absence had also rushed through "Bacon's Laws", possibly drafted by Lawrence and Drummond, or by Thomas Blayton (whom Edward Hill later called "Bacon's great engine" in the assembly). Although repealed by the burgesses in the 1677 session, they limited the governor's powers, set certain fees for governmental actions, made it illegal for one person to hold more than one important county office at one time (the offices being sheriff, clerk of court, surveyor and escheator) and restored suffrage to landless freemen (including in taxes levied by county courts and vestries).

Rival recruiting attempts and the "Declaration of the People"
In late July, Bacon completed preparations for his Indian campaign, including enlisting officers and armed bands from many counties, which were to meet at the falls of the James River. Bacon addressed seven hundred gathered horse and six hundred gathered foot troops, took the oath of allegiance and expected to march the next day, only to learn that Philip Ludwell and Robert Beverley were recruiting other troops on behalf of Governor Berkeley in Gloucester County to their rear, alleging that Bacon's commission was illegal because it had been procured by force, but the troops refused to gather for the governor upon learning they were to oppose the popular hero Bacon. On July 30, 1676, Bacon and his army issued the "Declaration of the People". The declaration criticized Berkeley's administration in detail. It leveled several accusations against Berkeley:
 * 1) that "upon specious pretense of public works [he] raised great unjust taxes upon the commonality";
 * 2) that he advanced favorites to high public offices;
 * 3) that he monopolized the beaver trade with the Native Americans;
 * 4) that he was pro-Native American.

Berkeley then followed Robert Beverley's advice and fled across Chesapeake Bay to Accomack County on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Chicheley promised to meet him shortly thereafter, but was captured. Bacon and his followers established a camp at Middle Plantation (modern Williamsburg) and issued a proclamation declaring Berkeley, Chicheley, Ludwell, Beverley and others traitors, as well as threatened to confiscate their estates unless they surrendered within four days. Bacon also summoned all the leading planters to a conference. Seventy assembled and 69 took three oaths: (1) that they would join with him against the Indians, (2) that they would arrest anyone trying to raise troops against him, and (3) (with demurrers) that they would oppose any English troops sent to Virginia until Bacon could plead his case before the King. Among the oath's signers were burgesses or councillors Thomas Swan, John Page, Philip Lightfoot and Thomas Ballard. Meanwhile, Bacon's father, Thomas Bacon, was pleading with the King to pardon his son, presenting "The Virginians' Plea".

Bacon then led his army through upper Gloucester and Middlesex Counties against the Pamunkey, finding a village in the swamps and capturing 45 prisoners (although the queen of the Pamunkeys escaped) as well as stores of wampum, skins, fur and English goods. Meanwhile, on August 1, Bacon's followers Giles Bland and William Carver captured a ship 'Rebecca" commanded by Captain Larrimore and refitted her with guns, although two other ships escaped. Bland and Carver and 250 men with three ships then attempted to block the mouth of the James River, but ended up anchoring off Accomac, where Captain Larrimore sent a message to Governor Berkeley about serving with his crew under duress, so Philip Ludwell and two boats of soldiers sailed out and recaptured the ship. Berkeley then embarked 200 men on two ships and six or seven sloops and returned to the Western Sore, sailing up the James River toward Jamestown, where Bacon's garrison fled without firing a shot.

Burning of Jamestown, further raids, courts martial and Bacon's death
When Bacon's forces again reached Jamestown, it seemed impregnable, approachable only via a narrow isthmus defended by three heavy guns. Nonetheless, Bacon ordered a crude fortification constructed at the end of the isthmus, and when Berkeley's forces fired on the crude structure, sent out parties of horse troops to gather the wives of some of the governor's supporters. Thus, Elizabeth Page, Angelica Bray, Anna Ballard, Frances Thorpe and Elizabeth Bacon (wife of his senior cousin) were placed on the ramparts together with some Native American prisoners, to be endangered should firing resume. On September 15, some of Berkeley's troops sallied out, but without success, so Berkeley's Councillors advised abandoning the town. They spiked the guns, took stores aboard vessels and slipped down the river at night. Bacon's forces thus retook the town. However, Bacon also learned that his former follower, Giles Brent had raised an army in the northern counties and was marching south to attack Bacon and his men. Thus, Bacon, Lawrence, Drummond and others decided to torch Jamestown, the colony's capital, on September 19.

After Bacon's followers torched the capital and left their encampment at Berkeley's Green Spring Plantation outside Jamestown, the main body traveled east to Yorktown. They then crossed the York River and encamped in Gloucester County at Warner Hall, home of the speaker of the House of Burgesses, Augustine Warner Jr. However, the Gloucester troops balked at further oaths. This disappointed Bacon, so he arrested Rev. James Wadding, who had tried to dissuade the people from subscribing. Bacon also set up courts martial to try some of this opponents, or exchange them for Carver and Bland, but only executed one deserter. Bacon also sent Captain George Farlow (formerly one of Cromwell's men) and 40 soldiers to capture Governor Berkeley at the plantation of council member John Custis in Accomack County on Virginia's Eastern Shore, but the raid failed, and Farloe was captured and hanged. Nor was a manifesto to the people of the Eastern Shore effective. Thus, Bacon issued orders that the estates of the governor and his friends be ransacked to supply his army. Taking cattle, sheep, hogs, Indian corn and household furnishings, Bacon's soldiers seemed to plunder both friend and foe, eroding his support. Bacon made his final headquarters at the house of Major Thomas Pate, in Gloucester County a few miles east of West Point, but fell ill of dysentery and after calling in Rev. Wadding for last rites, died on October 26, 1676. His body was never found; upon being exhumed on Berkeley's orders, the casket contained only stones.

Suppression
Bacon and his rebels never encountered a Crown force consisting of 1,000 English Army troops led by Colonel Herbert Jeffreys transported by a Royal Navy squadron under the command of Thomas Larimore sent to aid Berkeley. Neither Lawrence nor Drummond had military experience, and Giles Bland who had such experience was already Berkeley's prisoner, having been captured along with Carver during the failed kidnapping attempt. Thus, the remaining rebels elected John Ingram, Bacon's second in command but a saddler by trade, as their leader. However, he faced daunting problems in feeding his men, as well as the militarily strategic need to cover hundreds of thousands of acres of land with many vulnerable areas.

The rebellion did not last long after that. Ingram kept his main force at the head of the York River, with small garrisons at strategic points—including Governor Berkeley's residence at Green Spring and Major Arthur Allen's across the James River (at what came to be called Bacon's Castle though Bacon had never lived there), as well as Colonel West's house near West Point, Councillor Bacon's house at King's Creek and Yorktown (both on the York River) as well as Col. John Washington's house in Westmoreland County to the north. Berkeley launched a series of successful amphibious attacks across the Chesapeake Bay and defeated the small pockets of insurgents spread across Tidewater Virginia. Major Beverley captured Captain Thomas Hansford and his Yorktown garrison, then returned to capture Major Edmund Cheesemen and Capt. Thomas Wilford.

However, Berkeley's forces also suffered losses. A planned surprise raid on the York River garrison at King's Creek ended with the death of its leader, Capt. Hubert Farril. Major Lawrence Smith had gathered loyalists in Gloucester county, but when they faced Ingram's forces, Major Bristow offered single combat in the medieval style, and the loyalists' rank and file laid down their arms and went home. Another large force gathered in Middlesex County but dispersed after Ingram sent out Gregory Wakelett and a body of horse troops. Thus Berkeley's plan to close in on Ingram from the south of the York River, while other loyalists attacked from the north and east failed miserably.

In November 1676, the royal navy arrived. Thomas Grantham, captain of the ship Concord cruised the York River, despite pleas from Lawrence about the people having been grievously oppressed and requests to remain neutral. Grantham tried to persuade Berkeley to use meekness, which Berkeley soon used to good effect, but insisted that the pardons not be allowed to Lawrence and Drummond. Grantham then went up the York River to the Pate house at West Point, and used cunning and force to disarm the rebels there. Ingram yielded the West Point garrison with 300 men, four great guns and many small arms, then Grantham tricked his way into the rebel garrison at John West's house with a barrel of brandy and promises of pardon. However, after surrendering the post with 3 cannon, 500 muskets and fowling pieces and 1000 pounds of bullets, and once they were safely in the hold, he turned the ship's guns on them and disarmed the rebels. Berkeley invited Ingram and Langston to dine with him on shipboard, after their surrender at Tindall's Point, after the men had toasted the King and governor, they were allowed to disperse. Then to secure the submission of Gregory Wakelett's cavalry, Berkeley offered not only a pardon, but part of the wampum Bacon's former men had taken from the Indians.

Lawrence, Whaley and three others fled westward, risking torture at the hands of natives rather than fall into the governor's control. They were last seen pushing through the snow on the extreme frontier, and may have died of hunger and exposure, or found refuge in some other colony. Drummond was found hiding in Chickahominy Swamp.

Aftermath
Although rebel forces were suppressed, the colony was in a deplorable condition, with many plantations deserted or plundered. The government lacked money, and the absence of labor had resulted in small harvests of both tobacco and grain. Nonetheless, at year's end, tobacco ships began to come in with supplies of clothing, cloth, medicines, and sundries.

Trials and executions
Executions continued for several months. Berkeley acknowledged executing 13 rebels. While his headquarters remained on the Eastern Shore, Berkeley condemned many rebels and executed five. Hansford pleaded that he be shot as a soldier not hanged like a dog, and protested his loyalty as he stood on the scaffold. Major Cheeseman died in prison, though his wife pleaded that she be hung in his place. Farloe produced his military commission and was told that it authorized fighting only against Indians, not the Governor, and so was also executed, as were Carver, Wilford, and John Johnson.

The 71-year-old governor Berkeley returned to the burned capital and his looted Green Spring home at the end of January 1677. His wife described their Green Spring Plantation in a letter to her cousin:

"It looked like one of those the boys pull down at Shrovetide, and was almost as much to repair as if it had been new to build, and no sign that ever there had been a fence around it..."

Thomas Young, James Wilson ("Harris" per Berkeley), Henry Page and Thomas Hall were executed on January 12, 1677. Then William Drummond and John Baptista (the latter not mentioned by Berkeley) were tried at Middle Plantation (Williamsburg) not far from Green Spring and executed on January 20. James Crewes, William Cookson and John Digbie ("Darby" being named as a former servant in Berkeley's list) were tried at Jamestown and hanged on January 24.

However, despite receiving orders to return to England, Berkeley delayed his departure for several months, during which he presided over additional trials, apparently disregarding the clemency suggested by the royal representatives. Bacon's wealthy landowning followers returned their loyalty to the Virginia government after Bacon's death. Some former rebels of lower classes were ordered to make public apologies, and many were fined or ordered to pay court costs. The childless, elderly Governor's seizing property of several (but not all) rebels for the colony provoked considerable unrest and dissatisfaction. However, whereas in the initial trials, many of the accused were denied counsel, such were present in several of the later trials. Berkeley in particular grew displeased with his former King's Counsel, William Sherwood for defending former rebels. Former customs collector Giles Bland and Anthony Arnold were executed on March 8, then John Isles and Richard Pomfrey on March 15 and John Whitson and William Scarburgh on March 16. Scholars differ as to the number of men executed, although roughly double the number in Berkeley's report. One scholar counted 25 executions another states 23 men were executed by hanging.

Royal commission and Berkeley's death
Meanwhile, after an investigative committee returned its report to King Charles II, Berkeley was relieved of the governorship and recalled to England. According to one historian, "Because the tobacco trade generated a crown revenue of about £5–£10 per laboring man, King Charles II wanted no rebellion to distract the colonists from raising the crop." Charles II was reported to have commented, "That old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father." No record of the king's comments have been found, and the origin of the story appears to have been colonial legend that arose at least 30 years after the events. The king prided himself on the clemency he had shown to his father's enemies. Berkeley left his wife, Frances Berkeley, in Virginia and returned to England. She sent a letter to let him know that the current governor was making a bet that the king would refuse to receive him. However, William Berkeley died in July 1677, shortly after he landed in England.

Historical disagreements
In order for the Virginia elite to maintain the loyalty of the common planters in order to avert future rebellions, one historian commented, they "needed to lead, rather than oppose, wars meant to dispossess and destroy frontier Indians." He elaborated that this bonded the elite to the common planter in wars against Indians, their common enemy, and enabled the elites to appease free whites with land. Taylor writes, "To give servants greater hope for the future, in 1705 the assembly revived the headright system by promising each freedman fifty acres of land, a promise that obliged the government to continue taking land from the Indians."

Bacon promised his army tax breaks, predetermined wages, and freedom from indentures, "so long as they should serve under his colors." Indentured servants both black and white had joined the frontier rebellion. Seeing them united in a cause alarmed the ruling class. Historians believe the rebellion hastened the hardening of racial lines associated with slavery, as a way for planters and the colony to control some of the poor. For example, historian Eric Foner writes, "The fear of civil war among whites frightened Virginia's ruling elite, who took steps to consolidate power and improve their image: for example, restoration of property qualifications for voting, reducing taxes, and adoption of a more aggressive American Indian policy." Some of these measures, by appeasing the poor white population, may have had the purpose of inhibiting any future unification with the enslaved black population.

Historiography
In 1676, Ann Cotton wrote a personal account of Bacon's Rebellion. Her account was in the form of a letter written in 1676 and published in its original form in 1804 in the Richmond Enquirer under the title, An account of our late troubles in Virginia. The following year, the same paper published The Beginning, Progress, and Conclusion of Bacon's Rebellion, which former participant Thomas Mathew wrote in 1704 (the year before his death), and which had been acquired for President Thomas Jefferson, who gave his former mentor George Wythe permission to have it published.

Historians question whether the rebellion by Bacon against Berkeley in 1676 had any lasting significance for the more-successful American Revolution a century later. The most idolizing portrait of Bacon is found in Torchbearer of the Revolution (1940) by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, which one scholar in 2011 called "one of the worst books on Virginia that a reputable scholarly historian ever published." The central area of debate is Bacon's controversial character and complex disposition, as illustrated by Wilcomb E. Washburn's The Governor and the Rebel (1957). Rather than singing Bacon's praises and chastising Berkeley's tyranny, Washburn found the roots of the rebellion in the colonists' intolerable demand to "authorize the slaughter and dispossession of the innocent as well as the guilty."

More nuanced approaches on Berkeley's supposed tyranny or mismanagement entertained specialist historians throughout the middle of the twentieth century, leading to a diversification of factors responsible for Virginia's contemporary instability. Wesley Frank Craven in the 1968 publication, The Colonies in Transition, argues that Berkeley's greatest failings took place during the revolt, near the end of his life. Bernard Bailyn pushed the novel thesis that it was a question of access to resources, a failure to fully transplant Old World society to New.

Edmund S. Morgan's 1975 classic, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, connected the calamity of Bacon's Rebellion, namely the potential for lower-class revolt, with the colony's transition over to slavery, saying, "But for those with eyes to see, there was an obvious lesson in the rebellion. Resentment of an alien race might be more powerful than resentment of an upper class. Virginians did not immediately grasp it. It would sink in as time went on."

James Rice's 2012 narrative, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America, whose emphasis on Bacon's flaws echoes The Governor and the Rebel, integrates the rebellion into a larger story emphasizing the actions of multiple Native Americans, as well as placing it in the context of politics in Europe. In this telling, the climax of Bacon's Rebellion comes with the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688/89.

Legacy
According to the Historic Jamestowne website, "For many years, historians considered the Virginia Rebellion of 1676 to be the first stirring of revolutionary sentiment in [North] America, which culminated in the American Revolution almost exactly one hundred years later. However, in the past few decades, based on findings from a more distant viewpoint, historians have come to understand Bacon's Rebellion as a power struggle between two stubborn, selfish leaders rather than a glorious fight against tyranny."

Nonetheless, many in the early United States, including Thomas Jefferson, saw Bacon as a patriot and believed that Bacon's Rebellion truly was a prelude to the later American Revolution against the control of the Crown. This understanding of the conflict was reflected in 20th-century commemorations, including a memorial window in Colonial Williamsburg and a prominent tablet in the Virginia House of Delegates chamber of the State Capitol in Richmond, which recalls Bacon as "A great Patriot Leader of the Virginia People who died while defending their rights October 26, 1676." Subsequent to the rebellion, the Virginia colonial legislature enacted the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705, which created several strict laws upon people of African background. Additionally, the codes were intended to socially segregate the white and black races.

Use of jimsonweed
Jimsonweed is a hallucination inducing plant that was first documented by a Virginian colonist named Robert Beverly. Robert Beverley reported, in his 1705 book on the history of Virginia, that some soldiers who had been dispatched to Jamestown to quell Bacon's Rebellion gathered and ate leaves of Datura stramonium and spent eleven days acting in bizarre and foolish ways before recovering. After recovery from the plant the soldiers claimed to not remember anything from the past 11 days. This led to the plant being known as Jamestown weed, and later jimsonweed.

Described as a "cooler" by Robert Beverley but effects can be close to schizophrenia and dissociative disorder – which explains why soldiers acted irrationally, or "went crazy" for days.

title: Bacon's Rebellion


text:
The Tripods

The Tripods is a series of young adult science fiction novels by John Christopher. The series takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is enslaved by "Tripods" — gigantic three-legged walking machines piloted by an alien race later identified as the "Masters". The first two books were the basis of a science fiction TV series, produced in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.

Synopsis
The story of The Tripods is a variation on post-apocalyptic literature, wherein humanity has been enslaved by "Tripods" — gigantic three-legged walking machines, piloted by unseen alien entities (later identified as "Masters"). Human society is largely pastoral, with few habitations larger than villages, and what little industry exists is conducted under the watchful presence of the Tripods. Lifestyle is reminiscent of the Middle Ages, but small artifacts from the Modern Age are still used as status symbols, such as the protagonist's father owning a watch.

Humans are controlled from age 14 by implants called "Caps," which suppress individuality and free will and make them docile. Some people's minds are broken by the Caps; they become so-called vagrants. According to The City of Gold and Lead, Masters begin to believe that humans should be capped at an earlier age "because some humans, in the year or two before they are Capped, become rebellious and act against the masters", but this cannot be done, because Capping must wait until the braincase has stopped growing.

The White Mountains (1967)
Life is like the Middle Ages in the pre-industrial era, except that all adolescent and adult humans are subject to Tripod control. Protagonist Will Parker, a thirteen-year-old boy living in the fictional English village of Wherton, is looking forward to being Capped at the next Capping Day, until a chance meeting with a mysterious fake-Capped man named Ozymandias (taking his name from a poem he frequently recites) prompts him to discover a world beyond the Tripods' control. Together with his cousin Henry and later a French teenager named Jean-Paul Deliet, nicknamed "Beanpole", they move off towards the White Mountains to avoid being Capped. On the way, they encounter a girl who is a possible romantic interest for Will, but when she is Capped (earlier than expected) they move on. The novel climaxes with Henry and Beanpole discovering that earlier, when Will was captured by a Tripod, he was unknowingly implanted with a tracking device. When Henry and Beanpole remove the device, a nearby Tripod attacks them, but the boys defeat the Tripod and elude subsequent efforts to find them. The story ends with them joining the resistance, located in the eponymous White Mountains. The White Mountains also are free from the tripods.

(1967)
After a year in the White Mountains, the resistance charges Will, Beanpole, and a German boy, Fritz, who are equipped with fake Caps, to infiltrate a Tripod city by competing in a regional sporting exhibition where the winners will be taken by the Tripods. Will, a boxer, and Fritz, a runner, win their respective contests, while Beanpole fails to win in the jumping events.

The winners are taken to the Tripod city in a pressurized dome astride a river. Inside the city, the boys encounter the Tripods' operators, whom they refer to as the "Masters". Human males are slaves inside the cities, while beautiful females are killed and preserved for the Masters to admire. Slaves are furnished with breathing masks to survive the aliens' atmosphere but are rapidly exhausted by the stronger artificial gravity and must therefore be periodically replaced (hence the selection through athletic contests). The gold in the title refers to the city's color; both gold and lead refer to the heightened gravity.

While Fritz is abused by his Master, Will is treated as a privileged pet by his. Eventually, Will's Master reveals a plan to replace the Earth's atmosphere with the Masters' toxic air to enable full control of the Earth. When the Master finds Will's diary, Will accidently kills him to maintain the secret. With the assistance of Fritz (who temporarily stays behind to maintain Will's alibi), Will escapes. The story ends with Will and Beanpole giving Fritz up for dead and returning to the White Mountains.

(1968)
Will and Fritz (who had managed to escape the city after all) travel to Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and the Middle East to organize resistance against the Tripods. The resistance, having ambushed a Tripod and captured a Master, accidentally discover that alcohol has a strong soporific effect on them, and use this knowledge to simultaneously attack their cities. Having introduced alcohol into the aliens' city water systems, raiding groups kill the Masters in two of the three cities by forcing open airlocks and exposing the unconscious aliens to Earth's atmosphere. However, the attack on the third city (located in Panama) fails. After an attack using simple aeroplanes and aerial bombs also fails, another attack is undertaken using hot air balloons developed by Beanpole. After most bombs detonate either before making contact with the dome of the city, or after the bomb has bounced clear, Henry jumps from his balloon onto the city's domed roof and holds the bomb in place, sacrificing himself and shattering the dome. Earth's atmosphere kills the Masters, and Henry is remembered as a hero.

Sometime later, the Masters' atmosphere-seeding spaceship arrives and destroys the remains of their cities, then leaves – presumably since the cities contained "star maps" which showed the location of the Masters' home world, also to prevent the humans from reverse engineering their technology – although Beanpole notes that they have already learned much from the cities. Modern human technology, which was halted during the Masters' rule is rediscovered rapidly, including the theory of space travel.

The saga ends with the Resistance leader Julius being deposed at a summit of nations. In contrast to Julius' efforts to unite the world, the alliance built during the resistance falls apart, with nationalistic hostilities appearing and each country going their separate ways. Will, Beanpole, and Fritz reunite as a tribute to Julius, to work towards establishing a better world.

(1988)
When the Tripods Came is a prequel written twenty years after the publication of the original trilogy. The plot follows the description of the conquest given in The City of Gold and Lead.

Fearing the technological potential of humanity, the so-called "Masters", unable to defeat humanity in a conventional war, hypnotise people through a television program called The Trippy Show, later using temporary and finally permanent Caps to control them.

As in the original trilogy, the narrator of When the Tripods Came is a young English boy. He and a friend bear witness to a botched initial invasion by a single Tripod in the British countryside. After the event is old news, The Trippy Show begins broadcasting, and engenders in some viewers an enthusiasm that gradually becomes a mania. As an increasingly hypnotized society falls under the control of the Masters, he and his family escape to Guernsey by boat. When they find it is also controlled by the Capped, they hijack a plane to Switzerland, which has managed to restrict its hypnotized population better than other European nations. When the Swiss are eventually invaded and enslaved, the narrator and his family establish the "White Mountains" resistance movement of the original trilogy.

Editions
Editions have been published by:
 * Hamish Hamilton (UK First Edition)
 * Simon & Schuster (USA First Edition)
 * Collier Books
 * E. P. Dutton
 * Thorndike Press
 * Knight Books
 * Turtleback Books
 * Beaver Books
 * Audible Studios (audiobook)

The series has been translated into Arabic, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Persian, Spanish, Greek, and Mandarin Chinese (Taiwan).

Comic books
Multiple graphic adaptations have been produced, notably including:

 * Boys' Life, the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, serialised all three books in the trilogy from May 1981 to August 1986. Artist Frank Bolle drew the single page black and white proofs, which were then inked by another person.
 * In 1985, the BBC initiated BEEB, the BBC Junior Television Magazine, and started to present in picture strip form additional adventures of Will, Henry, and Beanpole on their way to the White Mountains, starting at some unspecified point during the fourth episode of the first BBC serial as the trio pass through ruined Paris, and then heading off at a tangent to the television version. From Issue 6, the boys were accompanied on their journey by a young woman named Fizzio, a character original to the strip. The strips were drawn by John M. Burns and in each issue, they consisted of three pages; the first two in colour and the third in black and white. The storyline was never concluded as BEEB ceased publication after only 20 issues.
 * Masters were one of the species detailed in Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.

Television series
The television version of The Tripods was jointly produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom and the Seven Network in Australia. The music soundtrack was written by Ken Freeman. The series was noted for being one of the first to feature computer generated graphics and special effects.

Series one of The Tripods, broadcast in 1984, which had 13 half-hour episodes written by the well-known author of many radio plays Alick Rowe, covers the first book, The White Mountains; the 12-episode second series adapted and written by Christopher Penfold (1985) covers The City of Gold and Lead. Although a television script had been written for the third series "The Pool of Fire", it never went into production.

The first series was released on both VHS and DVD. The BBC released Tripods — The Complete Series 1 & 2 on DVD in March 2009.

Comparison with the novels
When the BBC made the television series of The Tripods in the 1980s, they departed from Christopher's description of the Masters. In the television series, the Masters somewhat resemble the Tripods they drive. This makes the Tripods seem much more like mecha, similar to those described in The War of the Worlds, than purely eccentric vehicles. In the BBC serial, the Masters did not need to eat, sleep or drink as humans do. Additionally, they were not the rulers of the city, but were, in turn, under the rule of higher beings made of pure energy, known as Cognoscs. The Masters came from a planet named Trion that was in the center of a triple star system.

The method by which the Masters name themselves is also different. Rather than having names, they are simply called by their addresses. Will's Master is called West Avenue 4, Sector 6, Level 8, or West 468.

The Masters in the BBC production enjoyed a hotter living environment. It was also established that the rigors of the Master's environment cause premature aging in humans. Treatment of humans slaves varied - ranging from the harsh and thoughtless abuse of "miner" slaves to the relatively luxurious amenities provided to the "power elite".

To avoid an overuse of the mechanical Tripods, the producers invented a new faction, the "Black Guards," as a human police force with the task to enforce the will of the Masters. They served as a more immediate threat for Will, his friends and the resistance.

Potential film adaptation
On January 4, 2005, Gregor Johnson was hired to direct a feature film adaptation of The Tripods and rewrite the screenplay for Don Murphy & Touchstone Pictures. In 2009, Alex Proyas was hired to direct a feature film adaptation of The Tripods and Stuart Hazeldine would write the screenplay starting with "The White Mountain."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Tripods


text:
Neutron moderator

In nuclear engineering, a neutron moderator is a medium that reduces the speed of fast neutrons, ideally without capturing any, leaving them as thermal neutrons with only minimal (thermal) kinetic energy. These thermal neutrons are immensely more susceptible than fast neutrons to propagate a nuclear chain reaction of uranium-235 or other fissile isotope by colliding with their atomic nucleus.

Water (sometimes called "light water" in this context) is the most commonly used moderator (roughly 75% of the world's reactors). Solid graphite (20% of reactors) and heavy water (5% of reactors) are the main alternatives. Beryllium has also been used in some experimental types, and hydrocarbons have been suggested as another possibility.

Moderation
Neutrons are normally bound into an atomic nucleus and do not exist free for long in nature. The unbound neutron has a half-life of 10 minutes and 11 seconds. The release of neutrons from the nucleus requires exceeding the binding energy of the neutron, which is typically 7-9 MeV for most isotopes. Neutron sources generate free neutrons by a variety of nuclear reactions, including nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Whatever the source of neutrons, they are released with energies of several MeV.

According to the equipartition theorem, the average kinetic energy, $$\bar{E}$$, can be related to temperature, $$T$$, via:
 * $$\bar{E}=\frac{1}{2}m_n \langle v^2 \rangle=\frac{3}{2}k_B T$$,

where $$m_n$$ is the neutron mass, $$\langle v^2 \rangle$$ is the average squared neutron speed, and $$k_B$$ is the Boltzmann constant. The characteristic neutron temperature of several-MeV neutrons is several tens of billions kelvin.

Moderation is the process of the reduction of the initial high speed (high kinetic energy) of the free neutron. Since energy is conserved, this reduction of the neutron speed takes place by transfer of energy to a material called a moderator.

The probability of scattering of a neutron from a nucleus is given by the scattering cross section. The first few collisions with the moderator may be of sufficiently high energy to excite the nucleus of the moderator. Such a collision is inelastic, since some of the kinetic energy is transformed to potential energy by exciting some of the internal degrees of freedom of the nucleus to form an excited state. As the energy of the neutron is lowered, the collisions become predominantly elastic, i.e., the total kinetic energy and momentum of the system (that of the neutron and the nucleus) is conserved.

Given the mathematics of elastic collisions, as neutrons are very light compared to most nuclei, the most efficient way of removing kinetic energy from the neutron is by choosing a moderating nucleus that has near identical mass.

A collision of a neutron which has mass of 1 with a 1H nucleus (a proton) could result in the neutron losing virtually all of its energy in a single head-on collision. More generally, it is necessary to take into account both glancing and head-on collisions. The mean logarithmic reduction of neutron energy per collision, $$\xi$$, depends only on the atomic mass, $$A$$, of the nucleus and is given by:

$$\xi= \ln\frac{E_0}{E}=1-\frac{(A-1)^2}{2A}\ln\left(\frac{A+1}{A-1}\right)$$.

This can be reasonably approximated to the very simple form $$\xi\simeq \frac{2}{A+2/3}$$. From this one can deduce $$n$$, the expected number of collisions of the neutron with nuclei of a given type that is required to reduce the kinetic energy of a neutron from $$E_0$$ to $$E_1$$
 * $$ n=\frac{1}{\xi}(\ln E_0-\ln E_1)$$.

Materials
Some nuclei have larger absorption cross sections than others, which removes free neutrons from the flux. Therefore, a further criterion for an efficient moderator is one for which this parameter is small. The moderating efficiency gives the ratio of the macroscopic cross sections of scattering, $$\Sigma_s$$, weighted by $$\xi$$ divided by that of absorption, $$\Sigma_a$$: i.e., $$\frac{\xi\Sigma_s}{\Sigma_a}$$. For a compound moderator composed of more than one element, such as light or heavy water, it is necessary to take into account the moderating and absorbing effect of both the hydrogen isotope and oxygen atom to calculate $$\xi$$. To bring a neutron from the fission energy of $$E_0$$ 2 MeV to an $$E$$ of 1 eV takes an expected $$n$$ of 16 and 29 collisions for H2O and D2O, respectively. Therefore, neutrons are more rapidly moderated by light water, as H has a far higher $$\Sigma_s$$. However, it also has a far higher $$\Sigma_a$$, so that the moderating efficiency is nearly 80 times higher for heavy water than for light water.

The ideal moderator is of low mass, high scattering cross section, and low absorption cross section.

Distribution of neutron velocities
After sufficient impacts, the speed of the neutron will be comparable to the speed of the nuclei given by thermal motion; this neutron is then called a thermal neutron, and the process may also be termed thermalization. Once at equilibrium at a given temperature the distribution of speeds (energies) expected of rigid spheres scattering elastically is given by the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. This is only slightly modified in a real moderator due to the speed (energy) dependence of the absorption cross-section of most materials, so that low-speed neutrons are preferentially absorbed, so that the true neutron velocity distribution in the core would be slightly hotter than predicted.

Reactor moderators
In a thermal-neutron reactor, the nucleus of a heavy fuel element such as uranium absorbs a slow-moving free neutron, becomes unstable, and then splits into two smaller atoms (fission products). The fission process for 235U nuclei yields two fission products, two to three fast-moving free neutrons, plus an amount of energy primarily manifested in the kinetic energy of the recoiling fission products. The free neutrons are emitted with a kinetic energy of ~2 MeV each. Because more free neutrons are released from a uranium fission event than thermal neutrons are required to initiate the event, the reaction can become a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under controlled conditions, thus liberating a tremendous amount of energy.

The probability of further fission events is determined by the fission cross section, which is dependent upon the speed (energy) of the incident neutrons. For thermal reactors, high-energy neutrons in the MeV-range are much less likely (though not unable) to cause further fission. The newly released fast neutrons, moving at roughly 10% of the speed of light, must be slowed down or "moderated", typically to speeds of a few kilometres per second, if they are to be likely to cause further fission in neighbouring 235U nuclei and hence continue the chain reaction. This speed occurs at temperatures in the few hundred Celsius range.

In all moderated reactors, some neutrons of all energy levels will produce fission, including fast neutrons. Some reactors are more fully thermalised than others; for example, in a CANDU reactor nearly all fission reactions are produced by thermal neutrons, while in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) a considerable portion of the fissions are produced by higher-energy neutrons. In the proposed water-cooled supercritical water reactor, the proportion of fast fissions may exceed 50%, making it technically a fast-neutron reactor.

A fast reactor uses no moderator but relies on fission produced by unmoderated fast neutrons to sustain the chain reaction. In some fast reactor designs, up to 20% of fissions can come from direct fast neutron fission of uranium-238, an isotope which is not fissile at all with thermal neutrons.

Moderators are also used in non-reactor neutron sources, such as plutonium-beryllium (using the (α,n) reaction) and spallation sources (using (p,xn) reactions with neutron rich heavy elements as targets).

Form and location
The form and location of the moderator can greatly influence the cost and safety of a reactor. Classically, moderators were precision-machined blocks of high-purity graphite with embedded ducting to carry away heat. They were in the hottest part of the reactor and therefore subject to corrosion and ablation. In some materials, including graphite, the impact of the neutrons with the moderator can cause the moderator to accumulate dangerous amounts of Wigner energy. This problem led to the infamous Windscale fire at the Windscale Piles, a nuclear reactor complex in the United Kingdom, in 1957. In a carbon dioxide cooled graphite moderated reactor where coolant and moderator are in contact with one another, the Boudouard reaction needs to be taken into account. This is also the case if fuel elements have an outer layer of carbon—as in some TRISO fuels—or if an inner carbon layer becomes exposed by failure of one or several outer layers.

In pebble-bed reactors, the nuclear fuel is embedded in spheres of reactor-grade pyrolytic carbon, roughly of the size of pebbles. The spaces between the spheres serve as ducting. The reactor is operated above the Wigner annealing temperature so that the graphite does not accumulate dangerous amounts of Wigner energy.

In CANDU and PWR reactors, the moderator is liquid water (heavy water for CANDU, light water for PWR). In the event of a loss-of-coolant accident in a PWR, the moderator is also lost and the reaction will stop. This negative void coefficient is an important safety feature of these reactors. In CANDU the moderator is located in a separate heavy-water circuit, surrounding the pressurized heavy-water coolant channels. The heavy water will slow down a significant portion of neutrons to the resonance integral of increasing the neutron capture in this isotope that makes up over 99% of the uranium in CANDU fuel thus decreasing the amount of neutrons available for fission. As a consequence, removing some of the heavy water will increase reactivity until so much is removed that too little moderation is provided to keep the reaction going. This design gives CANDU reactors a positive void coefficient, although the slower neutron kinetics of heavy-water moderated systems compensates for this, leading to comparable safety with PWRs.

In the light-water-cooled, graphite-moderated RBMK, a reactor type originally envisioned to allow both production of weapons grade plutonium and large amounts of usable heat while using natural uranium and foregoing the use of heavy water, the light water coolant acts primarily as a neutron absorber and thus its removal in a loss-of-coolant accident or by conversion of water into steam will increase the amount of thermal neutrons available for fission. Following the Chernobyl nuclear accident the issue was remedied so that all still operating RBMK type reactors have a slightly negative void coefficient, but they require a higher degree of uranium enrichment in their fuel.

Impurities
Good moderators are free of neutron-absorbing impurities such as boron. In commercial nuclear power plants the moderator typically contains dissolved boron. The boron concentration of the reactor coolant can be changed by the operators by adding boric acid or by diluting with water to manipulate reactor power. The Nazi Nuclear Program suffered a substantial setback when its inexpensive graphite moderators failed to function. At that time, most graphites were deposited onto boron electrodes, and the German commercial graphite contained too much boron. Since the war-time German program never discovered this problem, they were forced to use far more expensive heavy water moderators. This problem was discovered by physicist Leó Szilárd.

Non-graphite moderators
Some moderators are quite expensive, for example beryllium, and reactor-grade heavy water. Reactor-grade heavy water must be 99.75% pure to enable reactions with unenriched uranium. This is difficult to prepare because heavy water and regular water form the same chemical bonds in almost the same ways, at only slightly different speeds.

The much cheaper light water moderator (essentially very pure regular water) absorbs too many neutrons to be used with unenriched natural uranium, and therefore uranium enrichment or nuclear reprocessing becomes necessary to operate such reactors, increasing overall costs. Both enrichment and reprocessing are expensive and technologically challenging processes, and additionally both enrichment and several types of reprocessing can be used to create weapons-usable material, causing proliferation concerns.

The CANDU reactor's moderator doubles as a safety feature. A large tank of low-temperature, low-pressure heavy water moderates the neutrons and also acts as a heat sink in extreme loss-of-coolant accident conditions. It is separated from the fuel rods that actually generate the heat. Heavy water is very effective at slowing down (moderating) neutrons, giving CANDU reactors their important and defining characteristic of high "neutron economy". Unlike a light water reactor where adding water to the core in an accident might provide enough moderation to make a subcritical assembly go critical again, heavy water reactors will decrease their reactivity if light water is added to the core, which provides another important safety feature in the case of certain accident scenarios. However, any heavy water that becomes mixed with the emergency coolant light water will become too diluted to be useful without isotope separation.

Nuclear weapon design
Early speculation about nuclear weapons assumed that an "atom bomb" would be a large amount of fissile material moderated by a neutron moderator, similar in structure to a nuclear reactor or "pile". Only the Manhattan Project embraced the idea of a chain reaction of fast neutrons in pure metallic uranium or plutonium. Other moderated designs were also considered by the Americans; proposals included using uranium deuteride as the fissile material.

In 1943 Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr considered the possibility of using a "pile" as a weapon. The motivation was that with a graphite moderator it would be possible to achieve the chain reaction without the use of any isotope separation. However, plutonium can be produced ("bred") sufficiently isotopically pure as to be usable in a bomb and then has to be "only" separated chemically, a much easier processes than isotope separation, albeit still a challenging one. In August 1945, when information of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was relayed to the scientists of the German nuclear program who were interred at Farm Hall in England, chief scientist Werner Heisenberg hypothesized that the device must have been "something like a nuclear reactor, with the neutrons slowed by many collisions with a moderator". The German program, which had been much less advanced, had never even considered the plutonium option and did not discover a feasible method of large scale isotope separation in uranium.

After the success of the Manhattan Project, all major nuclear weapons programs have relied on fast neutrons in their weapons designs. The notable exception is the Ruth and Ray test explosions of Operation Upshot–Knothole. The aim of the University of California Radiation Laboratory (UCRL) designs was the exploration of deuterated polyethylene charge containing uranium as a candidate thermonuclear fuel,  hoping that deuterium would fuse (becoming an active medium) if compressed appropriately. If successful, the devices could also lead to a compact primary containing minimal amount of fissile material, and powerful enough to ignite RAMROD a thermonuclear weapon designed by UCRL at the time. For a "hydride" primary, the degree of compression would not make deuterium to fuse, but the design could be subjected to boosting, raising the yield considerably. The cores consisted of a mix of uranium deuteride (UD3), and deuterated polyethylene. The core tested in Ray used uranium low enriched in U235, and in both shots deuterium acted as the neutron moderator. The predicted yield was 1.5 to 3 kt for Ruth (with a maximum potential yield of 20 kt ) and 0.5-1 kt for Ray. The tests produced yields of 200 tons of TNT each; both tests were considered to be fizzles.

A side effect of using a moderator in a nuclear explosive is that as the chain reaction progresses, the moderator will be heated, thus losing its ability to cool the neutrons. Another effect of moderation is that the time between subsequent neutron generations is increased, slowing down the reaction. This makes the containment of the explosion a problem; the inertia that is used to confine implosion type bombs will not be able to confine the reaction. The result may be a fizzle. The explosive power of a fully moderated explosion is thus limited; at worst it may be equal to a chemical explosive of similar mass. According to Heisenberg: "One can never make an explosive with slow neutrons, not even with the heavy water machine, as then the neutrons only go with thermal speed, with the result that the reaction is so slow that the thing explodes sooner, before the reaction is complete." While a nuclear bomb working on thermal neutrons may be impractical, modern weapons designs may still benefit from some level of moderation. A beryllium tamper used as a neutron reflector will act as a moderator.

Materials used

 * Hydrogen, as in ordinary "light water". Because protium also has a significant cross section for neutron capture only limited moderation is possible without losing too many neutrons. The less-moderated neutrons are relatively more likely to be captured by uranium-238 and less likely to fission uranium-235, so light-water reactors require enriched uranium to operate.
 * There are also proposals to use the compound formed by the chemical reaction of metallic uranium and hydrogen (uranium hydride—UH3) as a combination fuel and moderator in a new type of reactor.
 * Hydrogen is also used in the form of cryogenic liquid methane and sometimes liquid hydrogen as a cold neutron source in some research reactors: yielding a Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution for the neutrons whose maximum is shifted to much lower energies.
 * Hydrogen combined with carbon as in paraffin wax was used in some early German experiments.
 * Deuterium, in the form of heavy water, in heavy water reactors, e.g. CANDU. Reactors moderated with heavy water can use unenriched natural uranium.
 * Carbon, in the form of reactor-grade graphite or pyrolytic carbon, used in e.g. RBMK and pebble-bed reactors, or in compounds, e.g. carbon dioxide. As carbon dioxide contains twice as many oxygen atoms as it does carbon atoms and both have moderating and neutron absorbing effects in a similar range (see above), a significant share of the moderation in a (yet to be built) carbon dioxide moderated reactor would actually come from the oxygen. Lower-temperature reactors are susceptible to buildup of Wigner energy in the material. Like deuterium-moderated reactors, some of these reactors can use unenriched natural uranium.
 * Graphite is also deliberately allowed to be heated to around 2000 K or higher in some research reactors to produce a hot neutron source: giving a Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution whose maximum is spread out to generate higher energy neutrons.
 * Beryllium, in the form of metal. Beryllium is expensive and toxic, so its use is limited. Beryllium was used in the S2G reactor.
 * Lithium-7, in the form of a lithium fluoride salt, typically in conjunction with beryllium fluoride salt (FLiBe). This is the most common type of moderator in a molten-salt reactor.

Other light-nuclei materials are unsuitable for various reasons. Helium is a gas and it requires special design to achieve sufficient density; lithium-6 and boron-10 absorb neutrons.

title: Neutron moderator


text:
Talk:Americentrism

Why?
Why is there a special page for American ethnocentrism? "Americentrism" is not a word; this article should be under ethnocentrism. I'm surprised a page like this is considered NPOV. -- Goatasaur

 * I wondered the same thing when I saw the page on Jewish ethnocentrism; I'd been assuming that ethnocentrism was a fairly straightforward subject, regardless of the ethnicity on which it centers. Apparently, however, we seem to be going the route of detailed study of each specific instance of ethnocentrism.  If that is indeed the case, I probably should think about preparing an article on Brecqhou ethnocentrism, regarding which there is a substantial amount of material. -- Hephaestos 02:50 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)
 * You're preaching to the choir here. If I were so bold I would try to meld all the splintered ethnocentrism articles into one big whopping article. I don't understand the need to define specific instances of ethnocentrism, because they all have the same "symptoms". -- Goatasaur

Google search came up with 43 hits...

Perhaps, what you mean is: specialized info about american ethnocentrism should find a place on the ethnocentrism article? -&#35918&#30505
 * That's exactly what I mean. You should be aware that 43 hits on Google is a pretty piddly amount. A Google search on my name yielded 21 hits. :) -- Goatasaur

Means Western supremacy?
Considering the discussion going on over at List of United States people, this article obviously means the feeling of superiority by all people of the Western Hemisphere. -- Zoe

 * Americentrism involves negating / minimizing all other countries, including Western nations. How can Americentrism be seen as promoting Western nations such as Germany, France, Australia, when it minimizes and diminishes them? Information yes (talk) 11:42, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

 * LOL That was a very Americentric thing to say, Zoe...! Obviously Americentrism = Occidentalism... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.9.1.157 (talk) 21:34, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Redirection to ethnocentrism
Oh, I come here to find most of what I was about to say is already said.

 * 1) The entry was not much more than a dictionary definition, not encyclopedic.
 * 2) The entry doesn't say much more than "Americentrism = American Ethnocentrism", hence it is covered (and can be expanded on) in ethnocentrism.
 * 3) Internet searches show that this "word" isn't used in any sort of meaningful way, nor is there any agreed meaning.

 * You are right that the entry right now is not much more than a dictionary definition. But there is a lot to be said on this topic, and not just what can be covered in the ethnocentrism article.  I came to the discussion page to see what other users thought of what I wanted to add to the article, and instead uncovered a secret deletion plot. CyborgTosser 17:42, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Secret? How is it secret? Clearly almost everyone is in agreement here. This article should be deleted, not because the page doesnt deserve to exist, but because the content is seriously lacking in...well...content. Whatever can be salvaged from this article should be added to Ethnocentrism with a dead link to Americentrism or maybe something less madeup like "American Centralism" (frankly I could care less about the name as long as it remains NPOV) until actual, quality content is added by someone. Hope I dont sound too much like an S.O.B. freestylefrappe 23:41, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

NPOV tag
I have tagged the article as POV because as currently written, it seems to label all Americans as ethnocentric, which of course many Americans would dispute. I'm not sure whether someone wants to claim that some people think all Americans are ethnocentric, or if they want to claim that some Americans are ethnocentric, so I'm reluctant to try to fix the article myself. -- Beland 09:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Converted back into article
This was changed in the past to a redirect to nationalism in the United States. I have converted it back into a stub article, since we also have Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, and Sinocentrism. There doesn't seem to be anything in the history of the original article worth salvaging. — Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   02:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Facts needed
Americentrism is a new word. As far as I can tell it's less than 7 yrs old and may well be younger. Most google hits were copied from this page, that is use the exact same definition as this page. So we need to know who coined this word and when? Or better yet go back to American Ethnocentrism - because we already have enough words without making up new ones just to save 8 letters. Nitpyck (talk) 21:18, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Americentrism needs more sources to help define what it is. It was also found the sociology stubs and needs content about why and how it is important to the field of sociology. Also, with the section, in the media, there needs to be more content in each subject affiliated with Americentrism. For example, there needs to be a background history about why the European Commission is considered Americentric. Same with the celebrates and with Wikipedia being accused of Americentrism. Lastly, there needs to be more concepts and words that revolve around Amercentrism such as theories. Coasp3 (talk) 19:07, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

White supremacy category
Why is that present? How can Americentrism be considered to be part of white supremacy? Many non-white Americans are Americentric. Plus, the majority of whites in the world are not in or from the United States, so an Americentric white supremacist would be contradicting himself and 'shooting himself in the foot' by demeaning whites abroad and promoting hostility between American whites and non-American whites. I'm not saying there aren't White American nationalists. However, the large majority of Americentic people are not white supremacists, and the large majority of white supremacists are not Americentric. Therefore, the cat does not apply to this article. Information yes (talk) 11:42, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Statement is not true
"The authors Ziauddin Sardar, a Pakistan-born British Muslim, and Merryl Wyn Davies, writing about the overt Americentrism of the US media have referred to a phenomenon known as 'the international balcony' where events in US dramas typically begin with a US setting, shift to a generically 'foreign' (usually Eastern European) location and are then resolved in the US.[2]" US dramas almost never shift to a usually Eastern European location. Law and Order for instance seldom strays from NYC. In a recent list of New Yorker openings and previews 14 plays were set in US, 5 are set in Europe (one in Russia) and none move from US to a foreign land and back. Nitpyck (talk) 03:12, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Did a search in Google books and the term "international balcony" is not found in the cited book. "Drama" was found 4 times none of them relating to this theory that American Drama typically sets part of the action in a generically foreign setting. So what is the page number that justifies the cited statement? Nitpyck (talk) 21:27, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Read the book and could not find this statement. Unless someone finds the page where this statement written I'm going to delete it. "The authors Ziauddin Sardar, a Pakistan-born British Muslim, and Merryl Wyn Davies, writing about the overt Americentrism of the US media have referred to a phenomenon known as 'the international balcony' where events in US dramas typically begin with a US setting, shift to a generically 'foreign' (usually Eastern European) location and are then resolved in the US. " Nitpyck (talk) 22:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

lol
Ironically, the first sentence in this article says "center". Correctrix (talk) 23:32, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Americentrism. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2004/08/20/friday

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 00:11, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Examples from Wikipedia and real life, and why I think the phenomenon is not 'just' a kind of ethnocentrism
Aside from the question of whether 'Americanocentrism' would be etymologically more accurate (since the adjective is 'American', not 'Americ'), and whether 'America(n)' should even be used to refer only to the United States rather than the Americas in general, I've just found what I consider an example of the phenomenon in the Wikipedia article on Lily-Rose Depp. She was born to an English-speaking father (Johnny Depp) and a French-speaking mother (Vanessa Paradis), so it would not be all that surprising to find that she speaks both languages well. In any case, the English version of the article simply tells us 'Depp is fluent in French'. I assume she's also fluent in English, but the article simply takes that for granted - the (surely incorrect) assumption being that the average reader of English-language Wikipedia articles has an Anglocentric, and in this case Ameri(cano)centric, world view, in which everyone 'really' speaks English, and speaking even one other language is deemed an unusual achievement, or unusual full stop. In contrast, the French version of the article doesn't mention which languages she speaks, let alone say 'Depp is fluent in English'. The German version has unfortunately translated the English sentence as it stands - but in German that of course implies she ONLY speaks French, which strikes me as most unlikely. Unfortunately, none of these versions tells us whether Depp actually speaks English. It would have made more sense to say 'Depp is fluent in English and French' (or 'French and English') - or else nothing at all.

Someone had already commented on this, and received a reply - I strongly suspect from a US reader! - that since Depp had spent most of her life in the US (something I didn't know, but the reader seemed to assume anyone would) the surely unremarkable fact that she could speak her own mother's language was worth mentioning. So I've added a counter-comment, citing the above reasons.

I'm also reminded here of a real-life occurrence, which is more specifically Ameri(cano)centric. A US friend of mine brought her elderly mother to visit Europe for the first time in her life, and the trip began in Rome. At the end of the first day my friend asked her mother what she thought of it all. The reply: 'I have such admiration for these Italian housewives!' When my friend asked why, her mother said 'Well, just imagine having to divide all the prices in the market by 819!' - the current exchange rate of the US dollar in Italian liras (this was years before Italy adopted the euro). Even as she heard herself making this ludicrous statement, the penny still didn't drop. My friend, who'd lived in Europe for years, was speechless. In my view, and as this example surely goes to show, Ameri(cano)centrism is a particularly deep-rooted form of ethnocentrism, which differs so substantially from its (say) French, Turkish or Chinese equivalents that it does deserve an article of its own. If anything, it's an offshoot of Anglocentrism, for Brits (of whom I used to be one) also tend to suffer from it - but Irish, Canadians and South Africans (who are familiar with other languages in their own countries) far less.213.127.210.95 (talk) 16:01, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Americentrism. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131203113215/http://www.linguist.org.cn/doc/uc200803/uc20080316.pdf to http://www.linguist.org.cn/doc/uc200803/uc20080316.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 22:57, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

US-centrism instead? Even the name is 'Americentric'
Considering this relates specifically to the United States of America, as opposed to America in its continental sense (North or South), its pretty ironic that the term 'Americentrism' effectively co-opts America as synonymous with the US. US-centrism would, in my opinion, be a better term, don't you think? Is there consensus that this is the preferred expression, or can we vote for a change? 149.5.89.234 (talk) 15:36, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

 * It would be better, but if you do a quick search on the internet, "Americentrism" seems to be the most used term. SillyBilly3 (talk) 12:50, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Is Salon a credible sources?
On the section of "In the media", some editor use salon as source--Someone97816 (talk) 10:13, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Americentrism


text:
Tim Allen

Timothy Alan Dick (born June 13, 1953), known professionally as Tim Allen, is an American actor and comedian. He is known for playing Tim "The Toolman" Taylor on the ABC sitcom Home Improvement (1991–1999) for which he won a Golden Globe Award and Mike Baxter on the ABC/Fox sitcom Last Man Standing (2011–2021). He voices Buzz Lightyear for the Toy Story franchise for which he won an Annie Award and played Scott Calvin and Santa Claus in The Santa Clause franchise (1994–present).

Allen's other films include Jungle 2 Jungle (1997), Galaxy Quest (1999), Joe Somebody (2001), Big Trouble (2002), Christmas with the Kranks (2004), The Shaggy Dog (2006), Wild Hogs (2007), The Six Wives of Henry Lefay (2009) and Crazy on the Outside (2010).

Early life and education
Allen was born in Denver, Colorado, on June 13, 1953. He is the third oldest of six children of Martha Katherine (née Fox), a community-service worker, and Gerald M. Dick, a real estate agent. Allen has two older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister. His father died in a car accident in November 1964, colliding with a drunk driver when Allen was 11. Two years later, his mother married her high school sweetheart, a business executive, and moved with her six children to Birmingham, Michigan, to be with her new husband and his three children. Allen has said the move meant going from "being in a cool group at one school to being at the bottom [of the social hierarchy at another]."

Allen attended Seaholm High School in Birmingham, where he was in theater and music classes (resulting in his love of classical piano). He then attended Central Michigan University before transferring to Western Michigan University in 1974. At Western Michigan, Allen worked at the student radio station WIDR. In 1976 he received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications, specializing in radio and television production, with a split minor in philosophy and design.

1975–1990: Standup comedy and film debut

Allen started his career as a comedian in 1975. On a dare from one of his friends, he participated in a comedy night at Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle in Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit. While in Detroit he began to get recognition appearing in local television commercials and appearing on cable comedy shows such as Gary Thison's Some Semblance of Sanity. Following his release from prison in 1981, he returned to comedy. He moved to Los Angeles and became a regular performer at The Comedy Store. He began performing stand-up appearances on late-night talk shows and specials on record and film. In 1998, Western Michigan awarded Allen an honorary fine arts degree and the Distinguished Alumni Award. In a magazine interview, Allen once said, "I can only play a part if I can draw on personal experience, and that well can go dry pretty quickly". His initial film debut was as a baggage handler in Tropical Snow (1988).

1991–2010: Home Improvement and franchise roles
Allen rose to fame in acting with the sitcom Home Improvement (1991–1999) produced for ABC by Wind Dancer Productions. Allen played the main character Tim "The Tool-Man" Taylor, the father of three boys. Much of the show was based on his stand-up comedy act. In November 1994, Allen simultaneously starred in the highest-grossing film (Walt Disney Pictures's The Santa Clause), topped The New York Times bestseller list with his book Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man, and appeared in the top-rated television series (Home Improvement) within one week. Home Improvement ran until 1999, for which he was paid US$1.25 million per episode during the eighth and final season. In 1995, Allen provided the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Disney/Pixar blockbuster Toy Story. In 1997, he starred in the family comedy Jungle 2 Jungle from Disney. The next year he returned to voice Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 2, which was a financial and critical hit. In 1999, he starred in the sci-fi parody Galaxy Quest alongside Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, and Sam Rockwell. In 2002, he reprised his role as Scott Calvin in The Santa Clause 2. Two years later, he starred as Luther Krank in Christmas with the Kranks. In 2006, Zoom was released, starring Allen as Jack Shepard. The same year, he also starred in The Shaggy Dog and The Santa Clause 3. The year 2008 marked his first dramatic turn with a supporting role as an aging action film star in David Mamet's Redbelt.

Allen began narrating the "Pure Michigan" television and radio commercials for the "Travel Michigan" agency. These commercials can be seen and heard throughout the Midwest and began airing nationally in 2009. In December 2009, he started a preview tour of Crazy on the Outside, a film that debuted in January 2010. Allen accompanied the film, helping promote it with a series of stand-up acts beforehand. During the performances, he told audiences he planned a 2010 comedy tour. Allen also directed the film, marking his film directorial debut.

Allen hosted the 8th Annual TV Land Awards on April 25, 2010. That same year, he returned the role of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 3 and also became the official voice of the Chevrolet Cruze, narrating commercials for the vehicle, and he became the voice of Campbell Soup Company's "It's Amazing What Soup Can Do" campaign.

2011–present: Last Man Standing and other roles
Allen returned to ABC with the sitcom Last Man Standing (2011–2021). He played the role of Mike Baxter, a conservative father fighting for his manhood in a house filled with women. The character is loosely based on his own life. After six seasons, the show was canceled in May 2017. On May 11, 2018, Fox TV's CEOs and chairmen announced that Fox had officially picked up Last Man Standing for a seventh season. The show ended in May 2021 after nine seasons.

Shortly before the 2017 cancellation of Last Man Standing, Allen had been announced as part of the cast of the Netflix original comedy film El Camino Christmas (2017). In 2018, he had a cameo voice role as Buzz Lightyear in Ralph Breaks the Internet. In 2019, he voiced the character in Toy Story 4 and appeared as himself in No Safe Spaces, a documentary film. In 2022, it was announced that Allen would reprise the role of Scott Calvin in a Disney+ mini-series, The Santa Clauses, based on The Santa Clause franchise.

On June 30, 2022, the History Channel series More Power premiered, with co-host Allen reunited with Richard Karn. The show covered the history of tools and included field reports of people who use powerful tools. In February 2023, Allen announced that he would return as the voice of Buzz Lightyear for a fifth installment of the Toy Story franchise.

On March 6, 2024, Tim announced on his Facebook page that he will be starring in a third sitcom called Shifting Gears. His character is Matt, a “stubborn, widowed owner of a classic car restoration shop. When Matt’s estranged daughter and her teenage kids move into his house, the real restoration begins.” The show will premiere on ABC.

Marriages and family
Allen was raised as an Episcopalian. He married Laura Deibel on April 7, 1984. Their daughter, Katherine, was born in December 1989. He and Deibel legally separated in 1999 and finalized their divorce in 2003. Allen married actress Jane Hajduk on October 7, 2006, in a small private ceremony in Grand Lake, Colorado. They had been dating for five years. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born in March 2009.

Legal issues
On October 2, 1978, Allen was arrested at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport for possession of over 650 g of cocaine. He subsequently pleaded guilty to felony drug trafficking charges and provided the names of other dealers in exchange for a sentence of three to seven years rather than a possible life imprisonment. He was paroled on June 12, 1981, after serving two years and four months in Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone, in Sandstone, Minnesota.

In 1998, Allen was arrested for driving under the influence in Birmingham, Michigan. At the time, his blood alcohol content was 0.15, nearly double the legal limit in Michigan. He was sentenced to one-year probation and entered a rehabilitation clinic for alcohol abuse as part of his court obligation.

Political views
Allen is a supporter of the Republican Party, describing himself as "fiscally conservative and emotionally liberal". In 2021, he condemned then-president Donald Trump and those taking part in the 2021 United States Capitol attack, calling the incident "horrible, embarrassing, and shameful" and opining that the rioters must have had inside help. He also said the riot had caused people to be embarrassed to be known as conservative.

Allen is also involved in philanthropic efforts to help reduce homelessness.

Car interests
Allen is a car enthusiast and competed in endurance racing for Saleen in a co-owned car in the 1990s, including the 24 Hours of Daytona. He also owns a car collection, which he houses in a former paint shop in Southern California. As of 2022, the collection includes a 1956 Ford F-100 custom made by McLaren, a 1965 Shelby Cobra, and a 1966 Ferrari 330 GTC. While some sources claim the latter's standalone value to exceed $3,000,000, there is no proof of this, and typical sales of the same model are worth far less.

Awards and honors
Awards and nominations

Other honors
 * 1999: Named a Disney Legend for his work on the Toy Story and The Santa Clause franchises
 * 2004: Received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard for his contributions to the film industry
 * 2017: Inducted into the Diecast Hall of Fame

Honorary scholastic degrees

title: Tim Allen