What Was Bacon's Rebellion

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Bacon’s Rebellion is well known to students of colonial America, although no-one has succeeded in writing a convincing account of it. The first question historians asked was who was responsible for the widespread anarchy that followed the breakdown of government authority in the colony between 1676 and 1677. One historian attributes the rebellion to Nathaniel Bacon, and describes Governor Berkeley as a man doing his best to implement sensible policies. Another sees the Rebellion as prefiguring the American Revolution, with Bacon as an early George Washington, already defying British authority. Historians writing more recently explain that neither the rebel nor the governor could have controlled the dangerous economic situation in Virginia where

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