title: Jackie Coogan

text: The legal battle focused attention on child actors and resulted in the 1939 enactment of the California Child Actor's Bill, often referred to as the "Coogan Law" or the "Coogan Act". It required that a child actor's employer set aside 15% of the earnings in a trust (called a Coogan account) and specified the actor's schooling, work hours and time off.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: Coogan worked with Near East Relief, he toured across the United States and Europe in 1924 on a "Children's Crusade" as part of his fundraising drive, which provided more than $1 million in clothing, food and other contributions ($14.8 million in 2021 dollars). He was honored by officials in the United States and Greece, where he had an audience with Pope Pius XI.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: A Catholic, Coogan was a member of the Good Shepherd Parish and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: Coogan appeared with then-wife Betty Grable in "College Swing", a 1938 musical comedy starring George Burns, Gracie Allen, Martha Raye and Bob Hope.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: In 1940, Coogan played the role of "a playboy Broadway producer" in the "Society Girl" program on CBS radio. He also starred in his own program, "Forever Ernest", on CBS from April 29, 1946, to July 22, 1946.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: Coogan enlisted in the U.S. Army in March 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, he requested a transfer to Army Air Forces as a glider pilot because of his civilian flying experience. Graduating the Advanced Glider School with the Glider Pilot aeronautical rating and the rank of Flight Officer, he volunteered for hazardous duty with the 1st Air Commando Group.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: In December 1943, the unit was sent to India. He flew British troops, the Chindits, under General Orde Wingate on March 5, 1944, landing them at night in a small jungle clearing behind Japanese lines in the Burma Campaign.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: After the war, Coogan returned to acting, taking mostly character roles and appearing on television. From 1952 to 1953, he played Stoney Crockett on the syndicated series "Cowboy G-Men". In 1959, he guest-starred in a first-season episode of "Peter Gunn". He also appeared on NBC's "The Martha Raye Show". He appeared, too, as Corbett, in two episodes of NBC's 1960 series "The Outlaws". In the 1960–1961 season, he guest-starred in the episode "The Damaged Dolls" of the crime drama "The Brothers Brannagan". In 1961, he guest-starred in an episode of "The Americans", an NBC series about family divisions stemming from the Civil War. He also appeared in episode 37, titled "Barney on the Rebound", of "The Andy Griffith Show", which aired October 31, 1961. He had a regular role in a 1962–63 NBC series, "McKeever and the Colonel". He finally found his most famous television role as Uncle Fester in ABC's "The Addams Family" (1964–1966).


title: Jackie Coogan

text: He appeared four times on the "Perry Mason" series, including the role of political activist Gus Sawyer in the 1963 episode, "The Case of the Witless Witness" and TV prop man Pete Desmond in the final episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout", in 1966. He was a guest several times on "The Red Skelton Show", appeared twice on "The Brady Bunch" ("The Fender Benders" and "Double Parked"), "I Dream of Jeannie" (as Jeannie's uncle, Suleiman – Maharaja of Basenji), "Family Affair", "Here's Lucy" and "The Brian Keith Show" and continued to guest-star on television, including multiple appearances on "The Partridge Family" "The Wild Wild West", "Hawaii Five-O" and "McMillan and Wife", until his retirement in the middle 1970s. Coogan also appeared in the first season of "Barnaby Jones"; episode titled, "Sing a Song of Murder" (04/01/1973).


title: Jackie Coogan

text: Coogan was married four times and had four children. His first three marriages to actresses were short-lived. He and Betty Grable were engaged in 1935 and married on November 20, 1937,


title: Jackie Coogan

text: Dorothea Odetta Hanson, also known as Dorothea Lamphere (but best known as Dodie), was a dancer and became Coogan's fourth wife in April 1952. They were together over 30 years until his death in 1984. She died in 1999. They had two children together: daughter Leslie Diane Coogan was born in Los Angeles, while son Christopher Fenton Coogan was born in Riverside County, California. He died in a motorcycle accident in Palm Springs, California.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: Leslie Coogan has a son, actor Keith Coogan, who was born Keith Eric Mitchell. He began acting in 1975 and later changed his name two years after his grandfather's death, in 1986. His roles include the oldest son in "Adventures in Babysitting" and "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead".


title: Jackie Coogan

text: Footage of Jackie with his grandson Keith can be seen in the 1982 documentary "Hollywood's Children".


title: Jackie Coogan

text: After suffering from heart and kidney ailments, Coogan died of heart failure on March 1, 1984, at age 69, in Santa Monica, California. Coogan had a long history of heart trouble and hypertension and had previously suffered several strokes. He had been undergoing kidney dialysis when his blood pressure dropped. Coogan was taken to Santa Monica Hospital, where he died from cardiac arrest.


title: Jackie Coogan

text: At Coogan's request, his funeral was open to the public and was attended by several fans. John Astin, Coogan's co-star from "The Addams Family", delivered the eulogy. Coogan was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 1654 Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Boulevard.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War".


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Stowe, a Connecticut-born woman of English descent, was part of the religious Beecher family and an active abolitionist. She wrote the sentimental novel to depict the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In the United States, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely apocryphal story arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at the start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of negative stereotypes about black people including that of the namesake character "Uncle Tom". The term came to be associated with an excessively subservient person. These later associations with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical effects of the book as a "vital antislavery tool". However, the novel remains a "landmark" in protest literature, with later books such as "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair and "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson owing a large debt to it.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, wrote the novel as a response to the passage, in 1850, of the second Fugitive Slave Act. Much of the book was composed at her house in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, taught at his "alma mater", Bowdoin College.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Stowe was partly inspired to create "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by the slave narrative "The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself" (1849). Henson, a formerly enslaved black man, had lived and worked on a plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland, owned by Isaac Riley. Henson escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to the Province of Upper Canada (now Ontario), where he helped other fugitive slaves settle and become self-sufficient.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Stowe was also inspired by the posthumous biography of Phebe Ann Jacobs, a devout Congregationalist of Brunswick, Maine. Born on a slave plantation in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, Jacobs was enslaved for most of her life, including by the president of Bowdoin College. In her final years, Jacobs lived as a free woman, laundering clothes for Bowdoin students. She achieved respect from her community due to her devout religious beliefs, and her funeral was widely attended.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Another source Stowe used as research for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was "", a volume co-authored by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters. Stowe also conducted interviews with people who escaped slavery. Stowe mentioned a number of these inspirations and sources in "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1853). This non-fiction book was intended to not only verify Stowe's claims about slavery but also point readers to the many "publicly available documents" detailing the horrors of slavery.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" first appeared as a 40-week serial in "The National Era", an abolitionist periodical, starting with the June 5, 1851, issue. It was originally intended as a shorter narrative that would run for only a few weeks. Stowe expanded the story significantly, however, and it was instantly popular, such that protests were sent to the "Era" office when she missed an issue. The final installment was released in the April 1, 1852, issue of "Era". Stowe arranged for the story's copyright to be registered with the United States District Court for the District of Maine. She renewed her copyright in 1879 and the work entered the public domain on May 12, 1893.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: While the story was still being serialized, the publisher John P. Jewett contracted with Stowe to turn "Uncle Tom's Cabin" into a book. Convinced the book would be popular, Jewett made the unusual decision (for the time) to have six full-page illustrations by Hammatt Billings engraved for the first printing. Published in book form on March 20, 1852, the novel sold 3,000 copies on that day alone, and soon sold out its complete print run. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States. Eight printing presses, running incessantly, could barely keep up with the demand.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: By mid-1853 sales of the book dramatically decreased and Jewett went out of business during the Panic of 1857. In June 1860 the right to publish "Uncle Tom's Cabin" passed to the Boston firm Ticknor and Fields, which put the book back in print in November 1862. After that demand began to yet again increase. Houghton Mifflin Company acquired the rights from Ticknor in 1878. In 1879, a new edition of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was released, repackaging the novel as an "American classic". Through the 1880s until its copyright expired, the book served as a mainstay and reliable source of income for Houghton Mifflin. By the end of the nineteenth century, the novel was widely available in a large number of editions and in the United States it became the second best-selling book of that century after the Bible.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" sold equally well in Britain, the first London edition appearing in May 1852 and selling 200,000 copies. In a few years over 1.5 million copies of the book were in circulation in Britain, although most of these were infringing copies (a similar situation occurred in the United States). By 1857, the novel had been translated into 20 languages. Translator Lin Shu published the first Chinese translation in 1901, which was also the first American novel translated into that language.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them—Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza—to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. Emily Shelby is averse to this idea because she had promised her maid that her child would never be sold; Emily's son, George Shelby, hates to see Tom go because he sees the man as his friend and mentor.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: When Eliza overhears Mr. and Mrs. Shelby discussing plans to sell Tom and Harry, Eliza determines to run away with her son. The novel states that Eliza made this decision because she fears losing her only surviving child (she had already miscarried two children). Eliza departs that night, leaving a note of apology to her mistress. She later makes a dangerous crossing over the ice of the Ohio River to escape her pursuers.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: As Tom is sold, Mr. Haley takes him to a riverboat on the Mississippi River and from there Tom is to be transported to a slave market. While on board, Tom meets Eva, an angelic little white girl. They quickly become friends. Eva falls into the river and Tom dives into the river to save her life. Being grateful to Tom, Eva's father Augustine St. Clare buys him from Haley and takes him with the family to their home in New Orleans. Tom and Eva begin to relate to one another because of the deep Christian faith they both share.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: During Eliza's escape, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously. They decide to attempt to reach Canada, but are tracked by Tom Loker, a slave hunter hired by Mr. Haley. Eventually Loker and his men trap Eliza and her family, causing George to shoot him in the side. Worried that Loker may die, Eliza convinces George to bring the slave hunter to a nearby Quaker settlement for medical treatment.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Back in New Orleans, St. Clare debates slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia who, while opposing slavery, is prejudiced against black people. St. Clare, however, believes he is not biased, even though he is a slave owner. In an attempt to show Ophelia that her views on blacks are wrong, St. Clare purchases Topsy, a young black slave, and asks Ophelia to educate her.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies she experiences a vision of heaven, which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision, the other characters resolve to change their lives, Ophelia promising to throw off her personal prejudices against blacks, Topsy saying she will better herself, and St. Clare pledging to free Tom.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, he dies after being stabbed outside a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with other new slaves including Emmeline, whom Simon Legree has purchased to use as a sex slave.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom refuses Legree's order to whip his fellow slave. Legree beats Tom viciously and resolves to crush his new slave's faith in God. Despite Legree's cruelty, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves as best he can. While at the plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another slave whom Legree used as a sex slave. Cassy tells her story to Tom. She was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold. She became pregnant again but killed the child because she could not tolerate having another child separated from her.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Tom Loker, changed after being healed by the Quakers, returns to the story. He has helped George, Eliza, and Harry enter Canada from Lake Erie and become free. In Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs to hopelessness as his faith in God is tested by the hardships of the plantation. He has two visions, one of Jesus and one of Eva, which renew his resolve to remain a faithful Christian, even unto death. He encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, taking Emmeline with her. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who savagely beat him. Humbled by the character of the man they have killed, both men become Christians. George Shelby, Arthur Shelby's son, arrives to buy Tom's freedom, but Tom dies shortly after they meet.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: On their boat ride to freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris' sister Madame de Thoux and accompany her to Canada. Madame de Thoux and George Harris were separated in their childhood. Cassy discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. Now that their family is together again, they travel to France and eventually Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where after his father's death, he frees all his slaves. George Shelby urges them to remember Tom's sacrifice every time they look at his cabin. He decides to lead a pious Christian life just as Uncle Tom did.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is dominated by a single theme: the evil and immorality of slavery. While Stowe weaves other subthemes throughout her text, such as the moral authority of motherhood and the power of Christian love, she emphasizes the connections between these and the horrors of slavery. Stowe sometimes changed the story's voice so she could give a "homily" on the destructive nature of slavery (such as when a white woman on the steamboat carrying Tom further south states, "The most dreadful part of slavery, to my mind, is its outrages of feelings and affections—the separating of families, for example."). One way Stowe showed the evil of slavery was how this "peculiar institution" forcibly separated families from each other.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: One of the subthemes presented in the novel is temperance. Stowe made it somewhat subtle and in some cases she wove it into events that would also support the dominant theme. One example of this is when Augustine St. Clare is killed, he attempted to stop a brawl between two inebriated men in a cafe and was stabbed. Another example is the death of Prue, who was whipped to death for being drunk on a consistent basis; however, her reasons for doing so is due to the loss of her baby. In the opening of the novel, the fates of Eliza and her son are being discussed between slave owners over wine. Considering that Stowe intended this to be a subtheme, this scene could foreshadow future events that put alcohol in a bad light.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Because Stowe saw motherhood as the "ethical and structural model for all of American life" and also believed that only women had the moral authority to save the United States from the demon of slavery, another major theme of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is the moral power and sanctity of women. Through characters like Eliza, who escapes from slavery to save her young son (and eventually reunites her entire family), or Eva, who is seen as the "ideal Christian", Stowe shows how she believed women could save those around them from even the worst injustices. Though later critics have noted that Stowe's female characters are often domestic clichés instead of realistic women, Stowe's novel "reaffirmed the importance of women's influence" and helped pave the way for the women's rights movement in the following decades.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs show up in the novel's final, overarching theme—the exploration of the nature of Christian love and how she feels Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery. This theme is most evident when Tom urges St. Clare to "look away to Jesus" after the death of St. Clare's beloved daughter Eva. After Tom dies, George Shelby eulogizes Tom by saying, "What a thing it is to be a Christian." Because Christian themes play such a large role in "Uncle Tom's Cabin"—and because of Stowe's frequent use of direct authorial interjections on religion and faith—the novel often takes the "form of a sermon".


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Over the years scholars have postulated a number of theories about what Stowe was trying to say with the novel (aside from the major theme of condemning slavery). For example, as an ardent Christian and active abolitionist, Stowe placed many of her religious beliefs into the novel. Some scholars have stated that Stowe saw her novel as offering a solution to the moral and political dilemma that troubled many slavery opponents: whether engaging in prohibited behavior was justified in opposing evil. Was the use of violence to oppose the violence of slavery and the breaking of proslavery laws morally defensible? Which of Stowe's characters should be emulated, the passive Uncle Tom or the defiant George Harris? Stowe's solution was similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson's: God's will would be followed if each person sincerely examined his principles and acted on them.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Scholars have also seen the novel as expressing the values and ideas of the Free Will Movement. In this view, the character of George Harris embodies the principles of free labor, and the complex character of Ophelia represents those Northerners who condoned compromise with slavery. In contrast to Ophelia is Dinah, who operates on passion. During the course of the novel Ophelia is transformed, just as the Republican Party (three years later) proclaimed that the North must transform itself and stand up for its antislavery principles.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Feminist theory can also be seen at play in Stowe's book, with the novel as a critique of the patriarchal nature of slavery. For Stowe, blood relations rather than paternalistic relations between masters and slaves formed the basis of families. Moreover, Stowe viewed national solidarity as an extension of a person's family, thus feelings of nationality stemmed from possessing a shared race. Consequently, she advocated African colonization for freed slaves and not amalgamation into American society.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: The book has also been seen as an attempt to redefine masculinity as a necessary step toward the abolition of slavery. In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist the vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered. To change the notion of manhood so that men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self-image or their standing in society, some abolitionists drew on principles of women's suffrage and Christianity as well as passivism, and praised men for cooperation, compassion, and civic spirit. Others within the abolitionist movement argued for conventional, aggressive masculine action. All the men in Stowe's novel are representations of either one kind of man or the other.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is written in the sentimental and melodramatic style common to 19th-century sentimental novels and domestic fiction (also called women's fiction). These genres were the most popular novels of Stowe's time and were "written by, for, and about women" along with featuring a writing style that evoked a reader's sympathy and emotion. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been called a "representative" example of a sentimental novel.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: The power in this type of writing can be seen in the reaction of contemporary readers. Georgiana May, a friend of Stowe's, wrote a letter to the author, saying: "I was up last night long after one o'clock, reading and finishing "Uncle Tom's Cabin". I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying child." Another reader is described as obsessing on the book at all hours and having considered renaming her daughter Eva. Evidently the death of Little Eva affected a lot of people at that time, because in 1852, 300 baby girls in Boston alone were given that name.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Despite this positive reaction from readers, for decades literary critics dismissed the style found in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and other sentimental novels because these books were written by women and so prominently featured what one critic called "women's sloppy emotions". Another literary critic said that had the novel not been about slavery, "it would be just another sentimental novel", and another described the book as "primarily a derivative piece of hack work". In "The Literary History of the United States", George F. Whicher called "Uncle Tom's Cabin" "Sunday-school fiction", full of "broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos".


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In 1985 Jane Tompkins expressed a different view with her famous defense of the book in "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History." Tompkins praised the style so many other critics had dismissed, writing that sentimental novels showed how women's emotions had the power to change the world for the better. She also said that the popular domestic novels of the 19th century, including "Uncle Tom's Cabin", were remarkable for their "intellectual complexity, ambition, and resourcefulness"; and that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" offers a "critique of American society far more devastating than any delivered by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has exerted an influence equaled by few other novels in history. Upon publication, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" ignited a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery (who created a number of books in response to the novel) while the book elicited praise from abolitionists. The novel is considered an influential "landmark" of protest literature.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had an "incalculable" impact on the 19th-century world and captured the imagination of many Americans. In a likely apocryphal story that alludes to the novel's impact, when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he supposedly commented, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." Historians are undecided if Lincoln actually said this line, and in a letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln no mention of this comment was made. Many writers have also credited the novel with focusing Northern anger at the injustices of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law and helping to fuel the abolitionist movement. Union general and politician James Baird Weaver said that the book convinced him to become active in the abolitionist movement.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Frederick Douglass was "convinced both of the social uses of the novel and of Stowe's humanitarianism" and heavily promoted the novel in his newspaper during the book's initial release. Though Douglass said "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was "a work of marvelous depth and power," he also published criticism of the novel, most prominently by Martin Delany. In a series of letters in the paper, Delany accused Stowe of "borrowing (and thus profiting) from the work of black writers to compose her novel" and chastised Stowe for her "apparent support of black colonization to Africa." " Martin was "one of the most out-spoken black critics" of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" at the time and later wrote "Blake; or the Huts of America," a novel where an African American "chooses violent rebellion over Tom's resignation."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: White people in the American South were outraged at the novel's release, with the book also roundly criticized by slavery supporters. Southern novelist William Gilmore Simms declared the work utterly false while also calling it slanderous. Reactions ranged from a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama, being forced to leave town for selling the novel to threatening letters sent to Stowe (including a package containing a slave's severed ear). Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Some critics highlighted Stowe's paucity of life-experience relating to Southern life, saying that it led her to create inaccurate descriptions of the region. For instance, she had never been to a Southern plantation. Stowe always said she based the characters of her book on stories she was told by runaway slaves in Cincinnati. It is reported that "She observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In response to these criticisms, in 1853 Stowe published "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin", an attempt to document the veracity of the novel's depiction of slavery. In the book, Stowe discusses each of the major characters in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and cites "real life equivalents" to them while also mounting a more "aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had". Like the novel, "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a best-seller, but although Stowe claimed "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" documented her previously consulted sources, she actually read many of the cited works only after the publication of her novel.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" also created great interest in the United Kingdom. The first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies. Some of this interest was because of British antipathy to America. As one prominent writer explained, "The evil passions which "Uncle Tom" gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance [of slavery], but national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting under the conceit of America—we are tired of hearing her boast that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the world has ever seen. Our clergy hate her voluntary system—our Tories hate her democrats—our Whigs hate her parvenus—our Radicals hate her litigiousness, her insolence, and her ambition. All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy." Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to Britain during the war, argued later that ""Uncle Tom's Cabin"; or "Life among the Lowly", published in 1852, exercised, largely from fortuitous circumstances, a more immediate, considerable and dramatic world-influence than any other book ever printed."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Stowe sent a copy of the book to Charles Dickens, who wrote her in response: "I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generous feeling which inspired it, and the admirable power with which it is executed." The historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in 1852 that "it is the most valuable addition that America has made to English literature."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In the 20th century, a number of writers attacked "Uncle Tom's Cabin" not only for the stereotypes the novel had created about African-Americans but also because of "the utter disdain of the Tom character by the black community. These writers included Richard Wright with his collection "Uncle Tom's Children" (1938) and Chester Himes with his 1943 short story "Heaven Has Changed". Ralph Ellison also critiqued the book with his 1952 novel "Invisible Man," with Ellison figuratively killing Uncle Tom in the opening chapter.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In 1945 James Baldwin published his influential and infamous critical essay "Everbody's Protest Novel". In the essay, Baldwin described "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as "a bad novel, having, in its self-righteousness, virtuous sentimentality". He argued that the novel lacked psychological depth, and that Stowe, "was not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer". Edward Rothstein has claimed that Baldwin missed the point and that the purpose of the novel was "to treat slavery not as a political issue but as an individually human one – and ultimately a challenge to Christianity itself."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: George Orwell in his essay "Good Bad Books", first published in "Tribune" in November 1945, claims that "perhaps the supreme example of the 'good bad' book is "Uncle Tom's Cabin". It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other." But he concludes "I would back "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Moore, though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: The negative associations related to "Uncle Tom's Cabin", in particular how the novel and associated plays created and popularized racial stereotypes, have to some extent obscured the book's historical impact as a "vital antislavery tool". After the turn of the millennium, scholars such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins have re-examined "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in what has been called a "serious attempt to resurrect it as both a central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration of the character of those relations."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Generally recognized as the first best-selling novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" greatly influenced development of not only American literature but also protest literature in general. Later books that owe a large debt to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" include "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair and "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Despite this undisputed significance, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been called "a blend of children's fable and propaganda". The novel has also been dismissed by several literary critics as "merely a sentimental novel"; critic George Whicher stated in his "Literary History of the United States" that "Nothing attributable to Mrs. Stowe or her handiwork can account for the novel's enormous vogue; its author's resources as a purveyor of Sunday-school fiction were not remarkable. She had at most a ready command of broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos, and of these popular sentiments she compounded her book."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Other critics, though, have praised the novel. Edmund Wilson stated that "To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's Cabin may therefore prove a startling experience. It is a much more impressive work than one has ever been allowed to suspect." Jane Tompkins stated that the novel is one of the classics of American literature and wonders if many literary critics dismiss the book because it was simply too popular during its day.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Many modern scholars and readers have criticized the book for condescending racist descriptions of the black characters' appearances, speech, and behavior, as well as the passive nature of Uncle Tom in accepting his fate. The novel's creation and use of common stereotypes about African Americans is significant because "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the best-selling novel in the world during the 19th century. As a result, the book (along with illustrations from the book and associated stage productions) played a major role in perpetuating and solidifying such stereotypes into the American psyche. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements attacked the novel, claiming that the character of Uncle Tom engaged in "race betrayal", and that Tom made slaves out to be worse than slave owners.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Among the stereotypes of blacks in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" are the "happy darky" (in the lazy, carefree character of Sam); the light-skinned tragic mulatto as a sex object (in the characters of Eliza, Cassy, and Emmeline); the affectionate, dark-skinned female mammy (through several characters, including Mammy, a cook at the St. Clare plantation); the pickaninny stereotype of black children (in the character of Topsy); the Uncle Tom, an African American who is too eager to please white people. Stowe intended Tom to be a "noble hero" and a Christ-like figure who, like Jesus at his crucifixion, forgives the people responsible for his death. The false stereotype of Tom as a "subservient fool who bows down to the white man", and the resulting derogatory term "Uncle Tom", resulted from staged "Tom Shows", which sometimes replaced Tom's grim death with an upbeat ending where Tom causes his oppressors to see the error of their ways, and they all reconcile happily. Stowe had no control over these shows and their alteration of her story.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In response to "Uncle Tom's Cabin", writers in the Southern United States produced a number of books to rebut Stowe's novel. This so-called Anti-Tom literature generally took a pro-slavery viewpoint, arguing that the issues of slavery as depicted in Stowe's book were overblown and incorrect. The novels in this genre tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over childlike slaves in a benevolent extended family style plantation. The novels either implied or directly stated that African Americans were a childlike people unable to live their lives without being directly overseen by white people.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Among the most famous anti-Tom books are "The Sword and the Distaff" by William Gilmore Simms, "Aunt Phillis's Cabin" by Mary Henderson Eastman, and "The Planter's Northern Bride" by Caroline Lee Hentz, with the last author having been a close personal friend of Stowe's when the two lived in Cincinnati. Simms' book was published a few months after Stowe's novel, and it contains a number of sections and discussions disputing Stowe's book and her view of slavery. Hentz's 1854 novel, widely read at the time but now largely forgotten, offers a defense of slavery as seen through the eyes of a Northern woman—the daughter of an abolitionist, no less—who marries a Southern slave owner.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In the decade between the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the start of the American Civil War, between twenty and thirty anti-Tom books were published (although others continued to be published after the war, including "The Leopard's Spots" in 1902 by "professional racist" Thomas Dixon Jr.). More than half of these anti-Tom books were written by white women, Simms commenting at one point about the "Seemingly poetic justice of having the Northern woman (Stowe) answered by a Southern woman."


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Even though "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, far more Americans of that time saw the story as a stage play or musical than read the book. Historian Eric Lott estimated that "for every one of the three hundred thousand who bought the novel in its first year, many more eventually saw the play." In 1902, it was reported that by a quarter million of these presentations had already been performed in the United States.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: Given the lax copyright laws of the time, stage plays based on "Uncle Tom's Cabin"—"Tom shows"—began to appear while the novel was still being serialized. Stowe refused to authorize dramatization of her work because of her distrust of drama (although she did eventually go to see George L. Aiken's version and, according to Francis Underwood, was "delighted" by Caroline Howard's portrayal of Topsy). Aiken's stage production was the most popular play in the U.S. and England for 75 years. Stowe's refusal to authorize a particular dramatic version left the field clear for any number of adaptations, some launched for (various) political reasons and others as simply commercial theatrical ventures.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: No international copyright laws existed at the time. The book and plays were translated into several languages; Stowe received no money, which could have meant as much as "three-fourths of her just and legitimate wages".


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: All the Tom shows appear to have incorporated elements of melodrama and blackface minstrelsy. These plays varied tremendously in their politics—some faithfully reflected Stowe's sentimentalized antislavery politics, while others were more moderate, or even pro-slavery. Many of the productions featured demeaning racial caricatures of Black people; some productions also featured songs by Stephen Foster (including "My Old Kentucky Home", "Old Folks at Home", and "Massa's in the Cold Ground"). The best-known Tom shows were those of George Aiken and H.J. Conway.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: The many stage variants of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" "dominated northern popular culture... for several years" during the 19th century, and the plays were still being performed in the early 20th century.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been adapted several times as a film. Most of these movies were created during the silent film era ("Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the most-filmed book of that time period). Because of the continuing popularity of both the book and "Tom" shows, audiences were already familiar with the characters and the plot, making it easier for the film to be understood without spoken words.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: The first film version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was one of the earliest full-length movies (although full-length at that time meant between 10 and 14 minutes). This 1903 film, directed by Edwin S. Porter, used white actors in blackface in the major roles and black performers only as extras. This version was evidently similar to many of the "Tom Shows" of earlier decades and featured several stereotypes about blacks (such as having the slaves dance in almost any context, including at a slave auction).


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In 1910, a three-reel Vitagraph Company of America production was directed by J. Stuart Blackton and adapted by Eugene Mullin. According to "The Dramatic Mirror", this film was "a decided innovation" in motion pictures and "the first time an American company" released a dramatic film in three reels. Until then, full-length movies of the time were 15 minutes long and contained only one reel of film. The movie starred Florence Turner, Mary Fuller, Edwin R. Phillips, Flora Finch, Genevieve Tobin and Carlyle Blackwell, Sr.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: At least four more movie adaptations were created in the next two decades. The last silent film version was released in 1927. Directed by Harry A. Pollard (who played Uncle Tom in a 1913 release of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"), this two-hour movie was more than a year in production and was the third most expensive picture of the silent era (at a cost of $1.8 million). The black actor Charles Gilpin was originally cast in the title role, but he was fired after the studio decided his "portrayal was too aggressive".


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: For several decades after the end of the silent film era, the subject matter of Stowe's novel was judged too sensitive for further film interpretation. In 1946, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer considered filming the story but ceased production after protests led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Film versions were created overseas in the following decades, including a 1965 German-language version and a TV soap opera in Brazil called "A Cabana do Pai Tomás," which ran for 205 episodes from July 1969 to March 1970. The final film version was a television broadcast in 1987, directed by Stan Lathan and adapted by John Gay. It starred Avery Brooks, Phylicia Rashad, Edward Woodward, Jenny Lewis, Samuel L. Jackson and Endyia Kinney.


title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

text: In addition to film adaptations, versions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" have been produced in other formats, including a number of animated cartoons. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" also influenced movies, including "The Birth of a Nation". This controversial 1915 film set the dramatic climax in a slave cabin similar to that of Uncle Tom, where several white Southerners unite with their former enemy (Yankee soldiers) to defend, according to the film's caption, their "Aryan birthright". According to scholars, this reuse of such a familiar image of a slave cabin would have resonated with, and been understood by, audiences of the time.


title: 1996 NBA draft

text: The 1996 NBA draft was the 50th draft in the National Basketball Association (NBA). It was held on June 26, 1996 at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. In this draft, NBA teams took turns selecting college basketball players and other first-time eligible players, such as players from high schools and non-North American leagues. The Vancouver Grizzlies had the highest probability to win the NBA draft lottery, but since they were an expansion team along with the Toronto Raptors, they were not allowed to select first in this draft. The team with the second-highest probability, the Philadelphia 76ers, won the lottery and obtained the first selection. The Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies were second and third, respectively.


title: 1996 NBA draft

text: It is widely considered to be one of the deepest and most talented NBA drafts in history, with one-third of the first-round picks later becoming NBA All-Stars. The draft class produced three players who won a combined four NBA MVP awards (Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Steve Nash), seven other drafted players who became All-Stars (Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Ray Allen, Žydrūnas Ilgauskas, Stephon Marbury, Jermaine O'Neal, Peja Stojaković, Antoine Walker), and one undrafted All-Star (Ben Wallace), for a grand total of 11 All-Stars. Moreover, eight players from this draft class have been named to at least one All-NBA Team, the most among any draft. The draft class also produced three players who have been named to the NBA's all-defensive first team: Bryant, Marcus Camby, and Wallace. Camby won the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2007, while Wallace earned the same award in 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006. Five-time NBA champion Derek Fisher was also selected in the draft.


title: 1996 NBA draft

text: The 76ers selected two future Major League Baseball players, Mark Hendrickson and Ryan Minor, with their second-round picks.


title: 1996 NBA draft

text: Most experts rate it along with the 1984 NBA draft and 2003 NBA draft as one of the best drafts in history. "Sports Illustrated" named it the second-best, behind the 1984 draft, which included a draft class of Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and John Stockton.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation (from ) is part of the complex biological response of body tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants, and is a protective response involving immune cells, blood vessels, and molecular mediators. The function of inflammation is to eliminate the initial cause of cell injury, clear out necrotic cells and tissues damaged from the original insult and the inflammatory process, and initiate tissue repair.


title: Inflammation

text: The five cardinal signs are heat, pain, redness, swelling, and loss of function (Latin "calor", "dolor", "rubor", "tumor", and "functio laesa"). Inflammation is a generic response, and therefore it is considered as a mechanism of innate immunity, as compared to adaptive immunity, which is specific for each pathogen. Too little inflammation could lead to progressive tissue destruction by the harmful stimulus (e.g. bacteria) and compromise the survival of the organism. In contrast, too much inflammation, in the form of chronic inflammation, is associated with various diseases, such as hay fever, periodontal disease, atherosclerosis, and osteoarthritis.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation can be classified as either "acute" or "chronic". Acute inflammation is the initial response of the body to harmful stimuli, and is achieved by the increased movement of plasma and leukocytes (in particular granulocytes) from the blood into the injured tissues. A series of biochemical events propagates and matures the inflammatory response, involving the local vascular system, the immune system, and various cells within the injured tissue. Prolonged inflammation, known as "chronic inflammation", leads to a progressive shift in the type of cells present at the site of inflammation, such as mononuclear cells, and is characterized by simultaneous destruction and healing of the tissue from the inflammatory process.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation has also been classified as Type 1 and Type 2 based on the type of cytokines and helper T cells (Th1 and Th2) involved.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation is not a synonym for infection. Infection describes the interaction between the action of microbial invasion and the reaction of the body's inflammatory response—the two components are considered together when discussing an infection, and the word is used to imply a microbial invasive cause for the observed inflammatory reaction. Inflammation, on the other hand, describes purely the body's immunovascular response—whatever the cause may be. But because of how often the two are correlated, words ending in the suffix "-itis" (which refers to inflammation) are sometimes informally described as referring to infection. For example, the word "urethritis" strictly means only "urethral inflammation", but clinical health care providers usually discuss urethritis as a urethral infection because urethral microbial invasion is the most common cause of urethritis.


title: Inflammation

text: However, the inflammation–infection distinction becomes crucial for situations in pathology and medical diagnosis where inflammation is not driven by microbial invasion, such as the cases of atherosclerosis, trauma, ischemia, and autoimmune diseases (including type III hypersensitivity).


title: Inflammation

text: Acute inflammation occurs immediately upon injury, lasting only a few days. Cytokines and chemokines promote the migration of neutrophils and macrophages to the site of inflammation. Pathogens, allergens, toxins, burns, and frostbite are some of the typical causes of acute inflammation. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) recognize microbial pathogens. Acute inflammation can be a defensive mechanism to protect tissues against injury. Inflammation lasting 2–6 weeks is designated subacute inflammation.


title: Inflammation

text: Acute inflammation is a short-term process, usually appearing within a few minutes or hours and begins to cease upon the removal of the injurious stimulus. It involves a coordinated and systemic mobilization response locally of various immune, endocrine and neurological mediators of acute inflammation. In a normal healthy response, it becomes activated, clears the pathogen and begins a repair process and then ceases. It is characterized by five cardinal signs:


title: Inflammation

text: The first four (classical signs) were described by Celsus (–38 AD), while "loss of function" was probably added later by Galen. However, the addition of this fifth sign has also been ascribed to Thomas Sydenham and Virchow.


title: Inflammation

text: Redness and heat are due to increased blood flow at body core temperature to the inflamed site; swelling is caused by accumulation of fluid; pain is due to the release of chemicals such as bradykinin and histamine that stimulate nerve endings. Loss of function has multiple causes.


title: Inflammation

text: Acute inflammation of the lung (usually as in response to pneumonia) does not cause pain unless the inflammation involves the parietal pleura, which does have pain-sensitive nerve endings.


title: Inflammation

text: The process of acute inflammation is initiated by resident immune cells already present in the involved tissue, mainly resident macrophages, dendritic cells, histiocytes, Kupffer cells and mast cells. These cells possess surface receptors known as "pattern recognition receptors" (PRRs), which recognize (i.e., bind) two subclasses of molecules: pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). PAMPs are compounds that are associated with various pathogens, but which are distinguishable from host molecules. DAMPs are compounds that are associated with host-related injury and cell damage.


title: Inflammation

text: At the onset of an infection, burn, or other injuries, these cells undergo activation (one of the PRRs recognize a PAMP or DAMP) and release inflammatory mediators responsible for the clinical signs of inflammation. Vasodilation and its resulting increased blood flow causes the redness ("rubor") and increased heat ("calor"). Increased permeability of the blood vessels results in an exudation (leakage) of plasma proteins and fluid into the tissue (edema), which manifests itself as swelling ("tumor"). Some of the released mediators such as bradykinin increase the sensitivity to pain (hyperalgesia, "dolor"). The mediator molecules also alter the blood vessels to permit the migration of leukocytes, mainly neutrophils and macrophages, to flow out of the blood vessels (extravasation) and into the tissue. The neutrophils migrate along a chemotactic gradient created by the local cells to reach the site of injury. The loss of function ("functio laesa") is probably the result of a neurological reflex in response to pain.


title: Inflammation

text: In addition to cell-derived mediators, several acellular biochemical cascade systems—consisting of preformed plasma proteins—act in parallel to initiate and propagate the inflammatory response. These include the complement system activated by bacteria and the coagulation and fibrinolysis systems activated by necrosis (e.g., burn, trauma).


title: Inflammation

text: Acute inflammation may be regarded as the first line of defense against injury. Acute inflammatory response requires constant stimulation to be sustained. Inflammatory mediators are short-lived and are quickly degraded in the tissue. Hence, acute inflammation begins to cease once the stimulus has been removed.


title: Inflammation

text: Chronic inflammation is inflammation that lasts for months or years. Macrophages, lymphocytes, and plasma cells predominate in chronic inflammation, in contrast to the neutrophils that predominate in acute inflammation. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, allergies, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are examples of diseases mediated by chronic inflammation. Obesity, smoking, stress and insufficient diet are some of the factors that promote chronic inflammation. A 2014 study reported that 60% of Americans had at least one chronic inflammatory condition, and 42% had more than one.


title: Inflammation

text: As defined, acute inflammation is an immunovascular response to inflammatory stimuli. This means acute inflammation can be broadly divided into a vascular phase that occurs first, followed by a cellular phase involving immune cells (more specifically myeloid granulocytes in the acute setting). The vascular component of acute inflammation involves the movement of plasma fluid, containing important proteins such as fibrin and immunoglobulins (antibodies), into inflamed tissue.


title: Inflammation

text: Upon contact with PAMPs, tissue macrophages and mastocytes release vasoactive amines such as histamine and serotonin, as well as eicosanoids such as prostaglandin E2 and leukotriene B4 to remodel the local vasculature. Macrophages and endothelial cells release nitric oxide. These mediators vasodilate and permeabilize the blood vessels, which results in the net distribution of blood plasma from the vessel into the tissue space. The increased collection of fluid into the tissue causes it to swell (edema). This exuded tissue fluid contains various antimicrobial mediators from the plasma such as complement, lysozyme, antibodies, which can immediately deal damage to microbes, and opsonise the microbes in preparation for the cellular phase. If the inflammatory stimulus is a lacerating wound, exuded platelets, coagulants, plasmin and kinins can clot the wounded area and provide haemostasis in the first instance. These clotting mediators also provide a structural staging framework at the inflammatory tissue site in the form of a fibrin lattice – as would construction scaffolding at a construction site – for the purpose of aiding phagocytic debridement and wound repair later on. Some of the exuded tissue fluid is also funneled by lymphatics to the regional lymph nodes, flushing bacteria along to start the recognition and attack phase of the adaptive immune system.


title: Inflammation

text: Acute inflammation is characterized by marked vascular changes, including vasodilation, increased permeability and increased blood flow, which are induced by the actions of various inflammatory mediators. Vasodilation occurs first at the arteriole level, progressing to the capillary level, and brings about a net increase in the amount of blood present, causing the redness and heat of inflammation. Increased permeability of the vessels results in the movement of plasma into the tissues, with resultant stasis due to the increase in the concentration of the cells within blood – a condition characterized by enlarged vessels packed with cells. Stasis allows leukocytes to marginate (move) along the endothelium, a process critical to their recruitment into the tissues. Normal flowing blood prevents this, as the shearing force along the periphery of the vessels moves cells in the blood into the middle of the vessel.


title: Inflammation

text: The "cellular component" involves leukocytes, which normally reside in blood and must move into the inflamed tissue via "extravasation" to aid in inflammation. Some act as phagocytes, ingesting bacteria, viruses, and cellular debris. Others release enzymatic granules that damage pathogenic invaders. Leukocytes also release inflammatory mediators that develop and maintain the inflammatory response. In general, acute inflammation is mediated by granulocytes, whereas chronic inflammation is mediated by mononuclear cells such as monocytes and lymphocytes.


title: Inflammation

text: Various leukocytes, particularly neutrophils, are critically involved in the initiation and maintenance of inflammation. These cells must be able to move to the site of injury from their usual location in the blood, therefore mechanisms exist to recruit and direct leukocytes to the appropriate place. The process of leukocyte movement from the blood to the tissues through the blood vessels is known as "extravasation" and can be broadly divided up into a number of steps:


title: Inflammation

text: Extravasated neutrophils in the cellular phase come into contact with microbes at the inflamed tissue. Phagocytes express cell-surface endocytic pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) that have affinity and efficacy against non-specific microbe-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). Most PAMPs that bind to endocytic PRRs and initiate phagocytosis are cell wall components, including complex carbohydrates such as mannans and β-glucans, lipopolysaccharides (LPS), peptidoglycans, and surface proteins. Endocytic PRRs on phagocytes reflect these molecular patterns, with C-type lectin receptors binding to mannans and β-glucans, and scavenger receptors binding to LPS.


title: Inflammation

text: Upon endocytic PRR binding, actin-myosin cytoskeletal rearrangement adjacent to the plasma membrane occurs in a way that endocytoses the plasma membrane containing the PRR-PAMP complex, and the microbe. Phosphatidylinositol and Vps34-Vps15-Beclin1 signalling pathways have been implicated to traffic the endocytosed phagosome to intracellular lysosomes, where fusion of the phagosome and the lysosome produces a phagolysosome. The reactive oxygen species, superoxides and hypochlorite bleach within the phagolysosomes then kill microbes inside the phagocyte.


title: Inflammation

text: Phagocytic efficacy can be enhanced by opsonization. Plasma derived complement C3b and antibodies that exude into the inflamed tissue during the vascular phase bind to and coat the microbial antigens. As well as endocytic PRRs, phagocytes also express opsonin receptors Fc receptor and complement receptor 1 (CR1), which bind to antibodies and C3b, respectively. The co-stimulation of endocytic PRR and opsonin receptor increases the efficacy of the phagocytic process, enhancing the lysosomal elimination of the infective agent.


title: Inflammation

text: Specific patterns of acute and chronic inflammation are seen during particular situations that arise in the body, such as when inflammation occurs on an epithelial surface, or pyogenic bacteria are involved.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammatory abnormalities are a large group of disorders that underlie a vast variety of human diseases. The immune system is often involved with inflammatory disorders, as demonstrated in both allergic reactions and some myopathies, with many immune system disorders resulting in abnormal inflammation. Non-immune diseases with causal origins in inflammatory processes include cancer, atherosclerosis, and ischemic heart disease.


title: Inflammation

text: Atherosclerosis, formerly considered a bland lipid storage disease, actually involves an ongoing inflammatory response. Recent advances in basic science have established a fundamental role for inflammation in mediating all stages of atherosclerosis from initiation through progression and, ultimately, the thrombotic complications from it. These new findings provide important links between risk factors and the mechanisms of atherogenesis. Clinical studies have shown that this emerging biology of inflammation in atherosclerosis applies directly to human patients. Elevation in markers of inflammation predicts outcomes of patients with acute coronary syndromes, independently of myocardial damage. In addition, low-grade chronic inflammation, as indicated by levels of the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein, prospectively defines risk of atherosclerotic complications, thus adding to prognostic information provided by traditional risk factors. Moreover, certain treatments that reduce coronary risk also limit inflammation. In the case of lipid lowering with statins, the anti-inflammatory effect does not appear to correlate with reduction in low-density lipoprotein levels. These new insights on inflammation contribute to the etiology of atherosclerosis, and the practical clinical applications in risk stratification and the targeting of therapy for atherosclerosis.


title: Inflammation

text: An allergic reaction, formally known as type 1 hypersensitivity, is the result of an inappropriate immune response triggering inflammation, vasodilation, and nerve irritation. A common example is hay fever, which is caused by a hypersensitive response by mast cells to allergens. Pre-sensitised mast cells respond by degranulating, releasing vasoactive chemicals such as histamine. These chemicals propagate an excessive inflammatory response characterised by blood vessel dilation, production of pro-inflammatory molecules, cytokine release, and recruitment of leukocytes. Severe inflammatory response may mature into a systemic response known as anaphylaxis.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammatory myopathies are caused by the immune system inappropriately attacking components of muscle, leading to signs of muscle inflammation. They may occur in conjunction with other immune disorders, such as systemic sclerosis, and include dermatomyositis, polymyositis, and inclusion body myositis.


title: Inflammation

text: Due to the central role of leukocytes in the development and propagation of inflammation, defects in leukocyte functionality often result in a decreased capacity for inflammatory defense with subsequent vulnerability to infection. Dysfunctional leukocytes may be unable to correctly bind to blood vessels due to surface receptor mutations, digest bacteria (Chédiak–Higashi syndrome), or produce microbicides (chronic granulomatous disease). In addition, diseases affecting the bone marrow may result in abnormal or few leukocytes.


title: Inflammation

text: Certain drugs or exogenous chemical compounds are known to affect inflammation. Vitamin A deficiency, for example, causes an increase in inflammatory responses, and anti-inflammatory drugs work specifically by inhibiting the enzymes that produce inflammatory eicosanoids. Additionally, certain illicit drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy may exert some of their detrimental effects by activating transcription factors intimately involved with inflammation (e.g. NF-κB).


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation orchestrates the microenvironment around tumours, contributing to proliferation, survival and migration. Cancer cells use selectins, chemokines and their receptors for invasion, migration and metastasis. On the other hand, many cells of the immune system contribute to cancer immunology, suppressing cancer.


title: Inflammation

text: Molecular intersection between receptors of steroid hormones, which have important effects on cellular development, and transcription factors that play key roles in inflammation, such as NF-κB, may mediate some of the most critical effects of inflammatory stimuli on cancer cells. This capacity of a mediator of inflammation to influence the effects of steroid hormones in cells is very likely to affect carcinogenesis. On the other hand, due to the modular nature of many steroid hormone receptors, this interaction may offer ways to interfere with cancer progression, through targeting of a specific protein domain in a specific cell type. Such an approach may limit side effects that are unrelated to the tumor of interest, and may help preserve vital homeostatic functions and developmental processes in the organism.


title: Inflammation

text: According to a review of 2009, recent data suggests that cancer-related inflammation (CRI) may lead to accumulation of random genetic alterations in cancer cells.


title: Inflammation

text: In 1863, Rudolf Virchow hypothesized that the origin of cancer was at sites of chronic inflammation. At present, chronic inflammation is estimated to contribute to approximately 15% to 25% of human cancers.


title: Inflammation

text: An inflammatory mediator is a messenger that acts on blood vessels and/or cells to promote an inflammatory response. Inflammatory mediators that contribute to neoplasia include prostaglandins, inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-15 and chemokines such as IL-8 and GRO-alpha. These inflammatory mediators, and others, orchestrate an environment that fosters proliferation and survival.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation also causes DNA damages due to the induction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by various intracellular inflammatory mediators. In addition, leukocytes and other phagocytic cells attracted to the site of inflammation induce DNA damages in proliferating cells through their generation of ROS and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). ROS and RNS are normally produced by these cells to fight infection. ROS, alone, cause more than 20 types of DNA damage. Oxidative DNA damages cause both mutations and epigenetic alterations. RNS also cause mutagenic DNA damages.


title: Inflammation

text: A normal cell may undergo carcinogenesis to become a cancer cell if it is frequently subjected to DNA damage during long periods of chronic inflammation. DNA damages may cause genetic mutations due to inaccurate repair. In addition, mistakes in the DNA repair process may cause epigenetic alterations. Mutations and epigenetic alterations that are replicated and provide a selective advantage during somatic cell proliferation may be carcinogenic.


title: Inflammation

text: Genome-wide analyses of human cancer tissues reveal that a single typical cancer cell may possess roughly 100 mutations in coding regions, 10-20 of which are "driver mutations" that contribute to cancer development. However, chronic inflammation also causes epigenetic changes such as DNA methylations, that are often more common than mutations. Typically, several hundreds to thousands of genes are methylated in a cancer cell (see DNA methylation in cancer). Sites of oxidative damage in chromatin can recruit complexes that contain DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs), a histone deacetylase (SIRT1), and a histone methyltransferase (EZH2), and thus induce DNA methylation. DNA methylation of a CpG island in a promoter region may cause silencing of its downstream gene (see CpG site and regulation of transcription in cancer). DNA repair genes, in particular, are frequently inactivated by methylation in various cancers (see hypermethylation of DNA repair genes in cancer). A 2018 report evaluated the relative importance of mutations and epigenetic alterations in progression to two different types of cancer. This report showed that epigenetic alterations were much more important than mutations in generating gastric cancers (associated with inflammation). However, mutations and epigenetic alterations were of roughly equal importance in generating esophageal squamous cell cancers (associated with tobacco chemicals and acetaldehyde, a product of alcohol metabolism).


title: Inflammation

text: It has long been recognized that infection with HIV is characterized not only by development of profound immunodeficiency but also by sustained inflammation and immune activation. A substantial body of evidence implicates chronic inflammation as a critical driver of immune dysfunction, premature appearance of aging-related diseases, and immune deficiency. Many now regard HIV infection not only as an evolving virus-induced immunodeficiency, but also as chronic inflammatory disease. Even after the introduction of effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) and effective suppression of viremia in HIV-infected individuals, chronic inflammation persists. Animal studies also support the relationship between immune activation and progressive cellular immune deficiency: SIVsm infection of its natural nonhuman primate hosts, the sooty mangabey, causes high-level viral replication but limited evidence of disease. This lack of pathogenicity is accompanied by a lack of inflammation, immune activation and cellular proliferation. In sharp contrast, experimental SIVsm infection of rhesus macaque produces immune activation and AIDS-like disease with many parallels to human HIV infection.


title: Inflammation

text: Delineating how CD4 T cells are depleted and how chronic inflammation and immune activation are induced lies at the heart of understanding HIV pathogenesis––one of the top priorities for HIV research by the Office of AIDS Research, National Institutes of Health. Recent studies demonstrated that caspase-1-mediated pyroptosis, a highly inflammatory form of programmed cell death, drives CD4 T-cell depletion and inflammation by HIV. These are the two signature events that propel HIV disease progression to AIDS. Pyroptosis appears to create a pathogenic vicious cycle in which dying CD4 T cells and other immune cells (including macrophages and neutrophils) release inflammatory signals that recruit more cells into the infected lymphoid tissues to die. The feed-forward nature of this inflammatory response produces chronic inflammation and tissue injury. Identifying pyroptosis as the predominant mechanism that causes CD4 T-cell depletion and chronic inflammation, provides novel therapeutic opportunities, namely caspase-1 which controls the pyroptotic pathway. In this regard, pyroptosis of CD4 T cells and secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β and IL-18 can be blocked in HIV-infected human lymphoid tissues by addition of the caspase-1 inhibitor VX-765, which has already proven to be safe and well tolerated in phase II human clinical trials. These findings could propel development of an entirely new class of "anti-AIDS" therapies that act by targeting the host rather than the virus. Such agents would almost certainly be used in combination with ART. By promoting "tolerance" of the virus instead of suppressing its replication, VX-765 or related drugs may mimic the evolutionary solutions occurring in multiple monkey hosts (e.g. the sooty mangabey) infected with species-specific lentiviruses that have led to a lack of disease, no decline in CD4 T-cell counts, and no chronic inflammation.


title: Inflammation

text: The inflammatory response must be actively terminated when no longer needed to prevent unnecessary "bystander" damage to tissues. Failure to do so results in chronic inflammation, and cellular destruction. Resolution of inflammation occurs by different mechanisms in different tissues.


title: Inflammation

text: There is evidence for a link between inflammation and depression. Inflammatory processes can be triggered by negative cognitions or their consequences, such as stress, violence, or deprivation. Thus, negative cognitions can cause inflammation that can, in turn, lead to depression.


title: Inflammation

text: In addition, there is increasing evidence that inflammation can cause depression because of the increase of cytokines, setting the brain into a "sickness mode". Classical symptoms of being physically sick, such as lethargy, show a large overlap in behaviors that characterize depression. Levels of cytokines tend to increase sharply during the depressive episodes of people with bipolar disorder and drop off during remission. Furthermore, it has been shown in clinical trials that anti-inflammatory medicines taken in addition to antidepressants not only significantly improves symptoms but also increases the proportion of subjects positively responding to treatment.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammations that lead to serious depression could be caused by common infections such as those caused by a virus, bacteria or even parasites.


title: Inflammation

text: There is evidence for a link between inflammation and delirium based on the results of a recent longitudinal study investigating CRP in COVID-19 patients.


title: Inflammation

text: An infectious organism can escape the confines of the immediate tissue via the circulatory system or lymphatic system, where it may spread to other parts of the body. If an organism is not contained by the actions of acute inflammation, it may gain access to the lymphatic system via nearby lymph vessels. An infection of the lymph vessels is known as lymphangitis, and infection of a lymph node is known as lymphadenitis. When lymph nodes cannot destroy all pathogens, the infection spreads further. A pathogen can gain access to the bloodstream through lymphatic drainage into the circulatory system.


title: Inflammation

text: When inflammation overwhelms the host, systemic inflammatory response syndrome is diagnosed. When it is due to infection, the term sepsis is applied, with the terms bacteremia being applied specifically for bacterial sepsis and viremia specifically to viral sepsis. Vasodilation and organ dysfunction are serious problems associated with widespread infection that may lead to septic shock and death.


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation also is characterized by high systemic levels of acute-phase proteins. In acute inflammation, these proteins prove beneficial; however, in chronic inflammation, they can contribute to amyloidosis. These proteins include C-reactive protein, serum amyloid A, and serum amyloid P, which cause a range of systemic effects including:


title: Inflammation

text: With the discovery of interleukins (IL), the concept of systemic inflammation developed. Although the processes involved are identical to tissue inflammation, systemic inflammation is not confined to a particular tissue but involves the endothelium and other organ systems.


title: Inflammation

text: Chronic inflammation is widely observed in obesity. Obese people commonly have many elevated markers of inflammation, including:


title: Inflammation

text: Low-grade chronic inflammation is characterized by a two- to threefold increase in the systemic concentrations of cytokines such as TNF-α, IL-6, and CRP. Waist circumference correlates significantly with systemic inflammatory response.


title: Inflammation

text: Loss of white adipose tissue reduces levels of inflammation markers. As of 2017 the association of systemic inflammation with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, and with atherosclerosis was under preliminary research, although rigorous clinical trials had not been conducted to confirm such relationships.


title: Inflammation

text: C-reactive protein (CRP) is generated at a higher level in obese people, and may increase the risk for cardiovascular diseases.


title: Inflammation

text: The outcome in a particular circumstance will be determined by the tissue in which the injury has occurred—and the injurious agent that is causing it. Here are the possible outcomes to inflammation:


title: Inflammation

text: Inflammation is usually indicated by adding the suffix "itis", as shown below. However, some conditions, such as asthma and pneumonia, do not follow this convention. More examples are available at List of types of inflammation.


title: Federation

text: A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states, as well as the division of power between them and the central government, is typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision, neither by the component states nor the federal political body. Alternatively, a federation is a form of government in which sovereign power is formally divided between a central authority and a number of constituent regions so that each region retains some degree of control over its internal affairs.


title: Federation

text: It is often argued that federal states where the central government has overriding powers are not truly federal states. For example, such overriding powers may include: the constitutional authority to suspend a constituent state's government by invoking gross mismanagement or civil unrest, or to adopt national legislation that overrides or infringes on the constituent states' powers by invoking the central government's constitutional authority to ensure "peace and good government" or to implement obligations contracted under an international treaty.


title: Federation

text: The governmental or constitutional structure found in a federation is considered to be federalist, or to be an example of federalism. It can be considered the opposite of another system, the unitary state. France, for example, has been unitary for many centuries.


title: Federation

text: The Austrian Empire was a unitary state with crown lands, after the transformation into the Austria-Hungary monarchy the remaining crown lands of so-called Cisleithania became federated as "Länder" of the Republic of Austria through the implementation of its constitution. Germany, with its 16 states, or "Länder", is an example of a federation. Federations are often multi-ethnic and cover a large area of territory (such as Russia, the United States, Canada, India, or Brazil), but neither is necessarily the case (such as Saint Kitts and Nevis or the Federated States of Micronesia).


title: Federation

text: Several ancient chiefdoms and kingdoms, such as the 4th-century BCE League of Corinth, Noricum in Central Europe, and the Iroquois Confederacy in pre-Columbian North America, could be described as federations or confederations. The Old Swiss Confederacy was an early example of formal non-unitary statehood.


title: Federation

text: Several colonies and dominions in the New World consisted of autonomous provinces, transformed to federal states upon independence such as the United States, and various countries in Latin America (see Spanish American wars of independence). Some of the New World federations failed; the Federal Republic of Central America broke up into independent states less than 20 years after its founding. Others, such as Argentina, have shifted between federal, confederal, and unitary systems, before settling into federalism. Brazil became a federation only after the fall of the monarchy, and Venezuela became a federation after the Federal War. Australia and Canada are also federations.


title: Federation

text: Germany is another nation-state that has switched between confederal, federal and unitary rules, since the German Confederation was founded in 1815. The North German Confederation, the succeeding German Empire and the Weimar Republic were federations.


title: Federation

text: Founded in 1922, the Soviet Union was formally a federation of Soviet republics, autonomous republics and other federal subjects, though in practice highly centralized under the government of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation has inherited a similar system.


title: Federation

text: India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Malaysia (then Federation of Malaya) became federations on or shortly before becoming independent from the British Empire.


title: Federation

text: In some recent cases, federations have been instituted as a measure to handle ethnic conflict within a state, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraq since 2005.


title: Federation

text: With the United States Constitution having become effective on 4 March 1789, the United States is the oldest surviving federation, while the newest federation is Nepal, after its constitution went into effect on 20 September 2015.


title: Federation

text: The component states are in some sense sovereign, insofar as certain powers are reserved to them that may not be exercised by the central government. However, a federation is more than a mere loose alliance of independent states. The component states of a federation usually possess no powers in relation to foreign policy and so enjoy no independent status under international law. However, German Länder have that power, which is beginning to be exercised on a European level.


title: Federation

text: Some federations are called asymmetric because some states have more autonomy than others. An example of such a federation is Malaysia, in which Sarawak and Sabah agreed to form the federation on different terms and conditions from the states of Peninsular Malaysia.


title: Federation

text: A federation often emerges from an initial agreement between several separate states. The purpose can be the will to solve mutual problems and to provide for mutual defense or to create a nation-state for an ethnicity spread over several states. The former was the case with the United States and Switzerland. However, as the histories of countries and nations vary, the federalist system of a state can be quite different from these models. Australia, for instance, is unique in that it came into existence as a nation by the democratic vote of the citizens of each state, who voted "yes" in referendums to adopt the Australian Constitution. Brazil, on the other hand, has experienced both the federal and the unitary state during its history. Some present-day states of the Brazilian federation retain borders set during the Portuguese colonization (before the very existence of the Brazilian state), whereas the latest state, Tocantins, was created by the 1988 Constitution for chiefly administrative reasons.


title: Federation

text: A unitary state is sometimes one with only a single, centralized, national tier of government. However, unitary states often also include one or more self-governing regions. The difference between a federation and this kind of unitary state is that in a unitary state the autonomous status of self-governing regions exists by the sufferance of the central government, and may be unilaterally revoked. While it is common for a federation to be brought into being by agreement between a number of formally independent states, in a unitary state self-governing regions are often created through a process of devolution, where a formerly centralized state agrees to grant autonomy to a region that was previously entirely subordinate. Thus, federations are often established voluntarily from "below" whereas devolution grants self-government from "above".


title: Federation

text: It is often part of the philosophy of a unitary state that, regardless of the actual status of any of its parts, its entire territory constitutes a single sovereign entity or nation-state, and that by virtue of this the central government exercises sovereignty over the whole territory "as of right". In a federation, on the other hand, sovereignty is often regarded as residing notionally in the component states, or as being shared between these states and the central government.


title: Federation

text: A confederation, in modern political terms, is usually limited to a permanent union of sovereign states for common action in relation to other states. The closest entity in the world to a confederation at this time is the European Union. While the word "confederation" was officially used when the Canadian federal system was established in 1867, the term refers only to the process and not the resulting state since Canadian provinces are not sovereign and do not claim to be. In the case of Switzerland, while the country is still known officially as the Swiss Confederation, this is now a misnomer since the Swiss cantons lost their sovereign status in 1848.


title: Federation

text: In Belgium, however, the opposite movement is underway. Belgium was founded as a centralized state, after the French model, but has gradually been reformed into a federal state by consecutive constitutional reforms since the 1970s. Moreover, although nominally called a federal state, the country's structure already has a number of confederational traits. At present, there is a growing movement to transform the existing federal state into a looser confederation with two or three constitutive states and/or two special regions.


title: Federation

text: A confederation is most likely to feature three differences when contrasted with a federation: (1) No real direct powers: many confederal decisions are externalized by member-state legislation; (2) Decisions on day-to-day-matters are not taken by simple majority but by special majorities or even by consensus or unanimity (veto for every member); (3) Changes of the constitution, usually a treaty, require unanimity.


title: Federation

text: Over time these terms acquired distinct connotations leading to the present difference in definition. An example of this is the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles established a national government under what today would be defined as a federal system (albeit with a comparatively weaker federal government). However, Canadians, designed with a "stronger" central government than the U.S. in the wake of the Civil War of the latter, use the term "Confederation" to refer to the formation or joining, not the structure, of Canada. Legal reforms, court rulings, and political compromises have "decentralized" Canada in practice since its formation in 1867.


title: Federation

text: An empire is a multi-ethnic state, multinational state, or a group of nations with a central government established usually through coercion (on the model of the Roman Empire). An empire often includes self-governing regions, but these will possess autonomy only at the sufferance of the central government. On the other hand, a political entity that is an empire in name, may comprise several partly autonomous kingdoms organised together in a federation, with the empire being ruled over by an emperor or senior king (great king, high king, king of kings...). One example of this was the German Empire (1871–1918).


title: Federation

text: A federacy is a unitary state that incorporates one or more self-governing autonomous areas. It is distinguished from a federation in that the constitutional structure of the state is still unitary, but incorporates federalist principles. Some federacies, notably Åland, were established through international treaty.


title: Federation

text: A federation differs from a devolved state, such as Indonesia and the United Kingdom, because, in a devolved state, the central government can revoke the independence of the subunits (Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly in the case of the UK) without changing the constitution. In some cases, such as the Autonomous communities of Spain, devolution has led to federation in all but name, or "federation without federalism".


title: Federation

text: A federation also differs from an associated state, such as the Federated States of Micronesia (in free association with the United States) and Cook Islands and Niue (which form part of the Realm of New Zealand). There are two kinds of associated states: in case of Micronesia, the association is concluded by a treaty between two sovereign states; in the case of the Cook Islands and Niue, the association is concluded by domestic legal arrangements.


title: Federation

text: The relation between the Crown Dependencies of the Isle of Man and the bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey in the Channel Islands and the United Kingdom is very similar to a federate relation: the Islands enjoy independence from the United Kingdom, which, via The Crown, takes care of their foreign relations and defense – although the UK Parliament does have overall power to legislate for the dependencies. However, the islands are neither an incorporated part of the United Kingdom nor are they considered to be independent or associated states. The islands do not have a monarch, "per se"; rather in the Isle of Man the British Monarch is, "ex officio", Lord of Mann, and in the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey, the British Monarch rules as the Duke of Normandy.


title: Federation

text: Dependent territories, such as the British overseas territories, are vested with varying degrees of power; some enjoy considerable independence from the sovereign state, which only takes care of their foreign relations and defense. However, they are neither considered to be part of it nor recognized as sovereign or associated states.


title: Federation

text: The distinction between a federation and a unitary state is often quite ambiguous. A unitary state may closely resemble a federation in structure and, while a central government may possess the theoretical right to revoke the autonomy of a self-governing region, it may be politically difficult for it to do so in practice. The self-governing regions of some unitary states also often enjoy greater autonomy than those of some federations. For these reasons, it is sometimes argued that some modern unitary states are "de facto" federations.


title: Federation

text: Spain is suggested as one possible "de facto" federation as it grants more self-government to its autonomous communities than are retained by the constituent entities of most federations. For the Spanish parliament to revoke the autonomy of regions such as Galicia, Catalonia or the Basque Country would be a political near-impossibility, though nothing bars it legally. The Spanish parliament has, however, suspended the autonomy of Catalonia in response to the Catalan declaration of independence, in the lead up to the 2017 Catalan election. Additionally, some autonomies such as Navarre or the Basque Country have full control over taxation and spending, transferring a payment to the central government for the common services (military, foreign relations, macroeconomic policy). For example, scholar Enrique Guillén López discusses the "federal nature of Spain's government (a trend that almost no one denies)." Each autonomous community is governed by a Statute of Autonomy ("Estatuto de Autonomía") under the Spanish Constitution of 1978.


title: Federation

text: Although South Africa bears some elements of a federal system, such as the allocation of certain powers to provinces, it is nevertheless constitutionally and functionally a unitary state.


title: Federation

text: The European Union (EU) is a sui generis political union or confederation (the assemblage of societies or an association of two or more states into one state). Robert Schuman, the initiator of the European Community system, wrote that a transnational Community like the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community lay midway between an association of States where they retained complete independence and a federation leading to a fusion of States in a super-state. The Founding Fathers of the European Union wrote the Europe Declaration (Charter of the Community) at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 18 April 1951 saying that Europe should be organized on a transnational foundation. They envisaged a structure quite different from a federation called the European Political Community.


title: Federation

text: The EU is a three-pillar structure of the original supranational European Economic Community and the nuclear energy cooperation and non-proliferation treaty, Euratom, plus two largely intergovernmental pillars dealing with External Affairs and Justice and Home Affairs. The EU is therefore not a "de jure" federation, although some academic observers conclude that after 50 years of institutional evolution since the Treaties of Rome it is "becoming" one. The European Union possesses attributes of a federal state. However, its central government is far weaker than that of most federations and the individual members are sovereign states under international law, so it is usually characterized as an unprecedented form of supra-national union. The EU has responsibility for important areas such as trade, monetary union, agriculture, fisheries. Nonetheless, EU member states retain the right to act independently in matters of foreign policy and defense, and also enjoy a near-monopoly over other major policy areas such as criminal justice and taxation. Since the Treaty of Lisbon, the Member States' right to leave the Union is codified, and the Union operates with more qualified majority voting (rather than unanimity) in many areas.


title: Federation

text: A more nuanced view has been given by the German Constitutional Court. Here the EU is defined as 'an association of sovereign national states ("Staatenverbund")'. With this view, the European Union resembles more of a confederation.


title: Federation

text: Constitutionally, the power vested in the special administrative regions of the People's Republic is granted from the Central People's Government, through a decision by the National People's Congress. However, there have been certain largely informal grants of power to the provinces, to handle economic affairs and implement national policies, resulting in a system some have termed federalism "with Chinese characteristics".


title: Federation

text: Constitutionally a unitary state, the political system in Myanmar bears many elements of federalism. Each administrative division has its own cabinets and chief ministers, making it more like a federation rather than a unitary state.


title: Federation

text: The French overseas collectivity Wallis and Futuna maintains some quasi-federation attributes. The territory is divided into three traditional chiefdoms: Uvea, Sigave, and Alo. The chiefdoms are allowed to have their own legal system which have to be implemented along with French legal system.


title: Federation

text: Certain forms of political and constitutional dispute are common to federations. One issue is that the exact division of power and responsibility between federal and regional governments is often a source of controversy. Often, as is the case with the United States, such conflicts are resolved through the judicial system, which delimits the powers of federal and local governments. The relationship between federal and local courts varies from nation to nation and can be a controversial and complex issue in itself.


title: Federation

text: Another common issue in federal systems is the conflict between regional and national interests, or between the interests and aspirations of different ethnic groups. In some federations the entire jurisdiction is relatively homogeneous and each constituent state resembles a miniature version of the whole; this is known as 'congruent federalism'. On the other hand, incongruent federalism exists where different states or regions possess distinct ethnic groups.


title: Federation

text: The ability of a federal government to create national institutions that can mediate differences that arise because of linguistic, ethnic, religious, or other regional differences is an important challenge. The inability to meet this challenge may lead to the secession of parts of a federation or to civil war, as occurred in the United States (southern states sought to protect the institution of slavery while northern states opposed it, with a catalysis occurring in the then–Kansas Territory), in Nigeria and in Switzerland. In the case of Malaysia, Singapore was expelled from the federation because of rising racial tension. In some cases, internal conflict may lead a federation to collapse entirely, as occurred the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the Gran Colombia, the United Provinces of Central America, and the West Indies Federation.


title: Federation

text: The federal government is the common government of a national or supranational federation. A federal government may have distinct powers at various levels authorized or delegated to it by its member states. The structure of federal governments vary. Based on a broad definition of a basic federalism, there are two or more levels of government that exist within an established territory and govern through common institutions with overlapping or shared powers as prescribed by a constitution.