- The Great Leap Forward, an economic and social campaign of the Chinese Communist Party between 1958 and 1961, aimed to rapidly transform the country into a modern communist society through the rapid parallel development of China's agricultural and industrial sectors through agricultural collectivization and rural industrialization. Private farming was prohibited, those engaged in it persecuted as counter revolutionaries, and small backyard steel furnaces established in commune and urban neighbourhoods. Controversial agricultural innovations based on the theories of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko included close cropping, and deep ploughing while moderately productive land was left unplanted because concentrating manure and effort on the most fertile areas would result in productivity gains, but these innovations actually resulted in decreased production and their effect was exacerbated by a locust plague after their natural predators were killed in the Great Sparrow Campaign. The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, with estimates of the ensuing death toll range from 16.5 to 46 million. Criticism of Mao Zedong's leadership through the process prompted the beginnings of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. (Back)
- The Highland Clearances, forced displacements throughout the Scottish Highlands during the 18th and 19th centuries led to mass emigration to the coast, the Lowlands and North America and were part of the process of agricultural change throughout the British Isles. The impact of the Clearances on the Gaelic-speaking semi-feudal culture based on the mutual obligations between a chieftain and his clan resulted in lingering bitterness among the descendants of those forced to emigrate or to remain in crofting townships on small areas of poor farming land. The effects of the Clearances were exacerbated by the lack of legal protection for tenants, the swiftness of the change and the brutal manner in which many evictions were carried out. The Clearances were closely linked to the British government's efforts to curb the clans after the Jacobite Risings and the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and led to the destruction of the traditional clan system. (Back)
- The Great Irish Famine, a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852 when a million people died and a million more emigrated was one of the most significant events in Irish history. Although the immediate cause of the Famine was a disease commonly known as the potato blight which had affected crops throughout Europe through the 1840s, since around one-third of Ireland's population depended on the potato as their main source of food the disease had a greater affect in Ireland than it had elsewhere and its effects were magnified by a range of other social, political and economic factors. The resulting changes to the country's demographic, political and cultural landscape meant that the Famine entered folk memory and became a rallying point for later nationalist movements. (Back)
- Artist, writer and textile designer William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896), an important figure in the emergence of British socialism, developed theories of hand-craftsmanship and was a major contributor to the resurgence of traditional textiles and methods of production to create affordable hand-made art. A prolific writer, Morris produced poetry, fiction, essays, and translations of medieval texts, Icelandic sagas and Homer's Odyssey. (Back)
- English composer Gustav Holst (21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934), most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets, composed operas, ballets, choral hymns and songs and with Vaughan Williams explored and maintained the English vocal and choral tradition in folk song, madrigals and church music. (Back)
- Apart from producing an extensive array of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was also a collector of English folk music and song which influenced his original compositions. (Back)
- Widely regarded as the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early 20th century, Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) spent ten years in South Australia before returning to England, where he became interested in the vocal and instrumental folk music of the British Isles, and traditional English dance at a time when morris dancing was almost extinct. Many of England's traditional dances and music owe their continued existence to his work with the English Folk Dance and Song Society. (Back)
- Young, R. Electric Eden: Rediscovering Britain’s Visionary Music pp. 46-88, a chapter titled An Orgy on the Green goes into such matters in considerable detail. (Back)