title: Cubism

text: In addition to Seurat, the roots of cubism are to be found in the two distinct tendencies of Cézanne's later work: first his breaking of the painted surface into small multifaceted areas of paint, thereby emphasizing the plural viewpoint given by binocular vision, and second his interest in the simplification of natural forms into cylinders, spheres, and cones. However, the cubists explored this concept further than Cézanne. They represented all the surfaces of depicted objects in a single picture plane, as if the objects had all their faces visible at the same time. This new kind of depiction revolutionized the way objects could be visualized in painting and art.


title: Cubism

text: The historical study of Cubism began in the late 1920s, drawing at first from sources of limited data, namely the opinions of Guillaume Apollinaire. It came to rely heavily on Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's book "Der Weg zum Kubismus" (published in 1920), which centered on the developments of Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Gris. The terms "analytical" and "synthetic" which subsequently emerged have been widely accepted since the mid-1930s. Both terms are historical impositions that occurred after the facts they identify. Neither phase was designated as such at the time corresponding works were created. "If Kahnweiler considers Cubism as Picasso and Braque," wrote Daniel Robbins, "our only fault is in subjecting other Cubists' works to the rigors of that limited definition."


title: Cubism

text: The traditional interpretation of "Cubism", formulated "post facto" as a means of understanding the works of Braque and Picasso, has affected our appreciation of other twentieth-century artists. It is difficult to apply to painters such as Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay and Henri Le Fauconnier, whose fundamental differences from traditional Cubism compelled Kahnweiler to question whether to call them Cubists at all. According to Daniel Robbins, "To suggest that merely because these artists developed differently or varied from the traditional pattern they deserved to be relegated to a secondary or satellite role in Cubism is a profound mistake."


title: Cubism

text: The history of the term "Cubism" usually stresses the fact that Matisse referred to "cubes" in connection with a painting by Braque in 1908, and that the term was published twice by the critic Louis Vauxcelles in a similar context. However, the word "cube" was used in 1906 by another critic, Louis Chassevent, with reference not to Picasso or Braque but rather to Metzinger and Delaunay:


title: Cubism

text: The critical use of the word "cube" goes back at least to May 1901 when Jean Béral, reviewing the work of Henri-Edmond Cross at the Indépendants in "Art et Littérature", commented that he "uses a large and square pointillism, giving the impression of mosaic. One even wonders why the artist has not used cubes of solid matter diversely colored: they would make pretty revetments." (Robert Herbert, 1968, p. 221)


title: Cubism

text: The term Cubism did not come into general usage until 1911, mainly with reference to Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, and Léger. In 1911, the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire accepted the term on behalf of a group of artists invited to exhibit at the Brussels Indépendants. The following year, in preparation for the Salon de la Section d'Or, Metzinger and Gleizes wrote and published "Du "Cubisme"" in an effort to dispel the confusion raging around the word, and as a major defence of Cubism (which had caused a public scandal following the 1911 Salon des Indépendants and the 1912 Salon d'Automne in Paris). Clarifying their aims as artists, this work was the first theoretical treatise on Cubism and it still remains the clearest and most intelligible. The result, not solely a collaboration between its two authors, reflected discussions by the circle of artists who met in Puteaux and Courbevoie. It mirrored the attitudes of the "artists of Passy", which included Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, to whom sections of it were read prior to publication. The concept developed in "Du "Cubisme"" of observing a subject from different points in space and time simultaneously, i.e., the act of moving around an object to seize it from several successive angles fused into a single image (multiple viewpoints, mobile perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity), is a generally recognized device used by the Cubists.


title: Cubism

text: The 1912 manifesto "Du "Cubisme"" by Metzinger and Gleizes was followed in 1913 by "Les Peintres Cubistes", a collection of reflections and commentaries by Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire had been closely involved with Picasso beginning in 1905, and Braque beginning in 1907, but gave as much attention to artists such as Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Picabia, and Duchamp.


title: Cubism

text: The fact that the 1912 exhibition had been curated to show the successive stages through which Cubism had transited, and that "Du "Cubisme"" had been published for the occasion, indicates the artists' intention of making their work comprehensible to a wide audience (art critics, art collectors, art dealers and the general public). Undoubtedly, due to the great success of the exhibition, Cubism became avant-garde movement recognized as a genre or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal.


title: Cubism

text: A significant modification of Cubism between 1914 and 1916 was signaled by a shift towards a strong emphasis on large overlapping geometric planes and flat surface activity. This grouping of styles of painting and sculpture, especially significant between 1917 and 1920, was practiced by several artists; particularly those under contract with the art dealer and collector Léonce Rosenberg. The tightening of the compositions, the clarity and sense of order reflected in these works, led to its being referred to by the critic Maurice Raynal as 'crystal' Cubism. Considerations manifested by Cubists prior to the outset of World War I—such as the fourth dimension, dynamism of modern life, the occult, and Henri Bergson's concept of duration—had now been vacated, replaced by a purely formal frame of reference.


title: Cubism

text: Crystal Cubism, and its associative "rappel à l'ordre", has been linked with an inclination—by those who served the armed forces and by those who remained in the civilian sector—to escape the realities of the Great War, both during and directly following the conflict. The purifying of Cubism from 1914 through the mid-1920s, with its cohesive unity and voluntary constraints, has been linked to a much broader ideological transformation towards conservatism in both French society and French culture.


title: Cubism

text: The most innovative period of Cubism was before 1914. After World War I, with the support given by the dealer Léonce Rosenberg, Cubism returned as a central issue for artists, and continued as such until the mid-1920s when its avant-garde status was rendered questionable by the emergence of geometric abstraction and Surrealism in Paris. Many Cubists, including Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger, Gleizes, and Metzinger, while developing other styles, returned periodically to Cubism, even well after 1925. Cubism reemerged during the 1920s and the 1930s in the work of the American Stuart Davis and the Englishman Ben Nicholson. In France, however, Cubism experienced a decline beginning in about 1925. Léonce Rosenberg exhibited not only the artists stranded by Kahnweiler's exile but others including Laurens, Lipchitz, Metzinger, Gleizes, Csaky, Herbin and Severini. In 1918 Rosenberg presented a series of Cubist exhibitions at his Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris. Attempts were made by Louis Vauxcelles to argue that Cubism was dead, but these exhibitions, along with a well-organized Cubist show at the 1920 Salon des Indépendants and a revival of the Salon de la Section d’Or in the same year, demonstrated it was still alive.


title: Cubism

text: The reemergence of Cubism coincided with the appearance from about 1917–24 of a coherent body of theoretical writing by Pierre Reverdy, Maurice Raynal and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and, among the artists, by Gris, Léger and Gleizes. The occasional return to classicism—figurative work either exclusively or alongside Cubist work—experienced by many artists during this period (called Neoclassicism) has been linked to the tendency to evade the realities of the war and also to the cultural dominance of a classical or Latin image of France during and immediately following the war. Cubism after 1918 can be seen as part of a wide ideological shift towards conservatism in both French society and culture. Yet, Cubism itself remained evolutionary both within the oeuvre of individual artists, such as Gris and Metzinger, and across the work of artists as different from each other as Braque, Léger and Gleizes. Cubism as a publicly debated movement became relatively unified and open to definition. Its theoretical purity made it a gauge against which such diverse tendencies as Realism or Naturalism, Dada, Surrealism and abstraction could be compared.


title: Cubism

text: Japan and China were among the first countries in Asia to be influenced by Cubism. Contact first occurred via European texts translated and published in Japanese art journals in the 1910s. In the 1920s, Japanese and Chinese artists who studied in Paris, for example those enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, brought back with them both an understanding of modern art movements, including Cubism. Notable works exhibiting Cubist qualities were Tetsugorō Yorozu's "Self Portrait with Red Eyes" (1912) and Fang Ganmin's "Melody in Autumn" (1934).


title: Cubism

text: The Cubism of Picasso and Braque had more than a technical or formal significance, and the distinct attitudes and intentions of the Salon Cubists produced different kinds of Cubism, rather than a derivative of their work. "It is by no means clear, in any case," wrote Christopher Green, "to what extent these other Cubists depended on Picasso and Braque for their development of such techniques as faceting, 'passage' and multiple perspective; they could well have arrived at such practices with little knowledge of 'true' Cubism in its early stages, guided above all by their own understanding of Cézanne." The works exhibited by these Cubists at the 1911 and 1912 Salons extended beyond the conventional Cézanne-like subjects—the posed model, still-life and landscape—favored by Picasso and Braque to include large-scale modern-life subjects. Aimed at a large public, these works stressed the use of multiple perspective and complex planar faceting for expressive effect while preserving the eloquence of subjects endowed with literary and philosophical connotations.


title: Cubism

text: In "Du "Cubisme"" Metzinger and Gleizes explicitly related the sense of time to multiple perspective, giving symbolic expression to the notion of ‘duration’ proposed by the philosopher Henri Bergson according to which life is subjectively experienced as a continuum, with the past flowing into the present and the present merging into the future. The Salon Cubists used the faceted treatment of solid and space and effects of multiple viewpoints to convey a physical and psychological sense of the fluidity of consciousness, blurring the distinctions between past, present and future. One of the major theoretical innovations made by the Salon Cubists, independently of Picasso and Braque, was that of "simultaneity", drawing to greater or lesser extent on theories of Henri Poincaré, Ernst Mach, Charles Henry, Maurice Princet, and Henri Bergson. With simultaneity, the concept of separate spatial and temporal dimensions was comprehensively challenged. Linear perspective developed during the Renaissance was vacated. The subject matter was no longer considered from a specific point of view at a moment in time, but built following a selection of successive viewpoints, i.e., as if viewed simultaneously from numerous angles (and in multiple dimensions) with the eye free to roam from one to the other.


title: Cubism

text: This technique of representing simultaneity, multiple viewpoints (or relative motion) is pushed to a high degree of complexity in Metzinger's "Nu à la cheminée", exhibited at the 1910 Salon d'Automne; Gleizes' monumental "Le Dépiquage des Moissons (Harvest Threshing)", exhibited at the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or; Le Fauconnier's "Abundance" shown at the Indépendants of 1911; and Delaunay's "City of Paris", exhibited at the Indépendants in 1912. These ambitious works are some of the largest paintings in the history of Cubism. Léger's "The Wedding", also shown at the Salon des Indépendants in 1912, gave form to the notion of simultaneity by presenting different motifs as occurring within a single temporal frame, where responses to the past and present interpenetrate with collective force. The conjunction of such subject matter with simultaneity aligns Salon Cubism with early Futurist paintings by Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini and Carlo Carrà; themselves made in response to early Cubism.


title: Cubism

text: Cubism and modern European art was introduced into the United States at the now legendary 1913 Armory Show in New York City, which then traveled to Chicago and Boston. In the Armory show Pablo Picasso exhibited "La Femme au pot de moutarde" (1910), the sculpture "Head of a Woman (Fernande)" (1909–10), "Les Arbres" (1907) amongst other cubist works. Jacques Villon exhibited seven important and large drypoints, while his brother Marcel Duchamp shocked the American public with his painting "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" (1912). Francis Picabia exhibited his abstractions "La Danse à la source" and "La Procession, Seville" (both of 1912). Albert Gleizes exhibited "La Femme aux phlox" (1910) and "L'Homme au balcon" (1912), two highly stylized and faceted cubist works. Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Roger de La Fresnaye and Alexander Archipenko also contributed examples of their cubist works.


title: Cubism

text: Just as in painting, Cubist sculpture is rooted in Paul Cézanne's reduction of painted objects into component planes and geometric solids (cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones). And just as in painting, it became a pervasive influence and contributed fundamentally to Constructivism and Futurism.


title: Cubism

text: Cubist sculpture developed in parallel to Cubist painting. During the autumn of 1909 Picasso sculpted "Head of a Woman (Fernande)" with positive features depicted by negative space and vice versa. According to Douglas Cooper: "The first true Cubist sculpture was Picasso's impressive "Woman's Head", modeled in 1909–10, a counterpart in three dimensions to many similar analytical and faceted heads in his paintings at the time." These positive/negative reversals were ambitiously exploited by Alexander Archipenko in 1912–13, for example in "Woman Walking". Joseph Csaky, after Archipenko, was the first sculptor in Paris to join the Cubists, with whom he exhibited from 1911 onwards. They were followed by Raymond Duchamp-Villon and then in 1914 by Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens and Ossip Zadkine.


title: Cubism

text: Indeed, Cubist construction was as influential as any pictorial Cubist innovation. It was the stimulus behind the proto-Constructivist work of both Naum Gabo and Vladimir Tatlin and thus the starting-point for the entire constructive tendency in 20th-century modernist sculpture.


title: Cubism

text: Cubism formed an important link between early-20th-century art and architecture. The historical, theoretical, and socio-political relationships between avant-garde practices in painting, sculpture and architecture had early ramifications in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia. Though there are many points of intersection between Cubism and architecture, only a few direct links between them can be drawn. Most often the connections are made by reference to shared formal characteristics: faceting of form, spatial ambiguity, transparency, and multiplicity.


title: Cubism

text: Architectural interest in Cubism centered on the dissolution and reconstitution of three-dimensional form, using simple geometric shapes, juxtaposed without the illusions of classical perspective. Diverse elements could be superimposed, made transparent or penetrate one another, while retaining their spatial relationships. Cubism had become an influential factor in the development of modern architecture from 1912 ("La Maison Cubiste", by Raymond Duchamp-Villon and André Mare) onwards, developing in parallel with architects such as Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius, with the simplification of building design, the use of materials appropriate to industrial production, and the increased use of glass.


title: Cubism

text: Cubism was relevant to an architecture seeking a style that needed not refer to the past. Thus, what had become a revolution in both painting and sculpture was applied as part of "a profound reorientation towards a changed world". The Cubo-Futurist ideas of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti influenced attitudes in avant-garde architecture. The influential De Stijl movement embraced the aesthetic principles of Neo-plasticism developed by Piet Mondrian under the influence of Cubism in Paris. De Stijl was also linked by Gino Severini to Cubist theory through the writings of Albert Gleizes. However, the linking of basic geometric forms with inherent beauty and ease of industrial application—which had been prefigured by Marcel Duchamp from 1914—was left to the founders of Purism, Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (better known as Le Corbusier,) who exhibited paintings together in Paris and published "Après le cubisme" in 1918. Le Corbusier's ambition had been to translate the properties of his own style of Cubism to architecture. Between 1918 and 1922, Le Corbusier concentrated his efforts on Purist theory and painting. In 1922, Le Corbusier and his cousin Jeanneret opened a studio in Paris at 35 rue de Sèvres. His theoretical studies soon advanced into many different architectural projects.


title: Cubism

text: At the 1912 Salon d'Automne an architectural installation was exhibited that quickly became known as "Maison Cubiste" (Cubist House), with architecture by Raymond Duchamp-Villon and interior decoration by André Mare along with a group of collaborators. Metzinger and Gleizes in "Du "Cubisme"", written during the assemblage of the "Maison Cubiste", wrote about the autonomous nature of art, stressing the point that decorative considerations should not govern the spirit of art. Decorative work, to them, was the "antithesis of the picture". "The true picture" wrote Metzinger and Gleizes, "bears its "raison d'être" within itself. It can be moved from a church to a drawing-room, from a museum to a study. Essentially independent, necessarily complete, it need not immediately satisfy the mind: on the contrary, it should lead it, little by little, towards the fictitious depths in which the coordinative light resides. It does not harmonize with this or that ensemble; it harmonizes with things in general, with the universe: it is an organism...".


title: Cubism

text: "La Maison Cubiste" was a fully furnished model house, with a facade, a staircase, wrought iron banisters, and two rooms: a living room—the "Salon Bourgeois", where paintings by Marcel Duchamp, Metzinger ("Woman with a Fan"), Gleizes, Laurencin and Léger were hung, and a bedroom. It was an example of "L'art décoratif", a home within which Cubist art could be displayed in the comfort and style of modern, bourgeois life. Spectators at the Salon d'Automne passed through the plaster facade, designed by Duchamp-Villon, to the two furnished rooms. This architectural installation was subsequently exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show, New York, Chicago and Boston, listed in the catalogue of the New York exhibit as Raymond Duchamp-Villon, number 609, and entitled ""Facade architectural, plaster"" ("Façade architecturale").


title: Cubism

text: The furnishings, wallpaper, upholstery and carpets of the interior were designed by André Mare, and were early examples of the influence of cubism on what would become Art Deco. They were composed of very brightly colored roses and other floral patterns in stylized geometric forms.


title: Cubism

text: Mare called the living room in which Cubist paintings were hung the "Salon Bourgeois". Léger described this name as 'perfect'. In a letter to Mare prior to the exhibition Léger wrote: "Your idea is absolutely splendid for us, really splendid. People will see Cubism in its domestic setting, which is very important.


title: Cubism

text: "Mare's ensembles were accepted as frames for Cubist works because they allowed paintings and sculptures their independence", Christopher Green wrote, "creating a play of contrasts, hence the involvement not only of Gleizes and Metzinger themselves, but of Marie Laurencin, the Duchamp brothers (Raymond Duchamp-Villon designed the facade) and Mare's old friends Léger and Roger La Fresnaye".


title: Cubism

text: In 1927, Cubists Joseph Csaky, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Henri Laurens, the sculptor Gustave Miklos, and others collaborated in the decoration of a Studio House, rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, designed by the architect Paul Ruaud and owned by the French fashion designer Jacques Doucet, also a collector of Post-Impressionist and Cubist paintings (including "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", which he bought directly from Picasso's studio). Laurens designed the fountain, Csaky designed Doucet's staircase, Lipchitz made the fireplace mantel, and Marcoussis made a Cubist rug.


title: Cubism

text: The original Cubist architecture is very rare. Cubism was applied to architecture only in Bohemia (today Czech Republic) and especially in its capital, Prague. Czech architects were the first and only ones to ever design original Cubist buildings. Cubist architecture flourished for the most part between 1910 and 1914, but the Cubist or Cubism-influenced buildings were also built after World War I. After the war, the architectural style called "Rondo-Cubism" was developed in Prague fusing the Cubist architecture with round shapes.


title: Cubism

text: In their theoretical rules, the Cubist architects expressed the requirement of dynamism, which would surmount the matter and calm contained in it, through a creative idea, so that the result would evoke feelings of dynamism and expressive plasticity in the viewer. This should be achieved by shapes derived from pyramids, cubes and prisms, by arrangements and compositions of oblique surfaces, mainly triangular, sculpted facades in protruding crystal-like units, reminiscent of the so-called diamond cut, or even cavernous that are reminiscent of the late Gothic architecture. In this way, the entire surfaces of the facades including even the gables and dormers are sculpted. The grilles as well as other architectural ornaments attain a three-dimensional form. Thus, new forms of windows and doors were also created, e. g. hexagonal windows. Czech Cubist architects also designed Cubist furniture.


title: Cubism

text: The leading Cubist architects were Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár, Vlastislav Hofman, Emil Králíček and Josef Chochol. They worked mostly in Prague but also in other Bohemian towns. The best-known Cubist building is the House of the Black Madonna in the Old Town of Prague built in 1912 by Josef Gočár with the only Cubist café in the world, Grand Café Orient. Vlastislav Hofman built the entrance pavilions of Ďáblice Cemetery in 1912–1914, Josef Chochol designed several residential houses under Vyšehrad. A Cubist streetlamp has also been preserved near the Wenceslas Square, designed by Emil Králíček in 1912, who also built the Diamond House in the New Town of Prague around 1913.


title: Cubism

text: The influence of cubism extended to other artistic fields, outside painting and sculpture. In literature, the written works of Gertrude Stein employ repetition and repetitive phrases as building blocks in both passages and whole chapters. Most of Stein's important works utilize this technique, including the novel "The Making of Americans" (1906–08). Not only were they the first important patrons of Cubism, Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo were also important influences on Cubism as well. In turn, Picasso was an important influence on Stein's writing. In the field of American fiction, William Faulkner's 1930 novel "As I Lay Dying" can be read as an interaction with the cubist mode. The novel features narratives of the diverse experiences of 15 characters which, when taken together, produce a single cohesive body.


title: Cubism

text: The poets generally associated with Cubism are Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, André Salmon and Pierre Reverdy. As American poet Kenneth Rexroth explains, Cubism in poetry "is the conscious, deliberate dissociation and recombination of elements into a new artistic entity made self-sufficient by its rigorous architecture. This is quite different from the free association of the Surrealists and the combination of unconscious utterance and political nihilism of Dada." Nonetheless, the Cubist poets' influence on both Cubism and the later movements of Dada and Surrealism was profound; Louis Aragon, founding member of Surrealism, said that for Breton, Soupault, Éluard and himself, Reverdy was "our immediate elder, the exemplary poet." Though not as well remembered as the Cubist painters, these poets continue to influence and inspire; American poets John Ashbery and Ron Padgett have recently produced new translations of Reverdy's work. Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is also said to demonstrate how cubism's multiple perspectives can be translated into poetry.


title: Cubism

text: John Berger said: "It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of Cubism. It was a revolution in the visual arts as great as that which took place in the early Renaissance. Its effects on later art, on film, and on architecture are already so numerous that we hardly notice them."


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For government statistical purposes, it forms part of the East of England region.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire covers . It derives its name – via the name of the county town of Hertford – from a hart (stag) and a ford, as represented on the county's coat of arms and on the flag. Hertfordshire County Council is based in Hertford, once the main market town and the current county town. The largest settlement is Watford.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Since 1903 Letchworth has served as the prototype garden city; Stevenage became the first town to expand under post-war Britain's New Towns Act of 1946.


title: Hertfordshire

text: In 2013 Hertfordshire had a population of about 1,140,700, with Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, Watford and St Albans (the county's only "city") each having between 50,000 and 100,000 residents. Welwyn Garden City, Hoddesdon and Cheshunt are close behind with around 47,000 residents.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Elevations are higher in the north and west, reaching more than in the Chilterns near Tring. The county centres on the headwaters and upper valleys of the rivers Lea and the Colne; both flow south, and each is accompanied by a canal. Hertfordshire's undeveloped land is mainly agricultural, with much of it protected by green-belt policies. Services have become the largest sector of the county's economy. Hertfordshire is well served with motorways and railways for access to London, the Midlands and the North.


title: Hertfordshire

text: See the List of places in Hertfordshire and also List of settlements in Hertfordshire by population articles for extensive lists of local places and districts.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The county's landmarks span many centuries, ranging from the Six Hills in Stevenage built by local inhabitants during the Roman period, to Leavesden Film Studios. The volume of intact medieval and Tudor buildings surpasses London, in places in well-preserved conservation areas, especially in St Albans, which includes remains of the Roman town of Verulamium.


title: Hertfordshire

text: In 913, Hertfordshire was the area assigned to a fortress constructed at Hertford under the rule of Edward the Elder. Hertford is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "heort ford," meaning deer crossing (of a watercourse). The name Hertfordshire is first recorded in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" in 1011. Deer feature in many county emblems. Many of the names of the current settlements date back to the Anglo-Saxon period, with many featuring standard placename suffixes attributed to the Anglo-Saxons: "ford", "ton", "den", "bourn", "ley", "stead", "ing", "lett", "wood", and "worth", are represented in this county by Hertford, Royston, Harpenden, Redbourn, Cuffley, Wheathampstead, Tring, Radlett, Borehamwood and Rickmansworth.


title: Hertfordshire

text: There is evidence of human life in Hertfordshire from the Mesolithic period. It was first farmed during the Neolithic period and permanent habitation appeared at the beginning of the Bronze Age. This was followed by tribes settling in the area during the Iron Age.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Following the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, the aboriginal Catuvellauni quickly submitted and adapted to the Roman life; resulting in the development of several new towns, including Verulamium (St Albans) where in c. 293 the first recorded British martyrdom is traditionally believed to have taken place. Saint Alban, a Romano-British soldier, took the place of a Christian priest and was beheaded on Holywell Hill. His martyr's cross of a yellow saltire on a blue field is reflected in the flag and coat of arms of Hertfordshire as the yellow field to the stag or Hart representing the county. He is the Patron Saint of Hertfordshire.


title: Hertfordshire

text: With the departure of the Roman Legions in the early 5th century, the now-unprotected territory was invaded and colonised by the Anglo-Saxons. By the 6th century, the majority of the modern county was part of the East Saxon kingdom. This relatively short-lived kingdom collapsed in the 9th century, ceding the territory of Hertfordshire to the control of the West Anglians of Mercia. The region finally became an English shire in the 10th century, on the merger of the West Saxon and Mercian kingdoms.


title: Hertfordshire

text: In the midst of the Norse invasions, Hertfordshire was on the front lines of much of the fighting. King Edward the Elder, in his reconquest of Norse-held lands in what was to become England, established a "burh" or fort in Hertford, which was to curb Norse activities in the area. His father, King Alfred the Great, established the River Lea as a boundary between his kingdom and that of the Norse lord Guthrum, with the north and eastern parts of the county being within the Danelaw. There is little evidence however of Norse placenames within this region, and many of the Anglo-Saxon features remained intact to this day. The county however suffered from renewed Norse raids in the late 10th to early 11th centuries, as armies led by Danish kings Swein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great harried the country as part of their attempts to undermine and overthrow English king Athelred the Unready.


title: Hertfordshire

text: A century later, William of Normandy received the surrender of the surviving senior English Lords and Clergy at Berkhamsted, resulting in a new Anglicised title of William the Conqueror, before entering London unopposed and being crowned at Westminster. Hertfordshire was used for some of the new Norman castles at Bishop's Stortford, and at King's Langley, a staging post between London and the royal residence of Berkhamsted.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The Domesday Book recorded the county as having nine hundreds. Tring and Danais became oneDacorumfrom Danis Corum or Danish rule harking back to a Viking not Saxon past. The other seven were Braughing, Stevenage, Cashio, Buntingford, Hertford, Hitchin and Odsey.


title: Hertfordshire

text: In the later Plantagenet period, St. Albans Abbey was an initial drafting place of what was to become the Magna Carta. And in the later Wars of the Roses, St. Albans was the scene of two major battles between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists.


title: Hertfordshire

text: In Tudor times, Hatfield House was often frequented by Queen Elizabeth I. Stuart King James I used the locale for hunting and facilitated the construction of a waterway, the New River, supplying drinking water to London.


title: Hertfordshire

text: As London grew, Hertfordshire became conveniently close to the English capital; much of the area was owned by the nobility and aristocracy, this patronage helped to boost the local economy. However, the greatest boost to Hertfordshire came during the Industrial Revolution, after which the population rose dramatically. In 1903, Letchworth became the world's first garden city and Stevenage became the first town to redevelop under the New Towns Act 1946.


title: Hertfordshire

text: From the 1920s until the late 1980s, the town of Borehamwood was home to one of the major British film studio complexes, including the MGM-British Studios. Many well-known films were made here including the first three "Star Wars" movies (IV, V, & VI). The studios generally used the name of Elstree. American director Stanley Kubrick not only used to shoot in those studios but also lived in the area until his death. "Big Brother UK" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" have been filmed there. "EastEnders" is filmed at Elstree. Hertfordshire has seen development at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden; the "Harry Potter" series was filmed here and the 1995 James Bond film "GoldenEye".


title: Hertfordshire

text: On 17 October 2000, the Hatfield rail crash killed four people with over 70 injured. The crash exposed the shortcomings of Railtrack, which consequently saw speed restrictions and major track replacement. On 10 May 2002, the fourth of the Potters Bar rail accidents occurred killing seven people; the train was at high speed when it derailed and flipped into the air when one of the carriages slid along the platform where it came to rest.


title: Hertfordshire

text: In early December 2005, the 2005 Hemel Hempstead fuel depot explosions occurred at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire is the county immediately north of London and is part of the East of England region, a mainly statistical unit. To the east is Essex, to the west is Buckinghamshire and to the north are Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. A significant minority of the population across all districts commute to Central London.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The county's boundaries were roughly fixed by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 which eliminated exclaves; amended when, in 1965 under the London Government Act 1963, East Barnet Urban District and Barnet Urban District were abolished, their area was transferred to form part of the present-day London Borough of Barnet and the Potters Bar Urban District of Middlesex was transferred to Hertfordshire.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The highest point in the county is at (AOD) on the Ridgeway long distance national path, on the border of Hastoe near Tring with Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire.


title: Hertfordshire

text: At the 2011 census, among the county's ten districts, East Hertfordshire had the lowest population density (290 people per km) and Watford the highest (4210 per km). Compared with neighbouring Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire lacks large towns or cities on the scale of Luton or Milton Keynes, whose populations exceed 200,000, but its overall population (approximately 1 million) is greater than those of the two aforementioned counties.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The River Lea near Harpenden runs through Wheathampstead, Welwyn Garden City, Hertford, Ware, and Broxbourne before reaching Cheshunt and ultimately the River Thames. The far west of the county is the most hilly, with the Chiltern Hills surrounding Tring, Berkhamsted and the Ashridge estate. This Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty runs from near Hitchin in the north to Berkshire and Oxfordshire.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Many of the county's major settlements are in the central, northern and southern areas, such as Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Kings Langley, Rickmansworth, St. Albans, Harpenden, Radlett, Borehamwood, Potters Bar, Stevenage, Hatfield, Welwyn and Welwyn Garden City, Hitchin, Letchworth and Baldock. These are all small to medium-sized locations, featuring a mix of post-WWII new towns and older/more historical locales. The City of St. Albans is an example of a historical settlement, as its cathedral and abbey date to the Norman period, and there are ruins from the Roman settlement of Verulamium nearby the current city centre. Stevenage is a mix of post-WWII new town planning amidst its prior incarnation as a smaller town. The Old Town in Stevenage represents this historic core and has many shops and buildings reflecting its pre-WWII heritage. Hitchin also has a historic centre, with many Tudor and Stuart era buildings interspersed amongst more contemporary structures.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire's eastern regions are predominantly rural and arable, intermixed with villages and small to medium-sized towns. Royston, Buntingford and Bishops Stortford, along with Ware and the county town of Hertford are major settlements in this regard. The physical geography of eastern Hertfordshire is less elevated than the far west, but with lower rising hills and prominent rivers such as the Stort. This river rises in Essex and terminates via a confluence with the Lea near to Ware.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Apart from the Lea and Stort, the River Colne is the major watercourse in the county's west. This runs near Watford and Radlett, and has a complex system/drainage area running south into both Greater London and Buckinghamshire.


title: Hertfordshire

text: An unofficial status, the purple star-shaped flower with yellow stamens, the Pasqueflower is among endemic county flowers.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The rocks of Hertfordshire belong to the great shallow syncline known as the London Basin. The beds dip in a south-easterly direction towards the syncline's lowest point roughly under the River Thames. The most important formations are the Cretaceous Chalk, exposed as the high ground in the north and west of the county, forming the Chiltern Hills and the younger Palaeocene, Reading Beds and Eocene, London Clay which occupy the remaining southern part. The eastern half of the county was covered by glaciers during the Ice Age and has a superficial layer of glacial boulder clays.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Much of the west – and much more in the east – have richly diverse countryside. These range from beech woods of the Chilterns, clayland buffer zone countryside of Braughing and the Hadhams across to ancient hornbeam coppices west of the upper Lea valley. The county has sweeping panoramas of chalklands near Royston, Baldock, Hexton and Tring.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Some quarrying of sand and gravel occurs around St Albans. In the past, clay has supplied local brick-making and still does in Bovingdon, just south-west of Hemel Hempstead. The chalk that is the bedrock of much of the county provides an aquifer that feeds streams and is also exploited to provide water supplies for much of the county and beyond. Chalk has also been used as a building material and, once fired, the resultant lime was spread on agricultural land to improve fertility. The mining of chalk since the early 18th century has left unrecorded underground galleries that occasionally collapse unexpectedly and endanger buildings.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Fresh water is supplied to London from Ware, using the New River built by Hugh Myddleton and opened in 1613. Local rivers, although small, supported developing industries such as paper production at Nash Mills.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire affords habitat for a variety of flora and fauna. A bird once common in the shire is the Hooded Crow, the old name of which is the eponymous name of the regional newspaper, the "Royston Crow" published in Royston. A product, now largely defunct, was watercress, based in Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamsted supported by reliable, clean chalk rivers.


title: Hertfordshire

text: This is a table of trends of regional gross value added of Hertfordshire at current basic prices with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire has the main operational and/or headquarters UK site of some very large employers. Clockwise from north:


title: Hertfordshire

text: In Stevenage (a subsidiary of: BAE Systems, Airbus and Finmeccanica) MBDA, develops missiles. In the same town, Airbus (Defence & Space Division) produces satellites.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hatfield was where de Havilland developed the first commercial jet liner, the Comet. Now the site is a business park and new campus for the University of Hertfordshire. This major employment site notably hosts EE, Computacenter and Ocado groceries and other goods e-commerce.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Welwyn Garden City hosts Tesco's UK base, hosts the UK Cereal Partners factory and in pharmaceuticals it hosts Roche UK's headquarters (subsidiary of the Swiss Hoffman-La Roche). GlaxoSmithKline has plants in Ware and Stevenage.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The National Pharmacy Association (NPA), the trade association for UK pharmacies, is based in St Albans.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Watford hosts national companies such as J D Wetherspoon, Camelot Group, Bathstore, and Caversham Finance (BrightHouse). It is also the UK base of multi-nationals Hilton Worldwide, TotalEnergies, TK Maxx, Costco, JJ Kavanagh and Sons, Vinci and Beko. The 2006 World Golf Championship and the 2013 Bilderberg Conference, took place at The Grove hotel. Warner Bros. owns and runs its main UK base since the 2000s, Warner Studios, in Leavesden, Watford.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Local news is provided by BBC London & ITV London, however northern parts of the county receive BBC East & ITV Anglia from Cambridge.


title: Hertfordshire

text: In 2012, the canoe and kayak slalom events of the 2012 Summer Olympics took place in Waltham Cross, Broxbourne.


title: Hertfordshire

text: As of the 2021–22 season, there are four professional football teams in Hertfordshire: Watford F.C., Stevenage F.C., Arsenal W.F.C. and Boreham Wood F.C.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Since 1922, Watford play their home games at Vicarage Road. The club joined the Football League in 1920 as a founding member of the Third Division and first played in the First Division of English football in 1982, finishing as runners-up to champions Liverpool. Watford was promoted to the Premier League at the end of the 2020–2021 season. After spending one season in the Premier League, they were relegated to the Championship again for the 2022-2023 season.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Stevenage F.C. was formed in 1976 as Stevenage Borough and have played at Broadhall Way since 1980. Stevenage was the first club to win a competitive match at the new Wembley Stadium, beating Kidderminster Harriers 3–2 in the 2007 FA Trophy Final. The club currently play in the EFL League Two and have been managed by former player Alex Revell since February 2020.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Arsenal F.C., whilst based at the Emirates Stadium in the London Borough of Islington, has long held a training ground in the county. Until 1999, it held the London Colney University of London facility, until it built a new purpose-built compound adjacent to it. Watford FC currently utilises the old Arsenal training area as its training facility.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Arsenal W.F.C. play at Meadow Park in Borehamwood. The club was formed in 1987 and have played in the FA Women's Super League since its inaugural season in 2011.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire has many semi-professional and amateur clubs. The highest placed are Hemel Hempstead Town and St Albans City, who play one division lower in the National League South.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hemel Stags are a rugby league team based in Hemel Hempstead. Hemel Stags have played at Pennine Way Stadium since the club's founding in 1981. Until 2018, the club played in league 1, the of the British rugby league system, and now compete in the Conference League South.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The Hertfordshire Rugby Football Union is the governing body for rugby union in Hertfordshire and is responsible for any interested parties involved in rugby.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Tring Rugby play matches at Cow Lane, Tring. The first XV currently play in the Regional 1 South East, League. A league.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire is a home county with many towns forming part of the London commuter belt and has some of the principal roads in England including the A1, A1(M), A41, A414, M1, M11, and the M25.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Stansted Airport and Luton Airport are both within of the county's borders. The commercial airfield at Elstree is for light aircraft.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The state secondary schools are entirely comprehensive, although 7 schools in the south and southwest of the county are partially selective (see Education in Watford).


title: Hertfordshire

text: The tertiary colleges, each with multiple campuses, are Hertford Regional College, North Hertfordshire College, Oaklands College and West Herts College.


title: Hertfordshire

text: The University of Hertfordshire is a modern university based largely in Hatfield. It has more than 23,000 students.


title: Hertfordshire

text: Hertfordshire is the location of Jack Worthing's country house in Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest".


title: Hertfordshire

text: The eponymous residence in E. M. Forster's novel "Howards End" was based on Rooks Nest House just outside Stevenage.


title: Hertfordshire

text: George Orwell based "Animal Farm" on Wallington, Hertfordshire, where he lived between 1936 and 1940. Manor Farm and The Great Barn both feature in the novel.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (; 10 November 1919 – 23 December 2013) was a Soviet and Russian lieutenant general, inventor, military engineer, writer, and small arms designer. He is most famous for developing the AK-47 assault rifle and its improvements, the AKM and AK-74, as well as the PK machine gun and RPK light machine gun.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Kalashnikov was, according to himself, a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity. Even though Kalashnikov felt sorrow at the weapons' uncontrolled distribution, he took pride in his inventions and in their reputation for reliability, emphasizing that his rifle is "a weapon of defense" and "not a weapon for offense".


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Kalashnikov was born in the village of Kurya, in present-day Altai Krai, Russia, as the seventeenth child of the 19 children of Aleksandra Frolovna Kalashnikova (née Kaverina) and Timofey Aleksandrovich Kalashnikov, who were peasants. In 1930, his father and most of his family had their properties confiscated and were deported as kulaks to the village of Nizhnyaya Mokhovaya, Tomsk Oblast. In his youth, Mikhail suffered from various illnesses and was on the verge of death at age six. He was attracted to all kinds of machinery, but also wrote poetry, dreaming of becoming a poet. He went on to write six books and continued to write poetry all of his life. After deportation to Tomsk Oblast, his family had to combine farming with hunting, and thus Mikhail frequently used his father's rifle in his teens. Kalashnikov continued hunting into his 90s.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: After completing seventh grade, Mikhail, with his stepfather's permission, left his family and returned to Kurya, hiking for nearly 1,000 km. In Kurya, he found a job in mechanics at a tractor station. A party organizer embedded within the factory noticed the man's dexterity and issued him a directive ("napravlenie") to work at a nearby weapons design bureau, where he was employed as a tester of fitted stocks in rifles. In 1938, he was conscripted into the Red Army. Because of his small size and engineering skills he was assigned as a tank mechanic, and later became a tank commander. While training, he made his first inventions, which concerned not only tanks, but also small weapons, and was personally awarded a wrist watch by Georgy Zhukov. Kalashnikov served on the T-34s of the 24th Tank Regiment, 108th Tank Division stationed in Stryi before the regiment retreated after the Battle of Brody in June 1941. He was wounded in combat in the Battle of Bryansk in October 1941 and hospitalised until April 1942. In the last few months of being in hospital, he overheard some fellow soldiers bemoaning their current rifles, which were plagued with reliability issues, such as jamming. As he continued to overhear the complaints that the Soviet soldiers had, as soon as he was discharged, he went to work on what would become the famous AK-47 assault rifle.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Seeing the drawbacks of the standard infantry weapons at the time, he decided to construct a new rifle for the Soviet military. During this time Kalashnikov began designing a submachine gun. Although his first submachine gun design was not accepted into service, his talent as a designer was noticed. From 1942 onwards, Kalashnikov was assigned to the Central Scientific-developmental Firing Range for Rifle Firearms of the Chief Artillery Directorate of the Red Army.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: In 1944, he designed a gas-operated carbine for the new 7.62×39mm cartridge. This weapon, influenced by the Garand rifle design, lost out to the new Simonov carbine which would be eventually adopted as the SKS; but it became a basis for his entry in an assault rifle competition in 1946. His winning entry, the "Mikhtim" (so named by taking the first letters of his name and patronymic, Mikhail Timofeyevich) became the prototype for the development of a family of prototype rifles.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: This process culminated in 1947, when he designed the AK-47 (standing for "Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947"). In 1949, the AK became the standard issue assault rifle of the Soviet Army and went on to become Kalashnikov's most famous invention.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: While developing his first assault rifles, Kalashnikov competed with two much more experienced weapon designers, Vasily Degtyaryov and Georgy Shpagin, who both accepted the superiority of the AK-47 design. Kalashnikov named Alexandr Zaitsev and Vladimir Deikin as his major collaborators during those years.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: From 1949, Mikhail Kalashnikov lived and worked in Izhevsk, Udmurtia. He held a degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences (1971) and was a member of 16 academies.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Over the course of his career, he evolved the basic design into a weapons family. The AKM (), first brought into service in 1959, was lighter and cheaper to manufacture, owing to the use of a stamped steel receiver (in place of the AK-47's milled steel receiver) and contained detail improvements such as a re-shaped stock and muzzle compensator. From the AKM, he developed a squad automatic weapon variant, known as the RPK ().


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: He also developed the general-purpose PK machine gun (), which used the more powerful 7.62×54mmR cartridge of the Mosin–Nagant rifle. It is cartridge belt-fed, not magazine-fed, as it is intended to provide heavy sustained fire from a tripod mount, or be used as a light, bipod-mounted weapon. The common characteristics of all these weapons are simple design, ruggedness and ease of maintenance in all operating conditions.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Approximately 100 million AK-47 assault rifles had been produced by 2009, and about half of them are counterfeit, manufactured at a rate of about a million per year. Izhmash, the official manufacturer of AK-47 in Russia, did not patent the weapon until 1997, and in 2006 accounted for only 10% of the world's production. This arm became famous due to its reliability in the most extreme climatic conditions, functioning as perfectly in the desert as in the tundra. It is in official use by the militaries of 55 nations, and has been so influential in military struggle that it has been used on national flags. Prominent examples include the flags of Mozambique and Hezbollah, as well as the East Timorese and Zimbabwean coats of arms.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Kalashnikov himself claimed he was always motivated by service to his country rather than money, and made no direct profit from weapon production. He did however own 30% of a German company Marken Marketing International (MMI) run by his grandson Igor. The company revamps trademarks and produces merchandise carrying the Kalashnikov name, such as vodka, umbrellas and knives. One of the items is a knife named for the AK-74.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: During a visit to the United States in the early 2000s, Kalashnikov was invited to tour a Virginia holding site for the forthcoming American Wartime Museum. Kalashnikov, a former tank commander, became visibly moved at the sight of his old tank in action, painted with his name in Cyrillic.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: After a prolonged illness, Kalashnikov was hospitalized on 17 November 2013, in an Udmurtian medical facility in Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia and where he lived. He died 23 December 2013, at age 94 from gastric hemorrhage. In January 2014, a letter that Kalashnikov wrote six months before his death to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, was published by the Russian daily newspaper "Izvestia". In the letter, he stated that he was suffering "spiritual pain" about whether he was responsible for the deaths caused by the weapons he created. Translated from the published letter he states, "I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people's lives, then can it be that I... a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?"


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: The patriarch wrote back, thanked Kalashnikov, and said that he "was an example of patriotism and a correct attitude toward the country". Kirill added about the design responsibility for the deaths by the rifle, "the church has a well-defined position when the weapon is defense of the Motherland, the Church supports its creators and the military, which use it."


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Kalashnikov's father, Timofey Aleksandrovich Kalashnikov (1883–1930), was a peasant. He completed two grades of parochial school and could read and write. In 1901, he married Aleksandra Frolovna Kaverina (1884–1957), who was illiterate throughout her life. They had 19 children, but only eight survived to adult age; Kalashnikov was born 17th, and was close to death at age six.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: In 1930, the government labeled Timofey Aleksandrovich a kulak, confiscated his property, and deported him to Siberia, along with most of the family. The eldest three siblings, daughters Agasha (b. 1905) and Anna and son Victor, were already married by 1930, and remained in Kuriya. After her husband's death in 1930, Aleksandra Frolovna married Efrem Kosach, a widower who had three children of his own.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: Mikhail Kalashnikov married twice, the first time to Ekaterina Danilovna Astakhova of Altai Krai. He married the second time to Ekaterina Viktorovna Moiseyeva (1921–1977). She was an engineer and did much technical drawing work for her husband. They had four children: daughters Nelli (b. 1942), Elena (b. 1948) and Natalya (1953–1983), and a son Victor (1942–2018). Victor also became a prominent small arms designer.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: The title to the AK-47 trademark belonged to Mikhail Kalashnikov's family until 4 April 2016, when the Kalashnikov Concern won a lawsuit to invalidate the registration of the trademark.


title: Mikhail Kalashnikov

text: During his career, Kalashnikov designed about 150 models of small weapons. The most famous of them are:


title: Greta Scacchi

text: Greta Scacchi, OMRI (; born 18 February 1960) is an Italian-Australian actress. She holds dual Italian and Australian citizenship. She is best known for her roles in the films "White Mischief" (1987), "Presumed Innocent" (1990), "The Player" (1992), "Emma" (1996), and "Looking for Alibrandi" (2000).


title: Greta Scacchi

text: Her first leading role, in "Heat and Dust" (1983), earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer to Film. For her portrayal of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna of Russia in the television film, "" (1996), she won a Primetime Emmy Award and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2006, Scacchi received a second Emmy nomination for her role in the television film "Broken Trail", and earned her first Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: Scacchi was born on 18 February 1960 in Milan, Italy, the daughter of Luca Scacchi, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Risbey, an English dancer and antiques dealer. Scacchi's parents divorced when she was four, and her mother returned to her native England with Greta and her two older brothers, first to London, then to Haywards Heath, West Sussex. In 1975, after her mother's remarriage, the family moved to Perth, Western Australia, where her stepfather was a visiting professor at the University of Western Australia (UWA). While in Perth, Scacchi attended Hollywood Senior High School and joined UWA's University Dramatic Society, where she made her theatrical debut at the New Dolphin Theatre in Edward Bond's play "Early Morning" under director Arne Neeme.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In 1977, Scacchi returned to England to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where her contemporaries included Miranda Richardson and Amanda Redman. Her first on-screen role was in the first season finale of "Bergerac", in 1981, when she played a model who was the girlfriend of an international criminal being pursued by the eponymous detective. The following year, she made her film debut in the German movie "". Her first leading role was in the British film "Heat and Dust" (1983), opposite Shashi Kapoor and Julie Christie; Scacchi's performance earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer to Film. She went on to give performances in films such as "The Ebony Tower" (1984), "The Coca-Cola Kid" (1985), "White Mischief" (1987), "Presumed Innocent" (1990), "The Player" (1992) and "Country Life" (1994). She turned down the role of Catherine Trammell in "Basic Instinct" (1992).


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In 1996, she won an Emmy Award for her work as Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna of Russia in the television film, "", and was nominated for a Golden Globe and numerous other awards. In 1999, she had a role as an Italian-Australian single mother in the Australian film "Looking for Alibrandi", a performance for which she won the 2000 AFI award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In 2007, she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for "Broken Trail".


title: Greta Scacchi

text: Scacchi is fluent in English, French, German, and Italian, which has made her a popular choice for European casting directors.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: She has performed in a wide range of parts in theatre. She appeared "In Times Like These" (Bristol Old Vic) and "Cider with Rosie" (Phoenix Arts Theatre, Leicester) as her film career was taking off. After making four films in 15 months, in 1985 she appeared with Mark Rylance and Kevin McNally in "Airbase" (Oxford Playhouse and Arts Theatre). In "Uncle Vanya" at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, in 1987, she played opposite Michael Gambon and Jonathan Pryce. In 1991, she played Nora in Ibsen's "A Doll's House" in the Festival of Perth. A year later, she played the lead role in Strindberg's "Miss Julie" for the Sydney Theatre Company. She returned to Sydney in 1996 to play Cecilia in Sam Shepard's "Simpatico". In 1999, she took the lead in "Easy Virtue" in Chichester, directed by actress Maria Aitken.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In 2001, she returned to Sydney for Harold Pinter's "Old Times", directed by Aarne Neeme, playing Kate. In 2004 she toured Italy with an Italian production "Vecchi Tempi" of the same play, but this time playing Anne. In 2005, she performed at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in Thea Sharrock's production of Noël Coward's "Private Lives". Back in Australia in 2008, she was nominated for a Sydney Theatre Best Actress Award for playing Queen Elizabeth in Schiller's "Mary Stuart" in Sydney.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In that year, she also performed in Terence Rattigan's "The Deep Blue Sea" at the Theatre Royal, Bath, on tour and then in the West End back at the Vaudeville Theatre.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In 2010, she replaced an injured Kristin Scott Thomas in the Chatelet Theatre, Paris in the French premiere (37 years after it was written) of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music". As Desiree she sang "Send In The Clowns".


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In May 2011, she appeared alongside Anita Dobson in the play "Bette and Joan" at London's Arts Theatre, directed by Bill Alexander, about the personal and professional relationship between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. At the end of that year she appeared at the Ensemble Theatre, Sydney in David Williamson's new play, "Nothing Personal".


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In September 2013, Sir Jonathan Miller directed a gala performance of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at The Old Vic in London. Scacchi played Regan.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In 2014, she played Arkadina in Chekhov's "The Seagull" in Perth. In 2015 she joined the Headlong theatre company to star on a UK tour in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" as Amanda.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: Between 20 August and 12 November 2016, she played Phoebe Rice opposite Kenneth Branagh's Archie Rice in a revival of John Osborne's "The Entertainer" at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End. The play received mixed reviews but hers were uniformly positive.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: Scacchi is an Italian citizen by birth. She applied for British citizenship after turning 18, but was refused and refused again on appeal; she later applied again due to Brexit. She is a citizen of Italy, Australia and the United Kingdom.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: From 1983 to 1989, Scacchi was in a relationship with New Zealand musician Tim Finn. She had a four-year relationship with American actor Vincent D'Onofrio, with whom she has a daughter, actress Leila George. In 1997, Scacchi began a relationship with her first cousin, Carlo Mantegazza. They have a son, Matteo.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: Scacchi is an active supporter of campaigns and organisations that promote environmental causes. She has supported Greenpeace and Christian Aid's climate change campaign. In 2009, she posed nude with a codfish to promote the documentary "The End of the Line", a film exposing the effects of overfishing. She continues to lead the linked Fishlove campaign, which has seen a host of well known actors pose for photographs with a variety of fish.


title: Greta Scacchi

text: In October 2013, for her services to the arts she was awarded Cavaliere Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Knight in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic).


title: Bohemianism

text: Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people and with few permanent ties. It involves musical, artistic, literary, or spiritual pursuits. In this context, bohemians may be wanderers, adventurers, or vagabonds. Bohemian is a 19th-century historical and literary topos that places the milieu of young metropolitan artists and intellectuals—particularly those of the Latin Quarter in Paris—in a context of poverty, hunger, appreciation of friendship, idealization of art and contempt for money. Based on this topos, the most diverse real-world subcultures are often referred to as "bohemian" in a figurative sense, especially (but by no means exclusively) if they show traits of a precariat.


title: Bohemianism

text: This use of the word in the English language was imported from French "La bohème" in the mid-19th century and was used to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities.


title: Bohemianism

text: Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti-establishment political or social viewpoints, which often were expressed through free love, frugality, and—in some cases—simple living, vandwelling or voluntary poverty. A more economically privileged, wealthy, or even aristocratic bohemian circle is sometimes referred to as "haute bohème" (literally "Upper Bohemian").


title: Bohemianism

text: The term "bohemianism" emerged in France in the early 19th century, out of perceived similarities between the urban Bohemians and the Romani people; "La bohème" was a common term for the Romani people of France, who were mistakenly thought to have reached France in the 15th century via Bohemia (the western part of modern Czech Republic). "Bohemianism" and its adjective "bohemian" in this specific context are not connected to the native inhabitants of the historical region of Bohemia (the Czechs).


title: Bohemianism

text: Literary and artistic bohemians were associated in the French imagination with the roving Romani people. Not only were Romani called "bohémiens" in French because they were believed to have come to France from Bohemia, but literary bohemians and the Romani were both outsiders, apart from conventional society and untroubled by its disapproval. Use of the French and English terms to refer to the Romani is now old-fashioned and archaic, respectively, and both the French and English terms carry a connotation of arcane enlightenment (and are considered antonyms of the word philistine) and the less frequently intended, pejorative connotation of carelessness about personal hygiene and marital fidelity.


title: Bohemianism

text: The title character in "Carmen" (1876), a French opera set in the Spanish city of Seville, is referred to as a "bohémienne" in Meilhac and Halévy's libretto. Her signature aria declares love itself to be a "gypsy child" ("enfant de Bohême"), going where it pleases and obeying no laws.


title: Bohemianism

text: Henri Murger's collection of short stories "Scènes de la vie de bohème" ("Scenes of Bohemian Life"), published in 1845, was written to glorify and legitimize the bohemian lifestyle. Murger's collection formed the basis of Giacomo Puccini's opera "La bohème" (1896).


title: Bohemianism

text: In England, bohemian in this sense initially was popularised in William Makepeace Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair", published in 1848. Public perceptions of the alternative lifestyles supposedly led by artists were further molded by George du Maurier's romanticized best-selling novel of Bohemian culture "Trilby" (1894). The novel outlines the fortunes of three expatriate English artists, their Irish model, and two colourful Central European musicians, in the artist quarter of Paris.


title: Bohemianism

text: In Spanish literature, the Bohemian impulse can be seen in Ramón del Valle-Inclán's play "Luces de Bohemia", published in 1920.


title: Bohemianism

text: In his song La Bohème, Charles Aznavour described the Bohemian lifestyle in Montmartre. The film "Moulin Rouge!" (2001) also imagines the Bohemian lifestyle of actors and artists in Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century.


title: Bohemianism

text: In the 1850s, Bohemian culture started to become established in the United States via immigration. In New York City in 1857, a group of 15 to 20 young, cultured journalists flourished as self-described bohemians until the American Civil War began in 1861. This group gathered at a German bar on Broadway called Pfaff's beer cellar. Members included their leader Henry Clapp Jr., Ada Clare, Walt Whitman, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and actress Adah Isaacs Menken.


title: Bohemianism

text: Similar groups in other cities were broken up as well by the Civil War and reporters spread out to report on the conflict. During the war, correspondents began to assume the title bohemian, and newspapermen in general took up the moniker. Bohemian became synonymous with newspaper writer. In 1866, war correspondent Junius Henri Browne, who wrote for the "New York Tribune" and "Harper's Magazine", described bohemian journalists such as he was, as well as the few carefree women and lighthearted men he encountered during the war years.


title: Bohemianism

text: San Francisco journalist Bret Harte first wrote as "The Bohemian" in "The Golden Era" in 1861, with this persona taking part in many satirical doings, the lot published in his book "Bohemian Papers" in 1867. Harte wrote, "Bohemia has never been located geographically, but any clear day when the sun is going down, if you mount Telegraph Hill, you shall see its pleasant valleys and cloud-capped hills glittering in the West..."


title: Bohemianism

text: Mark Twain included himself and Charles Warren Stoddard in the bohemian category in 1867. By 1872, when a group of journalists and artists who gathered regularly for cultural pursuits in San Francisco were casting about for a name, the term bohemian became the main choice, and the Bohemian Club was born. Club members who were established and successful, pillars of their community, respectable family men, redefined their own form of bohemianism to include people like them who were bons vivants, sportsmen, and appreciators of the fine arts. Club member and poet George Sterling responded to this redefinition:


title: Bohemianism

text: Despite his views, Sterling associated with the Bohemian Club, and caroused with artist and industrialist alike at the Bohemian Grove.


title: Bohemianism

text: Canadian composer Oscar Ferdinand Telgmann and poet George Frederick Cameron wrote the song "The Bohemian" in the 1889 opera "Leo, the Royal Cadet".


title: Bohemianism

text: The impish American writer and Bohemian Club member Gelett Burgess, who coined the word "blurb", supplied this description of the amorphous place called Bohemia:


title: Bohemianism

text: In New York City, the pianist Rafael Joseffy formed an organization of musicians in 1907 with friends, such as Rubin Goldmark, called "The Bohemians (New York Musicians' Club)". Near Times Square, Joel Rinaldo presided over "Joel's Bohemian Refreshery", where the Bohemian crowd gathered from before the turn of the 20th century until Prohibition began to bite. Jonathan Larson's musical "Rent", and specifically the song "La Vie Boheme", portrayed the postmodern Bohemian culture of New York in the late 20th century.


title: Bohemianism

text: In May 2014, a story on NPR suggested, after a century and a half, some Bohemian ideal of living in poverty for the sake of art had fallen in popularity among the latest generation of American artists. In the feature, a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design related "her classmates showed little interest in living in garrets and eating ramen noodles."


title: Bohemianism

text: The term has become associated with various artistic or academic communities and is used as a generalized adjective describing such people, environs, or situations: bohemian ("boho"—informal) is defined in "The American College Dictionary" as "a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior".


title: Bohemianism

text: Many prominent European and American figures of the 19th and 20th centuries belonged to the bohemian subculture, and any comprehensive "list of bohemians" would be tediously long. Bohemianism has been approved of by some bourgeois writers such as Honoré de Balzac, but most conservative cultural critics do not condone bohemian lifestyles.


title: Bohemianism

text: In "Bohemian Manifesto: a Field Guide to Living on the Edge", author Laren Stover breaks down the bohemian into five distinct mind-sets or styles, as follows:


title: Bohemianism

text: Aimée Crocker, an American world traveler, adventuress, heiress, and mystic, was dubbed the "queen of Bohemia" in the 1910s by the world press for living an uninhibited, sexually liberated, and aggressively non-conformist life in San Francisco, New York, and Paris. She spent the bulk of her fortune inherited from her father Edwin B. Crocker, a railroad tycoon and art collector, on traveling all over the world (lingering the longest in Hawaii, India, Japan, and China) and partying with famous artists of her time such as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, the Barrymores, Enrico Caruso, Isadora Duncan, Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, and Rudolph Valentino. Crocker had countless affairs and married five times in five different decades of her life, each man being in his twenties. She was famous for her tattoos and pet snakes and was reported to have started the first Buddhist colony in Manhattan. Spiritually inquisitive, Crocker had a ten-year affair with occultist Aleister Crowley and was a devoted student of Hatha Yoga.


title: Bohemianism

text: Maxwell Bodenheim, an American poet and novelist, was known as the king of Greenwich Village Bohemians during the 1920s and his writing brought him international fame during the Jazz Age.


title: Bohemianism

text: In the 20th-century United States, the bohemian impulse was famously seen in the 1940s hipsters, the 1950s Beat generation (exemplified by writers such as William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti), the much more widespread 1960s counterculture, and 1960s and 1970s hippies.


title: Bohemianism

text: Rainbow Gatherings may be seen as another contemporary worldwide expression of the bohemian impulse. An American example is Burning Man, an annual participatory arts festival held in the Nevada desert.


title: Bohemianism

text: In 2001, political and cultural commentator David Brooks contended that much of the cultural ethos of well-to-do middle-class Americans is Bohemian-derived, coining the oxymoron "Bourgeois Bohemians" or "Bobos". A similar term in Germany is Bionade-Biedermeier, a 2007 German neologism combining Bionade (a trendy lemonade brand) and Biedermeier (an era of introspective Central European culture between 1815 and 1848). The coinage was introduced in 2007 by Henning Sußebach, a German journalist, in an article that appeared in "Zeitmagazin" concerning Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg lifestyle. The hyphenated term gained traction and has been quoted and referred to since. A German ARD TV broadcaster used the title "Boheme and Biedermeier" in a 2009 documentary about Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg. The main focus was on protagonists, that contributed to the image of a paradise for the (organic and child-raising) well-to-do, depicting cafés where "Bionade-Biedermeier sips from Fair-Trade".


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus "Saccharum", tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sucrose, which accumulates in the stalk internodes. Sugarcanes belong to the grass family, Poaceae, an economically important flowering plant family that includes maize, wheat, rice, and sorghum, and many forage crops. It is native to the warm temperate and tropical regions of India, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea. The plant is also grown for biofuel production, especially in Brazil, as the canes can be used directly to produce ethyl alcohol (ethanol).


title: Sugarcane

text: Grown in tropical and subtropical regions, sugarcane is the world's largest crop by production quantity, totaling 1.9 billion tonnes in 2020, with Brazil accounting for 40% of the world total. Sugarcane accounts for 79% of sugar produced globally (most of the rest is made from sugar beets). About 70% of the sugar produced comes from "Saccharum officinarum" and its hybrids. All sugarcane species can interbreed, and the major commercial cultivars are complex hybrids.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sucrose (table sugar) is extracted from sugarcane in specialized mill factories. It is consumed directly in confectionery, used to sweeten beverages, as a preservative in jams and conserves, as a decorative finish for cakes and pâtisserie, as a raw material in the food industry, or fermented to produce ethanol. Products derived from fermentation of sugar include falernum, rum, and cachaça. In some regions, people use sugarcane reeds to make pens, mats, screens, and thatch. The young, unexpanded flower head of "Saccharum edule" ("duruka") is eaten raw, steamed, or toasted, and prepared in various ways in Southeast Asia, such as certain island communities of Indonesia as well as in Oceanic countries like Fiji.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane was an ancient crop of the Austronesian and Papuan people. It was introduced to Polynesia, Island Melanesia, and Madagascar in prehistoric times via Austronesian sailors. It was also introduced to southern China and India by Austronesian traders around 1200 to 1000 BC. The Persians and Greeks encountered the famous "reeds that produce honey without bees" in India between the sixth and fourth centuries BC. They adopted and then spread sugarcane agriculture. Merchants began to trade in sugar, which was considered a luxurious and expensive spice, from India. In the 18th century, sugarcane plantations began in the Caribbean, South American, Indian Ocean, and Pacific island nations. The need for sugar crop laborers became a major driver of large migrations, some people voluntarily accepting indentured servitude and others forcibly imported as slaves.


title: Sugarcane

text: The term "sugarcane" combines the Sanskrit word, शर्करा ("śárkarā", later سُكَّر "sukkar" from Arabic, and "sucre" from Middle French and Middle English) with "cane", a crop grown on plantations in the Caribbean "gana", Hindi for "cane". This term was first used by Spanish settlers in the West Indies in the early 16th century.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane is a tropical, perennial grass that forms lateral shoots at the base to produce multiple stems, typically high and about in diameter. The stems grow into cane stalk, which when mature, constitutes around 75% of the entire plant. A mature stalk is typically composed of 11–16% fiber, 12–16% soluble sugars, 2–3% nonsugar carbohydrates, and 63–73% water. A sugarcane crop is sensitive to climate, soil type, irrigation, fertilizers, insects, disease control, varieties, and the harvest period. The average yield of cane stalk is per year, but this figure can vary between 30 and 180 tonnes per hectare depending on knowledge and crop management approach used in sugarcane cultivation. Sugarcane is a cash crop, but it is also used as livestock fodder. Sugarcane genome is one of the most complex plant genomes known, mostly due to interspecific hybridization and polyploidization.


title: Sugarcane

text: The two centers of domestication for sugarcane are one for "Saccharum officinarum" by Papuans in New Guinea and another for "Saccharum sinense" by Austronesians in Taiwan and southern China. Papuans and Austronesians originally primarily used sugarcane as food for domesticated pigs. The spread of both "S. officinarum" and "S. sinense" is closely linked to the migrations of the Austronesian peoples. "Saccharum barberi" was only cultivated in India after the introduction of "S. officinarum".


title: Sugarcane

text: "S. officinarum" was first domesticated in New Guinea and the islands east of the Wallace Line by Papuans, where it is the modern center of diversity. Beginning around 6,000 BP, several strains were selectively bred from the native "Saccharum robustum". From New Guinea, it spread westwards to maritime Southeast Asia after contact with Austronesians, where it hybridized with "Saccharum spontaneum".


title: Sugarcane

text: The second domestication center is mainland southern China and Taiwan, where "S. sinense" was a primary cultigen of the Austronesian peoples. Words for sugarcane are reconstructed as "*təbuS" or "*CebuS" in Proto-Austronesian, which became "*tebuh" in Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. It was one of the original major crops of the Austronesian peoples from at least 5,500 BP. Introduction of the sweeter "S. officinarum" may have gradually replaced it throughout its cultivated range in maritime Southeast Asia.


title: Sugarcane

text: From Island Southeast Asia, "S. officinarum" was spread eastward into Polynesia and Micronesia by Austronesian voyagers as a canoe plant by around 3,500 BP. It was also spread westward and northward by around 3,000 BP to China and India by Austronesian traders, where it further hybridized with "S. sinense" and "S. barberi". From there, it spread further into western Eurasia and the Mediterranean.


title: Sugarcane

text: The earliest known production of crystalline sugar began in northern India. The earliest evidence of sugar production comes from ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts. Around the eighth century, Muslim and Arab traders introduced sugar from medieval India to the other parts of the Abbasid Caliphate in the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, and Andalusia. By the 10th century, sources state that every village in Mesopotamia grew sugarcane. It was among the early crops brought to the Americas by the Spanish, mainly Andalusians, from their fields in the Canary Islands, and the Portuguese from their fields in the Madeira Islands. An article on sugarcane cultivation in Spain is included in Ibn al-'Awwam's 12th-century "Book on Agriculture".


title: Sugarcane

text: For thousands of years, cane was a heavy and unwieldy crop that had to be cut by hand and immediately ground to release the juice inside, lest it spoil within a day or two. Even before harvest time, rows had to be dug, stalks planted and plentiful wood chopped as fuel for boiling the liquid and reducing it to crystals and molasses. From the earliest traces of cane domestication on the Pacific island of New Guinea 10,000 years ago to its island-hopping advance to ancient India in 350 B.C., sugar was locally consumed and very labor-intensive. It remained little more than an exotic spice, medicinal glaze or sweetener for elite palates.


title: Sugarcane

text: In colonial times, sugar formed one side of the triangle trade of New World raw materials, along with European manufactured goods, and African slaves. Christopher Columbus first brought sugarcane to the Caribbean during his second voyage to the Americas, initially to the island of Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The first sugar harvest happened in Hispaniola in 1501; and many sugar mills had been constructed in Cuba and Jamaica by the 1520s. The Portuguese took sugar to Brazil. By 1540, there were 800 cane sugar mills in Santa Catarina Island and there were another 2,000 on the north coast of Brazil, Demarara, and Suriname.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugar, often in the form of molasses, was shipped from the Caribbean to Europe or New England, where it was used to make rum. The profits from the sale of sugar were then used to purchase manufactured goods, which were then shipped to West Africa, where they were bartered for slaves. The slaves were then brought back to the Caribbean to be sold to sugar planters. The profits from the sale of the slaves were then used to buy more sugar, which was shipped to Europe. Toil in the sugar plantations became a main basis for a vast network of forced population movement, supplying people to work under brutal coercion.


title: Sugarcane

text: France found its sugarcane islands so valuable that it effectively traded its portion of Canada, famously dismissed by Voltaire as "a few acres of snow", to Britain for their return of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Lucia at the end of the Seven Years' War. The Dutch similarly kept Suriname, a sugar colony in South America, instead of seeking the return of the New Netherlands (New York).


title: Sugarcane

text: Boiling houses in the 17th through 19th centuries converted sugarcane juice into raw sugar. These houses were attached to sugar plantations in the Western colonies. Slaves often ran the boiling process under very poor conditions. Rectangular boxes of brick or stone served as furnaces, with an opening at the bottom to stoke the fire and remove ashes. At the top of each furnace were up to seven copper kettles or boilers, each one smaller and hotter than the previous one. The cane juice began in the largest kettle. The juice was then heated and lime added to remove impurities. The juice was skimmed and then channeled to successively smaller kettles. The last kettle, the "teache", was where the cane juice became syrup. The next step was a cooling trough, where the sugar crystals hardened around a sticky core of molasses. This raw sugar was then shoveled from the cooling trough into hogsheads (wooden barrels), and from there into the curing house.


title: Sugarcane

text: The passage of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act led to the abolition of slavery through most of the British Empire, and many of the emancipated slaves no longer worked on sugarcane plantations when they had a choice. West Indian planters, therefore, needed new workers, and they found cheap labour in China and India. The people were subject to indenture, a long-established form of contract, which bound them to unfree labour for a fixed term. The conditions where the indentured servants worked were frequently abysmal, owing to a lack of care among the planters. The first ships carrying indentured labourers from India left in 1836. The migrations to serve sugarcane plantations led to a significant number of ethnic Indians, Southeast Asians, and Chinese people settling in various parts of the world. In some islands and countries, the South Asian migrants now constitute between 10 and 50% of the population. Sugarcane plantations and Asian ethnic groups continue to thrive in countries such as Fiji, South Africa, Burma, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, British Guiana, Jamaica, Trinidad, Martinique, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, St. Croix, Suriname, Nevis, and Mauritius.


title: Sugarcane

text: Between 1863 and 1900, merchants and plantation owners in Queensland and New South Wales (now part of the Commonwealth of Australia) brought between 55,000 and 62,500 people from the South Pacific Islands to work on sugarcane plantations. An estimated one-third of these workers were coerced or kidnapped into slavery (known as blackbirding). Many others were paid very low wages. Between 1904 and 1908, most of the 10,000 remaining workers were deported in an effort to keep Australia racially homogeneous and protect white workers from cheap foreign labour.


title: Sugarcane

text: Cuban sugar derived from sugarcane was exported to the USSR, where it received price supports and was ensured a guaranteed market. The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet state forced the closure of most of Cuba's sugar industry.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane remains an important part of the economy of Guyana, Belize, Barbados, and Haiti, along with the


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane cultivation requires a tropical or subtropical climate, with a minimum of of annual moisture. It is one of the most efficient photosynthesizers in the plant kingdom. It is a C plant, able to convert up to 1% of incident solar energy into biomass. In primary growing regions across the tropics and subtropics, sugarcane crops can produce over 15 kg/m of cane. Once a major crop of the southeastern region of the United States, sugarcane cultivation declined there during the late 20th century, and is primarily confined to small plantations in Florida, Louisiana, and southeast Texas in the 21st century. Sugarcane cultivation ceased in Hawaii when the last operating sugar plantation in the state shut down in 2016.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane is cultivated in the tropics and subtropics in areas with a plentiful supply of water for a continuous period of more than 6–7 months each year, either from natural rainfall or through irrigation. The crop does not tolerate severe frosts. Therefore, most of the world's sugarcane is grown between 22°N and 22°S, and some up to 33°N and 33°S. When sugarcane crops are found outside this range, such as the Natal region of South Africa, it is normally due to anomalous climatic conditions in the region, such as warm ocean currents that sweep down the coast. In terms of altitude, sugarcane crops are found up to close to the equator in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane can be grown on many soils ranging from highly fertile, well-drained mollisols, through heavy cracking vertisols, infertile acid oxisols and ultisols, peaty histosols, to rocky andisols. Both plentiful sunshine and water supplies increase cane production. This has made desert countries with good irrigation facilities such as Egypt some of the highest-yielding sugarcane-cultivating regions. Sugarcane consumes 9% of the world's potash fertilizer production.


title: Sugarcane

text: Although some sugarcanes produce seeds, modern stem cutting has become the most common reproduction method. Each cutting must contain at least one bud, and the cuttings are sometimes hand-planted. In more technologically advanced countries, such as the United States and Australia, billet planting is common. Billets (stalks or stalk sections) harvested by a mechanical harvester are planted by a machine that opens and recloses the ground. Once planted, a stand can be harvested several times; after each harvest, the cane sends up new stalks, called ratoons. Successive harvests give decreasing yields, eventually justifying replanting. Two to 10 harvests are usually made depending on the type of culture. In a country with a mechanical agriculture looking for a high production of large fields, as in North America, sugarcanes are replanted after two or three harvests to avoid a lowering yields. In countries with a more traditional type of agriculture with smaller fields and hand harvesting, as in the French island la Réunion, sugarcane is often harvested up to 10 years before replanting.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane is harvested by hand and mechanically. Hand harvesting accounts for more than half of production, and is dominant in the developing world. In hand harvesting, the field is first set on fire. The fire burns up dry leaves, and chases away or kills venomous snakes, without harming the stalks and roots. Harvesters then cut the cane just above ground-level using cane knives or machetes. A skilled harvester can cut of sugarcane per hour.


title: Sugarcane

text: Mechanical harvesting uses a combine, or sugarcane harvester. The Austoft 7000 series, the original modern harvester design, has now been copied by other companies, including Cameco / John Deere. The machine cuts the cane at the base of the stalk, strips the leaves, chops the cane into consistent lengths and deposits it into a transporter following alongside. The harvester then blows the trash back onto the field. Such machines can harvest each hour, but harvested cane must be rapidly processed. Once cut, sugarcane begins to lose its sugar content, and damage to the cane during mechanical harvesting accelerates this decline. This decline is offset because a modern chopper harvester can complete the harvest faster and more efficiently than hand cutting and loading. Austoft also developed a series of hydraulic high-lift infield transporters to work alongside its harvesters to allow even more rapid transfer of cane to, for example, the nearest railway siding. This mechanical harvesting does not require the field to be set on fire; the residue left in the field by the machine consists of cane tops and dead leaves, which serve as mulch for the next planting.


title: Sugarcane

text: The cane beetle (also known as cane grub) can substantially reduce crop yield by eating roots; it can be controlled with imidacloprid (Confidor) or chlorpyrifos (Lorsban). Other important pests are the larvae of some butterfly/moth species, including the turnip moth, the sugarcane borer ("Diatraea saccharalis"), the African sugarcane borer ("Eldana saccharina"), the Mexican rice borer ("Eoreuma loftini"), the African armyworm ("Spodoptera exempta"), leaf-cutting ants, termites, spittlebugs (especially "Mahanarva fimbriolata" and "Deois flavopicta"), and the beetle "Migdolus fryanus". The planthopper insect "Eumetopina flavipes" acts as a virus vector, which causes the sugarcane disease ramu stunt.


title: Sugarcane

text: Numerous pathogens infect sugarcane, such as sugarcane grassy shoot disease caused by 'Candidatus Phytoplasma sacchari', whiptail disease or sugarcane smut, "pokkah boeng" caused by "Fusarium moniliforme", Xanthomonas axonopodis bacteria causes Gumming Disease, and red rot disease caused by "Colletotrichum falcatum". Viral diseases affecting sugarcane include sugarcane mosaic virus, maize streak virus, and sugarcane yellow leaf virus.


title: Sugarcane

text: Some sugarcane varieties are capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen in association with the bacterium "Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus". Unlike legumes and other nitrogen-fixing plants that form root nodules in the soil in association with bacteria, "G. diazotrophicus" lives within the intercellular spaces of the sugarcane's stem. Coating seeds with the bacteria is a newly developed technology that can enable every crop species to fix nitrogen for its own use.


title: Sugarcane

text: At least 20,000 people are estimated to have died of chronic kidney disease in Central America in the past two decades – most of them sugarcane workers along the Pacific coast. This may be due to working long hours in the heat without adequate fluid intake.


title: Sugarcane

text: Not only are they dying because of exhaustion but some of the workers are being exposed to several hazards such as, high temperatures, harmful pesticides, and poisonous or venomous animals. This all occurs during the process of cutting the sugarcane manually, also causing physical ailments by doing the same movements for hours every work day.


title: Sugarcane

text: Traditionally, sugarcane processing requires two stages. Mills extract raw sugar from freshly harvested cane and "mill-white" sugar is sometimes produced immediately after the first stage at sugar-extraction mills, intended for local consumption. Sugar crystals appear naturally white in color during the crystallization process. Sulfur dioxide is added to inhibit the formation of color-inducing molecules and to stabilize the sugar juices during evaporation. Refineries, often located nearer to consumers in North America, Europe, and Japan, then produce refined white sugar, which is 99% sucrose. These two stages are slowly merging. Increasing affluence in the sugarcane-producing tropics increases demand for refined sugar products, driving a trend toward combined milling and refining.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugarcane processing produces cane sugar (sucrose) from sugarcane. Other products of the processing include bagasse, molasses, and filtercake.


title: Sugarcane

text: Bagasse, the residual dry fiber of the cane after cane juice has been extracted, is used for several purposes:


title: Sugarcane

text: The primary use of bagasse and bagasse residue is as a fuel source for the boilers in the generation of process steam in sugar plants. Dried filtercake is used as an animal feed supplement, fertilizer, and source of sugarcane wax.


title: Sugarcane

text: Molasses is produced in two forms: blackstrap, which has a characteristic strong flavor, and a purer molasses syrup. Blackstrap molasses is sold as a food and dietary supplement. It is also a common ingredient in animal feed, and is used to produce ethanol, rum, and citric acid. Purer molasses syrups are sold as molasses, and may also be blended with maple syrup, invert sugars, or corn syrup. Both forms of molasses are used in baking.


title: Sugarcane

text: Sugar refining further purifies the raw sugar. It is first mixed with heavy syrup and then centrifuged in a process called "affination". Its purpose is to wash away the sugar crystals' outer coating, which is less pure than the crystal interior. The remaining sugar is then dissolved to make a syrup, about 60% solids by weight.


title: Sugarcane

text: The sugar solution is clarified by the addition of phosphoric acid and calcium hydroxide, which combine to precipitate calcium phosphate. The calcium phosphate particles entrap some impurities and absorb others, and then float to the top of the tank, where they can be skimmed off. An alternative to this "phosphatation" technique is "carbonatation", which is similar, but uses carbon dioxide and calcium hydroxide to produce a calcium carbonate precipitate.


title: Sugarcane

text: After filtering any remaining solids, the clarified syrup is decolorized by filtration through activated carbon. Bone char or coal-based activated carbon is traditionally used in this role. Some remaining color-forming impurities are adsorbed by the carbon. The purified syrup is then concentrated to supersaturation and repeatedly crystallized in a vacuum, to produce white refined sugar. As in a sugar mill, the sugar crystals are separated from the molasses by centrifuging. Additional sugar is recovered by blending the remaining syrup with the washings from affination and again crystallizing to produce brown sugar. When no more sugar can be economically recovered, the final molasses still contains 20–30% sucrose and 15–25% glucose and fructose.


title: Sugarcane

text: To produce granulated sugar, in which individual grains do not clump, sugar must be dried, first by heating in a rotary dryer, and then by blowing cool air through it for several days.