What specific historical allusions is Huxley trying to make in Brave New World?

Huxley takes the title of his novel Brave New
World from Shakespeare's The
Tempest:

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"O wonder!...How many goodly creatures there are
here!...How beauteous mankind is!...O brave new world that has such people in
it!"

Names are also
symbolic:

• A.F. ("After Ford"): time is kept
  according to Henry Ford's assembly line
  technology.


• Bernard Marx: named after Karl Marx, a
  proponent of the socialist/communist state


• Lenina: named
  after Lenin, the cruel head of the U.S.S.R.


• Hemholtz
  Watson: "named by Huxley after John B. Watson, the founder of the Behaviorist School of
  psychology)"


• John: a "Noble Savage" based on the work of
  the Romantic writers (Rousseau) who said that:


• a person
  raised in a primitive world, away from western civilization, has a purity of heart that
  civilized people lack (although Huxley does not portray the primitive world as a
  paradise)


• Neo-Pavlovian conditioning: kids are negatively
  conditioned to hate books and nature using the methods of Ivan Pavlov's work with
  conditioning of dogs


• Caste system: loosely based on the
  Hindu Caste system which also has five levels (priest, warrior, merchant, artisan,
  outcast)


• Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy: a spoof on football
  which requires elaborate equipment and played in a large
  field.


• Soma: "an intoxicating drink prepared from a plant
  and used in Vedic ritual, believed to be the drink of the gods."