British taxes are very low, and government restrictions are minimal.

There are still problem areas, such as occasional riots, especially those motivated by anti-Catholicism.

Society is still ruled by the aristocracy and the gentry, which controls high government offices, both houses of Parliament, the church, and the military.

Becoming a rich businessman is not as prestigious as inheriting a title and owning a landed estate.

Literature is doing well, but the fine arts languish as the Great Exhibition of 1851 showcases Britain's industrial prowess rather than its sculpture, painting or music.

The educational system is mediocre; the capstone universities (outside Scotland) are likewise mediocre.

Northeastern North America

(1840 to 1851 CE): Epidemics, Industrial Development, and Social Reform

From 1840 to 1851, Northeastern North America experienced severe health crises, significant industrial expansion, transformative immigration patterns, and dynamic social and cultural movements. This era was characterized by devastating epidemics, burgeoning industries, powerful intellectual and artistic movements, and growing anti-slavery activism.

Epidemics and Public Health Crises

Cholera and Typhus Epidemics

In the early 1840s, cholera killed thousands in New York, a major destination for Irish immigrants. In 1843, a typhus epidemic originating from an earlier outbreak in Philadelphia claimed the life of the son of Franklin Pierce, future fourteenth President of the United States, in Concord, New Hampshire. Another severe typhus epidemic, from 1847 to 1848, resulted in more than twenty thousand deaths in Canada, primarily among Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Irish Famine. These immigrants contracted the disease aboard crowded "coffin ships," and health officials, unaware of effective sanitation and disease prevention methods, quarantined victims ineffectively. Additionally, the cholera outbreak of 1849–1850 claimed the life of former U.S. President James K. Polk in Nashville.

Industrial and Economic Growth

Bluestone Industry

The bluestone industry in Ulster County, New York, began with Silas Brainard recognizing the industrial potential of this deep-blue sandstone in the 1840s. By 1850, the local bluestone industry had become well-established, with significant quarries in Sawkill and Hurley, and major shipment points in Wilbur on the Rondout Creek and Malden on the Hudson. Bluestone from Wilbur, also known as Twaalfskill, notably paved the sidewalks of New York City. Before its commercial development, bluestone was utilized by natives and early settlers for tools and practical items such as chicken troughs, chimney caps, and tombstones.

Ice Harvesting and Brick Manufacturing

Ice harvesting continued to thrive along the Hudson River, with ice blocks preserved year-round in warehouses insulated with straw, serving as a rudimentary form of refrigeration for local communities including Rondout, Kingston, and Wilbur. Concurrently, large brick-making factories emerged near these shipping hubs, complementing the growing local economy.

Immigration and Canadian Developments

Irish and Scottish Immigration

Immigration resumed significantly after the War of 1812, with over nine hundred and sixty thousand arrivals from Britain to Canada between 1815 and 1850. These included refugees from the Great Irish Famine and Gaelic-speaking Scots displaced by the Highland Clearances. The influx of these immigrants deeply affected the demographic and cultural landscape of Canada and Northeastern United States.

Canadian Political Union

The Act of Union in 1841 merged Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada, establishing responsible government across British North America by 1849. This union aimed to stabilize political tensions and foster more coherent governance, following earlier rebellions and demands for reform.

Social Reform and Abolitionism

Abolitionist Movement

The abolitionist movement intensified during this period, particularly under influential figures such as William Lloyd Garrison, who published the radical anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, and Frederick Douglass, who began writing for Garrison’s newspaper around 1840 before founding his own abolitionist paper, North Star, in 1847. While radicals like Garrison considered slavery a sin demanding immediate eradication, moderate abolitionists, including future president Abraham Lincoln, regarded slavery as a regrettable social evil rather than a religious transgression.

Transcendentalist Movement

The Transcendentalist movement, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, emphasized personal freedom, individualism, and a belief in the inherent goodness of people. Influenced by Romantic ideals, Transcendentalists sought to reconcile individual spirituality with empirical scientific understanding, profoundly shaping American thought and culture.

Artistic and Cultural Developments

Hudson River School

The Hudson River School of painting flourished, reflecting themes of discovery, exploration, and settlement, and depicting the American landscape as a harmonious pastoral setting where humans and nature coexist peacefully. These artists, inspired by European masters such as Claude Lorrain, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner, portrayed nature as a divine manifestation, capturing both the idyllic agricultural landscapes and rapidly disappearing wilderness. Their work complemented contemporary literary voices like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Artists associated with the Hudson River School, such as members trained under the Düsseldorf school of painting and German painter Paul Weber, often composed their scenes from multiple observations made during arduous travels, creating realistic yet idealized landscapes.

Legacy of the Era (1840–1851 CE)

From 1840 to 1851, Northeastern North America navigated a transformative period defined by devastating epidemics, significant industrial and economic developments, dynamic immigration, robust abolitionist and reform movements, and profound artistic and intellectual achievements. These developments reshaped the region's cultural and social identity, set the stage for intensified sectional tensions, and further entrenched industrialization as a defining feature of American society.

French caricaturist Grandville, the pseudonym of Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, creates the illustrations for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1840.

The spread of daguerreotype photography influences portrait painting.

J. M. W. Turner first displays his painting The Slave Ship in 1840.

He depicts a ship, visible in the background, sailing through a tumultuous sea of churning water and leaving scattered human forms floating in its wake.

Turner had been inspired to paint The Slave Ship in 1840 after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson.

In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered one hundred and thirty-three enslaved Africans to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected.

This event had probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society.

Although slavery has been outlawed in the British Empire since 1833, Turner and many other abolitionists believe that slavery should be outlawed around the world.

The violent power of the sea and the strange sea creatures represent the forces of nature punishing the guilty.

The painting, another in Turner’s precursor works to the Impressionist movement, is widely admired for its use of color and the way in which sea and sky merge around the distant ship.

In the lower portion of the painting, hands of enslaved Africans can be seen still shackled.

The first known photograph of Niagara Falls, a daguerreotype, is taken by English chemist Hugh Lee Pattinson in 1840.

Pattinson, known in his time for the patent process for refining silver that bears his name, is best remembered for his daguerreotype photographs taken in 1840.

Britain issues the Penny Black on May 1, 1840.

The world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system, it will become valid for the pre-payment of postage from May 6.

It features a profile of Queen Victoria.

British postal rates were high, complex and anomalous in 1837, when Sir Rowland Hill, to simplify matters, proposed an adhesive stamp to indicate pre-payment of postage.

The recipient normally pays postage on delivery, charged by the sheet and on distance traveled.

By contrast, the Penny Black allows letters of up to one half-ounce (fourteen grams) to be delivered at a flat rate of one penny, regardless of distance.

Postal delivery systems using what may have been adhesive stamps existed before the Penny Black.

The idea had at least been suggested earlier in the Austrian Empire, Sweden, and possibly Greece.

Initially, Hill had pecified that the stamps should be three quarter inches inch square, but altered the dimensions to three-quarter inches wide by seven eights of an inch tall (approximately nineteen by twenty-two millimeters) to accommodate the writing at the bottom.

The word "POSTAGE" at the top of the design distinguishes it from a revenue stamp, which had long been used in the UK; "ONE PENNY." at the bottom shows the amount pre-paid for postage of the stamped letter. The background to the portrait consists of finely engraved engine turnings.

The two upper corners hold Maltese crosses with radiant solar discs at their centres; the lower corner letters show the position of the stamp in the printed sheet, from "A A" at top left to "T L" at bottom right.

The sheets, printed by Perkins Bacon, consist of two hundred and forty stamps in twenty rows of twelve columns.

One full sheet costs two hundred and forty pence or one pound; one row of twelve stamps costs a shilling.

As the name suggests, the stamp is printed in black ink.

A two penny stamp printed in blue and covering the double-letter rate (up to one ounce or twenty-eight grams) is issued on May 8, 1840.

Grandville’s 1842 satirical series, Scenes de la vie privee et publique des animaux (Public and Private Life of Animals), features fantastic anthropomorphic figures combining human and animal characteristics.

The influential John Ruskin emphasizes truth to nature in his 1843 treatise, “Modern Painters.”

Thomas Cole, best known for his work as an American landscape artist, has spent the years 1829 to 1832 and 1841 to 1842 abroad, mainly in England and Italy.

Cole has also produced thousands of sketches of varying subject matter, of which over twenty-five hundred of these sketches can be seen today at The Detroit Institute of Arts.

In 1842, Cole had embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe in an effort to study in the style of the Old Masters and to paint its scenery.

Most striking to Cole is Europe's tallest active volcano, Mount Etna. (Regarding the title: "Etna" is the more common spelling in the present day, but "Aetna" was a common nineteenth-century variant.)

Cole is so moved by the volcano's beauty that he produces several sketches and at least six paintings of it.

The most famous of these works is A View from Mount Etna from Taormina.

Cole also produced a highly detailed sketch of it, entitled View of Mount Etna, which shows a panoramic view of the volcano with the crumbling walls of the ancient Greek theater of Taormina on the far right.

Grandville produces another satirical series, un Autre Monde (Another World) in 1844.