England Background Paper

England [1840-1860]

In the 1840’s and ‘50’s and for several years before, England was plagued by an assortment of epidemics, including smallpox, influenza, typhus, typhoid cholera, and scarlet fever. Scarlet fever alone killed over 20,000 people in 1840, and the English knew the cause of neither this, nor any of the other rampant diseases. The best that could be done to contain the coinciding epidemics was to isolate a person as soon as they showed symptoms of a fatal disease, though by the time that symptoms were obvious, the disease had often already been transmitted. Between 1842 and 1846 the standard of living in England went up due to increased employment, which was itself caused by new job opportunities in the newly invented railroad industry. However, typhus and influenza epidemics resurfaced in 1847, in that year alone killing more than 30,000. In 1848, a devastating cholera epidemic spread throughout all of England, killing more than in the original 1931 epidemic. Due to poor sanitation, disease continued to be a huge population limiting factor even when these epidemics settled down. However, the impact of disease was greatly lessened because of the Public Health Bill of 1948, which mandated monitoring of buildings and water quality with respect to certain health codes.

In 1851, England hosted the first World Fair, known as the Great Exhibition. It invited many countries to come to England and set up an exhibit that showcased the pinnacle of that country’s technology. England was at this time the industrial leader of the world, and Prince Albert, the man who coordinated the fair, was well aware of this. The Great Exhibition displayed fantastic English technologies alongside inferior foreign ones, increasing the prowess of England’s reputation as a modern, industrialized nation. Six million people came to the fair during the six months that it was in London, and through these people England’s reputation as a superpower was spread across the globe. The crystal palace, England’s primary contribution to the fair, was an architectural fete that continued to wow spectators until it was accidentally burned down in 1936.

On March 24, 1854, England and France declared war on Russia, launching the Crimean War in an effort to prevent Russian expansion. Also, there were disputes between Russia and the other involved nations concerning control of the Holy Land. British casualties throughout the war amounted to 29,017, though over 16,000 of these were not from battle, but from disease. Russia surrendered in March of 1856 and war was officially ended by the Treaty of Paris that month. The Crimean War is today seen as the first modern war because the media made the people of the involved countries intensely aware of the happenings of the war.

England outlawed domestic slavery in 1772 and throughout the entire British Empire in 1838. Slavery was considered by the English by the 1840’s to be an extremely immoral practice that should be avoided at all costs. Therefore, the British would have supported northern America in its anti-slavery sentiments. However, this anti-slavery position was more theoretical than practical. Though no Englishman could technically own a slave, the lowest English class was kept in a slave-like state of perpetual poverty and had extremely low standards of living, far worse than that of many American slaves. The royals, executives, and parliament obviously didn’t in reality care for the impoverished, suggesting that England might betray its anti-slavery morals and align itself with southern America for economic reasons. In the 1840’s England bought almost all of its cotton from the South, making England’s economy very dependent on this region. Both the North and the South expected for England to ally itself with their own region because of moral and economic reasons, respectively. However, England remained neutral as American sectionalism became more and more pronounced.