The Cozens/Byrnes Merchants Networks Project - Updated 15 August 2008

A project seldom if ever developed for the Internet ... a website to return to ...

A website intended to be of greatest use for anyone interested in economic history ... maritime history ...

The drop-down menu above will guide you to the files available in the sub-directories of this website, on topics such a Genealogy, Periods / Timeframes / Eras, new research on Jamaica, Galleries of graphics and information-resources.

New Timeline/Chronology files now appearing on this website in series 1-4 from the first file available - Timelines1- Click here

This website is a new and major excursion begining with examinations of Merchant Networks in the context of The British Empire during its first and second foundings.

Or, more generally, merchants operating in the English-speaking world... from the 1680s to about 1900 ... All to be seen in a more detailed way than attempted before on the Internet ...

Note of 17 July 2008: Shortly, The Merchant Networks Project will be unveiling a new website feature which has been long in planning ... an on-line searchable maritime history database which will list ship voyages by date, with entries searchable by shipowner, captain name, ship name. This database is now in a test phase, prior to an official launch as part of this website. (The listings in the test database were built around normally-available data on convict ships sailing to Australia 1788++) Listings on trans-Atlantic shipping in different timeframes will be added in due course.
Once this new feature of the website is in operation, navigation of the site will be rejigged and improved - Editor

This database (by 29 July 2008) is now available and you can check the test version from its launch-page at: Shipping Database Launch Page

Click here to discover ... Who links to this Merchant Networks website?

Click here to read a new promotional page for this website translated into Chinese

The two writers/researchers behind the Merchant Networks Project are Ken Cozens (in London) and Dan Byrnes (Australia).

The Cozens/Byrnes team formed in late 2005 after prolonged e-mail discussions to pursue the idea of historians working on Merchant Networks. Not work on merchants as individuals, more on the networks they are part of ...

for more on the details of this approach, see The About Us Page

[And, yes, this project could also become something like a surfable book, or a website book ... an idea we first met in the late 1990s, and an idea we feel is well worth pursuing on the Internet in a variety of formats!]

Note: Material presented on this website is researched, compiled/recompiled and written by Ken Cozens and Dan Byrnes, unless otherwise indicated. Formatting and style of information delivery is © Kenneth J. Cozens (London) and Dan Byrnes (Australia) 2006=2008.

(Where " -Ed" is referred to in text in various files, it mostly refers to Dan Byrnes as the webmaster for this project)

This website was relaunched on the Net on 4 July 2006 at: www.merchantnetworks.com.au
E-mail the Webmaster: Dan Byrnes

About the authors:

Pictures: Kenneth J. Cozens (colour) and Dan Byrnes (b/w).

Ken Cozens has had a long interest in Thames-side history and British maritime history. He gained his Masters degree in History at Greenwich University in 2005. (At Greenwich Maritime Institute.) He has lately become more interested in using a variety of website technology to promote his interests in history.

Dan Byrnes has a deep interest in the history of convict transportation from England/Britain to both North America and Australia. He gained an Honours degree in History from University of New England (Australia) in 1996.

And so ... this website is a contemporary Anglo-Australian production ...

Webmaster of the Merchant Networks Project, Dan Byrnes, is the author behind The Blackheath Connection, a major work on the history of the transportation of convicts from England to North America and then Australia, 1717-1810.

Website history: Please note: This website was first launched on the Net by 20 May 2006 as a subset of a personal website from Australia. It was re-launched as a website on its own domain at its present URL on 4 July 2006. - Ed

Tech update: 7 June 2007: This website is lately made with open source web editor kit Quanta Plus and produced with a Linux system running ...

Latest work for this website: Work now being considered by the Byrnes/Cozens research duo includes: On William Duer and other financiers associated with "the financier of the American Revolution", such as Robert Morris. A late-2007-added file is on methodology (work-in-progress) for work on merchant networks. From April 2008, many new genealogy mini-websites are being added, plus data on genealogies of  Lord Mayors (Lords Mayor?) of London - see for example at:   http://www.merchantnetworks.com.au/periods/1800after/lordsmayor1.htm and the same for file2 of that series. For a fuller explanation on these Lords Mayor files, see the website's listing file at: Contents/Listing

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