Various webpages here updated 27 May, 2023 and 12 December, 2023
New comment on your post: "New insights into 18th century East India Company networks" Author: Bob James (email suppressed) URL: www.fraternalsecrets.org/
Very impressive research, Ken. I'm finding more and more connections to my puzzle. (I began reading Dan Byrnes back in the 1980's). In short, where you are mostly following the economic-mercantile trail, I'm trying to put together the 'fraternal brotherhood' trail, including Freemasonry of course, but not only - Lord Nelson, for example, was a member of the Ancient Society of Gregorians (see Downer). Freemasonry was/is not special, its Grand Lodge attached itself, via the Hugenots I believe, to the Walpole Govt (see Berman) and became viscerally connected to the Court and administrations up till the end of the Napoleonic Wars at least. Then, its role was taken over by arms of government but it, (Freemasonry, cd) did not survive without Royal patronage. Anyway, best I'd like to keep in touch. Cheers, (Dr) Bob James.
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New comment on your post "New insights into 18th century East India Company networks"
Comment: Hello - is there any biographical detail on 'Thomas King' of CC&K before he met Calvert? Is there any chance this Thos. King has connections to the Phillip Gidley King, 3rd Gov of NSW?
Love your work. Cheers, Bob James.
Re: "New insights into 18th century East India Company networks" Hello Bob,
Thanks for your message and your much-appreciated kind comments on my work. It would be good to keep in touch because 18th century Freemasonry interests me greatly. It was of course the military lodges that helped to spread its influence worldwide, especially in India and China. I have been following the work of a few scholars that are on the same page as me and who have an interest in merchant networks. I will send you a few articles if you wish? They have been of some use to me. One was the First Lodge in Canton by Lisa Hellman. Have you read this? She identified the Swedish merchants in Macao and Canton and their East India Company freemasonry connections. This was a great help.
You asked about Thomas King of Camden, Calvert & King. See: my MA Dissertation download available on my Academia webpage:
https://gre.academia.edu/KennethCozens which has some useful information on the networks and patronage of Camden, Calvert & King. Also the Mariners Mirror article by Professor Gary Sturgess, and I has some detail on their business operations. I do have a copy of Thomas King's Will which I could send you a copy of if you don't already have it? His roots were in Yorkshire before he moved to London, but most of the detailed research has changed little from my MA findings.
Gary has however advanced our understanding on the groups East India operations and the convict transportation to NSW more recently. Both of us regularly share information and are still finding out more on the fascinating group of international merchants. Let me know if you would like to know more? In the meantime I would suggest that you take a look at my various notes posted on my Academia webpage for guys just like your good self. Look forward to hearing from you again.
Best regards, Ken Cozens
bob james at 12:39PM - Great to hear from you, Ken, and to see your work continues. Historians here [Australia] are asleep at the wheel – they seem to have no interest at all in the northern hemisphere context which set off ‘the Botany Bay Project’ in the first place. So, I feel I’ve been playing catch up for decades now – filling in gaps, sussing out networks, etc – and from what you’ve sent me I’m still catching up. I’ll send you the ms I’ve been working on but its still very rough in places. (i’ve tried catching up with Dan (Byrnes) whose work I very much admire but haven’t caught him yet. If you care to send him my email I’d be grateful.
To your questions: anything you feel/believe would be useful I’ll be pleased to see – so what am I particularly interested in? …The official history of European Australia (EA) doesn’t fit with the evidence – in particular it doesn’t explain why certain banks of information have been left out – the indigenous people have been left out (slowly changing); women have been left out (slowly changing) the business of convict transporting has been left out, and ‘fraternal societies’ have been left out. To answer my ‘why?’ questions I’ve developed a notion of ‘modernism’ as a political ideology (Enlightenment- New World Order- Industrial Revolution, etc) which was sexist, racist, competitive, violent and anti-collective associations - (self-help and mutual aid) which is where the fraternals come in – historically these have been: Freemasonry, Trade Unions. Friendly Societies and a whole host of others like the Orange and Catholic fraternities, the Ku Klux Klan, Chinese Triads.
(I’m going to run on and let you ask questions if you’ve a mind.) All of this has direct relevance to EA and the US because of the proximity of their establishment dates (1788 and 1776) to the French Revolution (1789) and the claimed transition from pre-industrial to Industrial, or pre-modern to Modern.
As you can imagine in those late-18th century years and then the Napoleonic wars, there were a lot of plots – governmental/oppositional – and the fraternals were right in the thick of it for reasons I won’t go into right now. But they were secret societies, right, and the Freemasons in particular have divided historians between those who’ve dismissed it as irrelevant to the real world events and those who’ve argued (increasingly) that it not only embodied Enlightenment values but that it was the means by which Europe, especially Britain, achieved its empire.
Again easy to dispute but how did it work? ‘Botany Bay’ is a case study of:
Involvement of entrepreneurial networks in convict transportation and commercial evolution, whaling for example, out from under a penal colony
Involvement of the tavern culture to the wheeling and dealing
Involvement of particular fraternals in the military victories and/or the commercial victories won by Britain globally – SF has grabbed some headlines (Alan Atkinson’s Vol 1 – “Europeans in Australia” if you haven’t seen it – I can send you the essential bits - or Harland-Jacobs “Builders of Empire”, which exemplifies the mythical history of SF while arguing the importance of the military lodges).
So – conspiracies – dealmaking to supply the empire with finance, sea biscuits, ships, labour, and intelligence - and mythology about the white Man’s Burden etc. And of course, EA had a lot of Irish convicts who would just keep revolting and bringing other secret societies – the Oranges, the United Irish, the Defenders, etc., which has meant I’ve had to teach myself about their regalia, passwords, handgrips, and the like – which has taken me to the Dundas Arms at Wapping, the Irish Rebellion, theories of secret societies, and conspiracy theories – as well as mutual aid arrangements between sailors, and others, who weren’t ‘Masonic’ because of an interest in SF. (Roger Burt on ‘Mariners and Freemasons’ – I think.)
And then there’s the 19th century explosion of fraternals but in a completely non-secret way – parades, etc.
Given the way the fraternal debates have developed, I really do need certainty – dates, and so on of ‘lodge’ membership, not anecdotes or heresay. Do you know Kroon’s thesis from Leiden University – a bit mythical but it does set the Dutch EICoy alongside the BIEC and shows the same processes – lodges establishment – trading networks – conflict- invasions – takeover, as elsewhere. So the article about the Canton/Macao lodges would be a help as was Dan’s stuff on the Blackheath golfers. Sorry, I may have confused you with all of that, but I do appreciate your work – please keep in touch. Cheers, Bob
How much do you love Australia? I love it a lot. And since I am not an Aborigine - I am white and have an Irish heritage that I think of far less than my Australianness - I thought one day in the 1970s that I would like to write a novel about my own myth of origin – convicts. 0r, convictism. (And is this Addendum more a letter from a novelist than a report from a historian?)
For in 1970 I had failed a university course – by the way, i am usually a straight Credits student - it was the only university course I ever failed, so I was suspicious of it for that reason if no other – in Australian Economic History. So in 1977-2000 I had failed to write a novel on the first three fleets of ships intended to ship convicts out of the kingdom of England. And maybe I had been talking to my mother. (Her side of my family c.1823 had a convict ancestor (a failed cutler from Sheffield) that perhaps was on my mind, too). I read everything I could lay my hands on. Yet, nothing seemed good enough. Now, I know that the people I read in 1977 were wrong about convict transportation. But I didn’t know that in 1977! Yet these wrong-headed coves prevailed and convinced most. They still do.
Basically, this slice of history was so badly done, a decently-done novel on convict transportation seemed impossible to write. It would also be harder to sell to a publisher, but let’s not go into that just now!
I continued reading; that was how I discovered that as early as in 1937, Eris O’Brien (a Catholic priest) had contradicted most others commenting on post-1788 Australian history, with his book on Penal Colonization, and he said outright that an “objectionable consortium” In London had hijacked the shipping business of the first three fleets of convict transportation London-Sydney. Quite right, too. So what did government do?
But in 1988 I really got an historical comeuppance, despite making a change from aspiring novelist (in charge of an imagination) to more a fact-based historian, as there appeared for sale a novel and a history book with the same error about the man I was now writing a book of factual history about – the overseer of the Thamas River prison hulks - Duncan Campell (because I had discovered his Letterbooks in the Mitchell Library, Sydney) … and the mistake seemed huge. But, how huge?
The mistake was that Michael Talbot, a novelist, in 1988 had published his To The Ends of the Earth and historian Robert Hughes had published his book The Fatal Shore (a title inspired by Moorehead’s book on the colonisation by English speakers of the Pacific, The Fatal Impact.)
This novelist and this historian had made the same historical error – that Duncan Campbell (the keeper of the convicts in question) had also transported these same convicts. But there was nary a word of protest about this error from the world of history, in either Australia or Britain, that I know of.
Somehow, the Australians had institutionalised an odd habit, the habit of Not addressing mistakes made in the historical records. Or was it that even the historians did not know the facts anymore? They had also excised - or tried to - from historical consciousness, the figure of the merchant who has an international reach ...
And wrong! For I had in my keeping - or rather the Mitchell Library, the home of historical Australia in Sydney, had them … The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks, which flatly contradicted both this novelist and this historian. Campbell, the Letterbooks said, didn’t transport those convicts. (But making such an error did not mean that Eris O’Brien was right in 1937, either. He was right enough, but I didn’t know that in 1988!) I felt I had no hope, either, only despair; as Hughes was published in 23 languages - the genie was out of the bottle and it was the wrong genie. Although, in retrospect, few of Hughes’ readers in 23 languages, or not, seem to have back-checked on Campbell or the British government’s actual problems with resuming convict transportation.
Other problems for the novelist included ... apart from how badly-done this slice of history was, I read encyclopedias of London and it seemed I would have to visit that city …. so I finally chose the 29th April. The date of the mutiny on the Bounty, And I visited London. (The National Maritime Musuem of the UK was having an exhibition on the Bounty mutiny.) The Larkins of Blackheath?
Meantime, The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks are a historian’s goldmine about the London of 1758, when they were opened, to about 1810, a period which embraces the 1780s and the 1790s. So what did Mackaness - the Freemason and historian - make of them? Essentially, he ignored them. He actually had them in his possession, due to the generosity of a Campbell descendant -the Mitchell Library inherited Mackaness' literary estate.
Yes. The Sydney historian George Mackaness (MA) appears to have started all this. He began the trend of attempting (by writing about Gov. Bligh and Gov. phillip too!) to Australianize what is, essentially, an originally English story – convict transportation. Starting about 1929, he wrote a lot about Bligh. Bligh, who was the nephew-in-law of Campbell at the time of the mutiny on the Bounty, when Campbell was alive; and at the time of Gov. Bligh, when Campbell was dead.
Mackaness made many errors of judgement, including about Bligh. But the new developments haven’t stopped, either. When I began research on this topic in 1977, there was much chat in the topic area regarding Abbot Emerson Smith’s treatment of the age of convict transportation to North America.
Now, I used to think that Wilfrid Oldham, the first Australian to ever write a PhD thesis about convict transportation to Australia - he produced about 1933 - was a pioneer, and therefore entitled to make a few errors. The problem is, that his errors have not been corrected by historians – including me – till now. In particular, and for his day, the 1930s, Eris O’Brien got the first and subsequent fleets of convict ships right – and Oldham just a few years before him got them wrong. (O’Brien wrote by 1937).
In particular – and as did O’Brien also in fact - Oldham had also missed The Blackheath Connection, and there is no telling by now what Australian history - or, Australian maritime history- would read like if it was realised more widely that just one London suburb had been a home to so many men who were major players with the shipping of the first-ever convict transportations to Australia, the first three fleets of convict ships.
Which involved Thomas King, the in-house marine insurance expert of the London slavers, [William] Camden, [Anthony] Calvert and King; Duncan Campbell (1726-1803, Jamaiacan absentee sugar planter and the overseer of the Thames River convict hulks), London alderman George Mackenzie Macaulay; the hoytaker, insurance underwriter and whaler investor, John St Barbe; and the founder of the South whale fishery, Samuel Enderby Snr. Plus the Larkins family, the first East India Co. family to use (in 1792) one of their ships to transport convicts to Sydney, Australia. All of them lived in suburban Blackheath, which at the time – the early 1790s - was still part of Kent, not London.
Now, the Blackheath Connection is one thing, and involves the resumption of convict transportation to Australia; basically the Anglo-Australian history 1786-1792 needs rewriting. But, the entire history of convict transportation to North America 1718-1775 is now up for renovation and re-analysis. In short, new developments in the field of the history of the transportation of English convicts to Australia have eclipsed older research.
Andrew Waple, a former UK investigative journalist, is now (actually, since 2021) writing on convict transportation from its inception in 1718, to effect including, that Jonathan Forward, as a British government convict contractor to North America (he was known-about from 1718 by a variety of Anglo-American historians, he was known about in 1933 in Oldham's day), was married to Susannah Waple. (She was known about by no one, including me, but her existence of course raises the question: who were the other convict contractors married to? (They were named Reid or Armour.) And thereby hang many tales.
Meantime too, Peter Dickson (like Waple, a UK writer), has been re-researching Duncan Campbell’s investments in North America to 1775. Dickson has by now produced several articles newly detailing what happened after the death in 1772 of the British convict contractor, John Stwart. (Dickson's efforts also contain information new to me.) Campell’s efforts also involved aspects of the destiny of a minor diplomat of the American Revolution - Matthew Ridley, of Baltimore, Maryland. (See Peter Dickson, Matthew Ridley (d.1789) - "many irons in the fire", on www.academia.edu). (See also, Peter dickson, "I will oblige myself to do any business you have in Maryland" ... also on www.academia.edu).
Meantime, too, Dan Byrnes has dredged up the history of the Anglo-American bank (from the 1690s till they failed and then disappeared in England in 1793), Lane, Son and Fraser; who were friends of Gov. Arthur Phillip, the first governor of NSW. (The details are contained in an addendum to the new book, Merchant Networks, by Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens.)
Then, Charles Bateson (in The Convict Ships) in 1959 topped off this dismal Australian historical debacle by getting alderman Macaulay even more wrong than Oldham had, and ended up indexing him as a spurious identity – Turnbull Macaulay – whom no one evidently looks up anyway on the Internet, but not because of the fact that he never existed. New research by Dan Byrnes and Prof Sturgess has revealed that this spurious identity indexed by Bateson - Turnbull Macaulay - is actually a conflation of alderman Macaulay (1750-1803) and his vehement Scots brother-in-law, John Turnbull (d.1816). So the future seems brimful of surprises.
Some surprise may come via new researches by Dan Byrnes in the UK on unexpected linkages between the families of Matthew Flinders RN (the first Englishman to circumnavigate Australia) and the Larkins family of Blackheath. (Willian Larkins had married to the Steer family.) Meantime, a Lt Samuel Flinders (army, not navy and not the brother of Matthew) was the forebear of Dora Flinders who was married and had progeny -the Flinders also married to the Steer family.<
Dan Byrnes also continues his research on Sir William Curtis (the alderman of London); and on the careers of English mariners who transported English felons to Australia, Surprises may come thick and fast!
But toward its end, and whether Bateson is misleading or not, The Blackheath Connection (the online book by myself) is wrong in places from 1797, the date of the death of Samuel Enderby Snr. In particular, and the prevailing theory by now must be viewed as a nonsense if it cannot talk sensibly about this, it seems that at the time the Larkins (the only time, by the way, that the Larkins - good servants of the EICo - ever bothered to send convicts to Australia) used their ship Royal Admiral I to transport convicts to Australia - 1792 - the chairman of the EICo was Francis Baring (the London banker) who was against convict transportation to Australia as he believed it was only an encouragement for piracy by whalers (who were anti-Spanish in the Pacific). Baring continued at the EICo as an influential director till 1798-1799, about the time that EICo country traders (encouraged by David Scott Snr who was ex British-India?) became involved in convict transportation, such that by about 1806, London-based firms with strong EI Co affilations became involved - such as Buckle, Buckle, Bagster and Buchanan, who were a still-mysterious kind of EICo wholesaler/retailer.
Some of the corrections to this record are contained in the book I finished in 2023, Merchant Networks.
(Ends)