Various
webpages here
updated 11 January 2008
This Blackheath
Connection website by October 2005 was receiving about 228/215
hits daily.
Please note: Email response to this website indicates that
some
netsurfers do not realise that this website has a total of 71+ files.
Please navigate around the website to that extent to ensure you get
the best from it - Ed
Contact via the convenient (and virus-free): e-mail form
The history websites on this domain now have a companion website on a new domain, at Merchant Networks Project, produced by Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens (of London).
This website (it is hoped) will become a major exercise in economic and maritime history, with some attention to Sydney, Australia.
October 2005: Major new citation of The Blackheath Connection: In Tom Keneally, The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Sydney Experiment. Milson's Point, NSW, Random House, 2005. (Now hear this, Australian film industry, why not make a movie from this book as soon as possible?? Hmmm?? – Dan Byrnes!)
Prepare to learn much about the
sweep of events which
from 1786 linked a long-lost Australia to the rest
of the
world...
The how and why of a global network of shipping, the
world-wide web of its day...
The
Blackheath Connection: a new
view of the "founding" of European-Australia as a British
convict colony - a review of the history of the transportation of
British convicts 1717-1810 to North America, then to Australia...
The Blackheath Connection... a discovery made in London in
1989
by Dan Byrnes and Neil Rhind
For more information on
present-day
Blackheath in London, visit a site managed by the noted local
historian there, Neil Rhind: http://www.blackheath.org
May 2003: Note
from the author:
The Blackheath Connection
website has
now been on the Internet since March 2000. Since then, it has
attracted a good deal of attention (and e-mail) from Britain and
Scotland, New Zealand, the Caribbean and the US eastern seaboard, but
much less so from Australians.
It needs to be asked, why is
this?
Is it because Australians still have cultural sensitivities about
convict transportation that they do not wish to discuss?
By
now
(mid-2003), it certainly seems so, as a matter of a self-imposed
truncation of cultural curiosities/historical amnesia.
For
example, e-mail from the UK has been far more penetrating about
England sending convicts to "Botany Bay", than e-mail from
Australians about Australian colonies receiving convicts.
This website has
had e-mail from some academic historians in the US/UK, and from many
family history-minded people around the world, but from few, if any,
historians in Australia, or their students, including high school
students, though some family historians in Australia have e-mailed.
What is noticeable is that international e-mailers find the
information on the website to be accurate and reliable, whereas
Australians seem to be avoiding the website's information and the
directions the information seeks out.
That is, people
overseas
find few cultural sensitivities with the material, Australians seem
to be finding "cultural reasons" to avoid the material. (At
last count, only one or two universities in Australian have staff who
have linked to The Blackheath Connection.)
It seems then,
that
Australians prefer the old stories on convict transportation that
they are used to, not new information which provokes fresh thinking
on the topic. So the questions arise... Does this website cut too
close to the bone? And if so, how and why?
Update:
November
2005: And after some thought, and due to various e-mail, by early
November 2005, the above notice of complaint, placed during mid-2003,
can be rescinded, or, withdrawn. It now appears that Australians have
begun to adjust to some new information, new ideas. The complaint
then by November 2005 can now be regarded as "old technology".
And the cultural resistance complained of, regarded as “old
historiography”.
- Dan Byrnes
Advertisement
The Blackheath Connection aims to retell the earlier stories of how Australia - the continent - was introduced to the rest of the world... Revised or new material is presented on settlers/planters on Jamaica after the 1690s Scottish Darien Company debacle; the Boston Tea Party; Britain's handling of convicts from 1776; how London aldermen reacted as the First Fleet to Australia was being mounted. How London-based merchants avoided new opportunities in the Pacific region... new material on whaling and maritime history. And much else...
FEEDBACK: If you have any doubt about the usefulness to researchers of the material mounted on this website, please see the FEEDBACK FILE.
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Webmaster |
Dan
Byrnes,
Unit 4,
145 Marsh
Street,
Armidale NSW 2350, Australia. Phone: 61 (02) 6771
5243.
Note: Research for this project overall was supported in 1993 by a Writer's Project Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.
Click here to discover ... Who links to websites by Dan Byrnes, Australia?
Visit Joan O'Donovan's
website at: (Error 500 can't connect):
http://www.oldfashionedclipart.com/
Many graphics seen on this website are used courtesy of Joan O'Donovan and her specialty graphics website.
View
these domain stats begun 18 December 2005
