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Note: As at 24- July 2008, this website will have two extra pages added to carry new listings plus historical information on modern computer industry.
You can find much greater detail for the timeframes 1550-1700 at another website... THE BUSINESS OF SLAVERY... a website book also designed to bring genealogical studies up-to-date from 1530 to the present-day... as well as questionS of merchant lives and activities... Click now to... The Business of Slavery (in English history).
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.
For convenience, bookmark this page and return soon.
This website, produced by Australian writer/historian Dan Byrnes, is a no-frills, text-based website designed simply to list historical and genealogical information on many notable merchants and traders of what is termed, the Western World.
The information delivered here by website proposes a basis for a longitudinal study of related topics from the time of Crusaders, to the present.
However, the merchants, bankers and traders treated here are mostly from the English-speaking world, since I can read no other language besides English.
Merchants are often seen by historians as humdrum, mundane people, but certainly, the more conspicuous entrepreneurs amongst them can seem very entertaining.
After years of reading on merchants, commercial histories, and business styles as they change over the centuries, I would be moved (personally, in 2001) to say that Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, quite apart from questions surrounding his current wealth, or his abilities as a computer programmer, is one of the most remarkable merchants in human history - which is saying quite something.
Bankers in whatever era are a different matter, and in fact, the earlier, Western history of banking is much-annoyed by sets of views (theological disapproval) on the taking of interest, regarded as usury. Bankers however have varied, and still vary, in the "creativity" of their outlook, which is a factor which will be given attention in these webpages.
But here, with merchants and bankers, questions of injustice, greed, or charity, or clarity of commercial mind, will also be treated, as might be found entertaining. (Hyperlinks to relevant websites as given in the text will add to this aspect of this website.)
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This website is not exactly a book project; it is more a set of listings of names, connections, notes, with some family history and bibliographic material added where relevant. "Can this website help other researchers?" is perhaps, the question!
It is especially hoped that this set of listings will be of help to family historians.
These pages will be added to and improved in quality as time permits. In time, some essays will appear on these pages.
Information
in these files is organised in chronological order from Early
Crusader times to the present (and please use the table above for
navigation):
Much of the information presented in this website arose as part of research for The Blackheath Connection, a formal treatment of the history of convict transportation from England to North America and then to Australia, 1718-1810.
This however is not the only reason for the treatment of mariners. Sea captains often went on land to work and live as merchants. Much more is known about this sort of behaviour in the English and American cases, than the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch or French cases.
European exercises in colonisation used the services of mariners, of course. How often sea traders operated as "minor bankers" for short-term deals remains unknown. Associated with mariners of course is the matter of marine insurance, a very important aspect of finance-handling.
Much of the information presented on this website is, as it were, "offcut material" from another related project, and may sometimes seem unfocussed, but remaining of interest when seen in terms of long timelines, more so where family history may also be a matter of interest.
- Dan
Byrnes
(otherwise indicated in these pages as -Editor)
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these domain stats begun 18 December 2005
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