The Cozens/Byrnes Merchants Networks Project - Updated 15 June 2013

[Prevous page - Timelines From 1890-1900] [You are now on Merchants Networks Project Timelines page filed as: From 1900-1910 - timelines19.htm] [Next page Timelines 1910-1920]

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This file is devoted to presenting basic Timeline information for website readers. The items are often sketchy, and some have been extracted from other websites managed by Dan Byrnes. These Timelines will be added-to intermittently, as new data and new e-mail arrives. Book titles will be entered according to the timeframes they treat. -Ed

For 1900++

This is file Timelines19 - To go to the next file in this Merchant Networks Timelines series of files, click Timelines20

Reference items

1900: Japan: At about the turn of the century, Japan's publishing industry undergoes a boom that is probably unprecedented in the history of the world up until that time. Itagaki Taisuke - Jiyuu Minken Undo "freedom and people's rights - "movement" - political party - (later) Seiyuukai held power in 1900-12, Ookuma Shigenobu - implement British parliamentary system; cabinet 1914-16 Ito Hirobumi - German system - constitution - assassinated by a Korean in 1909.

9 July, 1900: Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, passed by British Parliament, receives royal assent.

1900: World's first movie?: Made in Melbourne by Salvation Army, on Christian martyrs. Titled Soldiers of the Cross. Audience members tended to faint at graphic presentations. Centenary reported on Australian TV on 13-9-2000. (This information is disputed by some as to the status as world/Australian first-ever movie - the other contender movie title is also Australian, however - on bushranger Ned Kelly).

Early 1900s: The philanthropic Saint James Society in the U.S. mounts a campaign to supply free samples of heroin through the mail to morphine addicts who are trying give up their habits. Efforts by the British and French to control opium production in Southeast Asia are successful. Nevertheless, this Southeast region, referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', eventually becomes a major player in the profitable opium trade during the 1940's.

1900: Appearance of Maybach and Daimler's spark-and-carburettor Mercedes auto.

1901: Drillers in Texas find oil and unleash the world's oil industry.

1901: By September is found "one of the most important discoveries in history of science", an ancient Greek computer, discovered in a shipwreck of first-century BC on island of Antikythera. By 1951, Prof. Derek de Solla of Yale University was interested in this object, using x-rays. (Source: James/Thorpe).

1901-13: Japan: Saionji Kinmochi and General Katsura Taro alternated prime minister position

1901: Explorers Captain Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton turn back from 82 degrees south in Antarctica.

1901: Japan: A massive wave of translation of European literature begins and continues for about a decade. Of particular importance are the works of Zora and Nietzsche, though at first their ideas are translated into bad melodrama.

12 December 1901: Guglielmo Marconi performs the amazing feat of bridging the Atlantic Ocean by wireless signal.
8 December 2001, The Australian newspaper publishes special supplement on ABC - Celebrating Radio, to mark the beginning of radio with the work of Marconi in 12 December 1901.

1901: In Britain is patented a vacuum cleaner by a bridge engineer, Hubert Cecil Booth, a machine built on a horse-drawn cart with a long hose to be carried into a building.

1902-1925: Prolonged campaign by Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud, brother of King Feisal, and leaders of the Saud tribe, to bring the scattered tribes of Arabia under his rule. Later, the rise of Saudi Arabia.

1902: Women gain the right to vote in Australia (in the US in 1920 - in the UK in 1928).

1902: First true equal alliance between a Western nation (Britain) and a non-western nation (Japan) (- against Russia). Oriental Palace Hotel in Yokohama installs electric lights and fans.

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1902: In various medical journals, physicians discuss the side effects of using heroin as a morphine step-down cure. Several physicians would argue that their patients suffered from heroin withdrawal symptoms equal to morphine addiction.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1903: The Wright Brothers fly 36 miles in a biplane in the US, the first powered aeroplane flight (in a "heavier-than-air machine").

November 1903: Boer War ends.

1903: The Wright Brothers fly 36 miles in a biplane in the US, the first powered aeroplane flight (in a "heavier-than-air machine").

1903: Heroin addiction in US rises to alarming rates.

1903: Japan: First permanent movie house, The Electric Theater, built in Akasaka entertainment district, Tokyo.

1903: The Wright Brothers fly 36 miles in a biplane in the US, the first powered aeroplane flight (in a "heavier-than-air machine").

1904-1905: Japan: Russia-Japanese War - victory (control of Korea). The peace treaty (broken by Teddy Roosevelt) strikes many as unfair, and riots break out.

1905: Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon. (Partition annulled in 1911.)

1905: Albert Einstein publishes his Special Theory of Relativity.

1905: 5 September, Ending of Russo-Japanese War.

1905: Japan: Natsume Sooseki, professor of English at Tokyo Imperial University, publishes his I Am a Cat, and the work proves to be popular. Natsume Sooseki's image today graces Japan's most widely circulating denomination of paper currency, the 1,000 yen note.

1905: Japanese navy defeats Russia. Japanese prompted to build up their navy to beat US and UK naval presences in Pacific.

1905: US Congress bans opium.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1905: Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon. (Partition annulled in 1911.)

1905: Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon. (Partition annulled in 1911.)

1906: China and England finally enact a treaty restricting the Sino-Indian opium trade. Several physicians experiment with treatments for heroin addiction. Dr. Alexander Lambert and Charles B. Towns tout their popular cure as the most "advanced, effective and compassionate cure" for heroin addiction. The cure consisted of a seven-day regimen, which included a five-day purge of heroin from the addict's system with doses of belladonna delirium. U.S. Congress passes the Pure Food and Drug Act requiring contents labeling on patent medicines by pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the availability of opiates and opiate consumers significantly declines.

1906-10: Japan: Perhaps Japan's most important national literacy movement, Japanese Naturalism, erupts.

1906: US historian Henry Adams (1838-1918) predicts that before 1950 there would be used, "explosives of cosmic force".

1907: The world's first air force is established as the aeronautical division of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer of the US Army.

1907: Establishment of Japan's first car company, Hatsudoki Seizo, since 1951 known as Daihatsu.

Sir Ernest Clark. British Contractor. He later becomes known as the "midwife of Northern Ireland". He leaves no children. His second wife is Harriet Jessie Constance McLellan. He is also chief scout of Tasmania. He becomes a Freemason Grand Master in 1935. He has patron friend in Earl3 Abercorn. He is a director of Martin's Bank, Pacific Steam Navigation Co, and of shipbuilders Harland and Wolff. Son of Samuel Henry Clark, schoolmaster and his wife Anne nee Leaver. His own entry, Australian Dictionary of Biography.

George Macaulay Booth. Contractor, military. He is co-founder of Unit Trust Movement in Britain. thepeerage.com. Named in Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Ravensworth. He is named as deputy-director-general of munitions supply for Britain in WW1 in Bell/McNeillie. See Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie, (Eds.), The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 2, 1920-1924. London, Penguin, 1981., p. 24.

1907: Japan: Universal education for 6 years becomes reality

1907: Establishment of Japan's first car company, Hatsudoki Seizo, known since 1951 as Daihatsu.

1907: Emperor Kojong of Korea abdicates; he is succeeded by his son Sujong.

1907: The world's first air force is established as the aeronautical division of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer of the US Army.

1907: Rise in Turkey of Young Turks movement.

24 January 1907: UK: First boy scout troop is organised by Sir Robert Baden-Powell.

In 1908: Australian businessman, William K. D'Arcy, a solicitor in Rockhampton, Queensland, finds the first oil in the Middle East. He had bought into the gold mine at Mount ? [lost citation - Ed]

1908: Japan: Conservatives object to Naturalism. Boshin Shosho is promulgated to improve the morals of the nation.

1908: Oil in vast quantities is found in Iran.

1908: Wright Brothers patent their flying machine in the US.

1908: Henry Ford introduces the Model-T automobile.

1908: US Atlantic fleet (The Great White Fleet) visits Australia, despatched by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt as a goodwill gesture and a show of potential firepower. Ships include: USS Connecticut, Kansas, Vermont, Louisiana, Georgia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky and Kearsage.
Check online at: http://www.hazegray.org/features/gwf

1909: The first federal drug prohibition passes in the U.S. outlawing the importation of opium. It was passed in preparation for the Shanghai Conference, at which the US presses for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China.

1909: 1 February: The International Opium Commission convenes in Shanghai. Heading the U.S. delegation are Dr. Hamilton Wright and Episcopal Bishop Henry Brent. Both would try to convince the international delegation of the immoral and evil effects of opium.

1909: Shackelton turns back from 180km from the South Pole.

27 July 1909: Sinking of the Waratah, a luxury liner on her second voyage, coal-fired and with eight watertight compartments, said to be unsinkable. She was flagship of the Blue Anchor Line and had left Durban for Cape Town but never made it. Repeated searches have been found for the 211 people aboard, plus cargo and the ship itself. Now, the salvager of Titanic, Clive Tussler, has funded a new salvage effort for Waratah. Associated with the salvage effort is earlier work of Dr. Peter Ramsay, a geo-scientist from South Africa who mistakenly thought he identified Waratah in 1999, but that was a U-boat-sunk transport of WWII. Waratah was built by Barclay Curle and Co. in Scotland in 1908 for the migration trade to Australia. Her captain, Joshua Ilberry, had complained she was top heavy; she may have suffered from big waves, which pressed down her bow, then rolled her on her starboard side, to sink. In 1929 a soldier, Edward Joe Conquer, said he had seen her roll and disappear while using his telescope during military exercises. (Above on Waratah from Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April 2004.

1910: After 150 years of failed attempts to rid their country of opium, the Chinese are finally successful in convincing the British to dismantle the India-China opium trade.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1910: Union of South Africa is formed from provinces of Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State.

1910.196 - 1911.1: Japan: The High Treason Incident. Severity of censorship increases. Left-wing thinkers are suppressed. The "Winter Years of Socialism" continue until the end of WWI.

1910: Japan: Occupy (colonize) Korea. The first flight of an airplane in Japan.

Below are items still uncollected

1897 - More to come

1898: Death in London of former Governor of Victoria, Sir Henry Barkly (1815-1898). One of his wives, Lady Anne Maria Pratt was daughter of a general associated with the NZ Maori wars, General Thomas Simson Pratt. Sir Henry´s father was sugar and West Indies merchant Aeneas Barkly died 1836, of Davidson Barkly of Highbury and of Lime Street Square, London, shipowners and plantation owners.

Late 1803: According to David McCullough, John Adams. New York, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p. 576, a fine biography, John Adams when second president of the USA, and/or by late 1803 had invested personal funds, $13,000, with Bird, Savage and Bird, which failed in 1803. Adams had done so on the advice of his son, John Quincy Adams. Bird, Savage and Bird had been London-based British bankers for the US Treasury. To rectify the disastrous consequences of his mistake, John Quincy sold his own house in Boston, took out his savings, borrowed, and bought enough of his parents' property to cover the losses. Other notes from this book follow ... A website indicates that by 10 May 1797, Bird had been travelling from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. By 27 November 1798, Robert Bird had been associated with a shipment of arms from Britain to New York. A website indicates the cases in 1809 as associated with Bird, Savage and Bird, being in a court of South Carolina, (1) the USA (itself), (2) Sterry and others as assignees of H. M. Bird and Benjamin Savage under a British commission of bankruptcy [BSB were Henry Mertinns Bird, Benjamin Savage and Robert Bird their attorney] (3) Aspinwall and Others, assignees of Robert Bird, under an American Commission of Bankruptcy, (4) Several other American creditors of Brid Savage and Bird associated with South Carolina, (5 and 6) Various other British creditors of BSB and Thomas Parker, a debt collecting agent employed by BSB. Some issues wdere attached to merchandise sent to New York re an East India Co. ship Semiramis (of December 1802-1803). BSB had borrowed from the Bank of England. Outcome of cases not given. Semiramis was a China trader with a cargo said to be worth up to $500,000. She was headed for Newport Rhode Island following a three-year voyage to China, carrying silk, porcelain, tea, and "hard currency", silver or gold. Semiramis was on its second trip from China under Captain Jacob Smith when it sank. Following this, BSB, which had bankrolled the voyage, filed for bankruptcy without paying off a loan written against its cargo, which sparked a US Supreme Court case. We need to check if Semiramis had called by Sydney, see David Collins, An Account, Vol. 2, Chapter XIII, re arrival of Semiramis arriving to Sydney from Rhode Island in October 1798, and she and other American ship Argo sailed for China on the 7th (while on the 20th, Amerian ship Ann and Hope (owned by Brown and Ives) stayed a few days in Botany Bay, wanting wood and water, could not get into harbour due to winds, then sailed for China). for see Cumpston. A US website re Rhode Island says that on 9 June 1799, ships Semiramis Captain Jacob Smith arrived, was wrecked 2 March 1804 on Long Shoal, east end of Vinegar Sound, Nantucket Sound, with teas, sugar, nankeens and silks.

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