Frans August Larson - Boxer Rebellion

Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion, which broke out in China in the year 1900, was a hunt for foreigners- foreign influences in general, and missionaries and Christian converts in specific. About 220 missionaries, including 45 Swedes, and untold thousands of Christian Chinese were slaughtered by the Boxers. With a loaded rifle always at the ready, Larson managed to save himself, his wife and two small daughters, and about 20 Swedish and American missionaries, and got the party to Siberia. Larson had about twenty camels, fifteen horses and several draft oxen at pasture north of Kalgan. The animals belonged to the British consul in Beijing, C.W. Campbell. They were to have been used on an expedition Larson had agreed to lead. The Boxer Rebellion put a stop to this expedition. Campbell was confined to the British legation in Beijing, and Larson was able to use the animals to escape.

Larson was forced to leave most of his belongings in Kalgan. The Boxers destroyed everything, including the research for a Swedish-English-Mongolian dictionary that he and his wife had worked on together for several years. To get back on his feet financially Larson began working as an interpreter and foreman at a newly-opened gold mine near the city of Kyakhta on the border of Mongolia and Siberia. After four months, he had earned enough for the family to take the Trans-Siberian Railway to Finland and to then travel via Sweden and by boat to the USA and his wife's hometown of Albany, New York.

Less than a year later, he was back in Siberia. A rich American had lent him 200 dollars for the trip, and he had twelve cents left when he walked into the gold mine offices in Kyakhta. There, he became a guide and interpreter for two Swedish railway engineers (Major Wilhelm Olivecrona and Engineer Carl Lagerholm), who had just built a railway in Norrland in northern Sweden, and were staking out a railway from Siberia via Urga to Beijing.

However, the project was abandoned, and Larson was unemployed. He then turned to a British missionary society, offering to become their representative in Mongolia. His task was to distribute Mongolian-language Bibles to the Mongols. The year was 1902. The family took up residence in Kalgan again, and Larson's wife resumed her missionary work while Larson crossed Mongolia with a caravan consisting of five horses, four Mongolian assistants and ten camels loaded with Bibles which were distributed to Buddhist nomads.

Larson continued with this work for twelve years. He became very familiar with Mongolia and her many peoples. He became the friend of princes, nobility and Buddhist lamas, including Bogdo Gegen, The Living Buddha of Urga. Within Tibetan Lamaism, Bogdo Gegen ranked as the third potentate after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, and from 1911 until his death, he was also the Emperor of Mongolia. Larson's services to him included helping the Emperor obtain a Model T Ford.

Larson was now 43 years old. He had spent 20 years in Mongolia and was well on the way to becoming a legend. War had broken out between Mongolia and China as a result of the fall of the royal dynasty in 1911 and Mongolia's declaration of independence. The Chinese, who had started the conflict, were faring poorly, and wanted to end the war. China's president, Yuan Shikai, turned to Larson, who succeeded in forging peace. As a result, he was appointed the president's advisor on Mongolian issues. When he ended his work after two years, he was rewarded for his efforts with a citation of honor and 36,000 Chinese dollars (equivalent to three years' wages).

Content to leave the big city behind, Larson returned to "Tabo-ol," his ranch on the steppes north of Kalgan, where he had established a profitable horse breeding business, providing horses for the race tracks at Beijing, Shanghai and Tientsin. Larson now left both missionary work and politics behind, and turned to business. In 1917, he became part owner in the Danish-American commerce house, Andersson & Mayer. Five years later, he started his own commerce business, F.A. Larson and Company, with offices in Kalgan and Urga. Using Dodge trucks from America, he could ship freight between the two cities in four days. In the days of camel caravans, it had taken more than a month to cover the same route.