Frans August Larson - Expeditions

Expeditions

During his 46 years in Mongolia, Larson was hired several times as an expedition leader. The first planned expedition was for C.W. Campbell, the British consul in Shanghai. This expedition, was postponed due to the Boxer Rebellion, and was undertaken in 1902. In 1923, he was hired by Roy Chapman Andrews, the famous paleontologist who hunted for dinosaur remains in the Gobi desert. In thanks, Larson was made an honorary member of the board of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Ever since their very first meeting, Larson and explorer Sven Hedin had spoken about a joint expedition. In 1927, it became a reality, it was the largest scientific expedition that had been organized in Mongolia. Larson was responsible for logistics, which included such tasks as obtaining 300 camels, 26 Mongolian tents, and a year's worth of supplies for 65 persons.

During a visit to Sweden in 1929, Larson met the great Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger, "The Match King", and suggested that he make investments in China. "If you can get something big going, I'm in," answered Krueger. Larson began planning a gigantic railway project which would connect Nanjing with Urumqi in Xinjiang, and with Novosibirsk in Russia. Krueger would provide the financing in exchange for monopolies on the safety match markets in north and central China. Larson had just gotten the Chinese government to agree to the idea when a newswire came from Paris: Ivar Krueger was dead!

Several years later, then-president of China, Chiang Kai Shek, had asked Larson to report on the situation in northern China. Larson tried to get the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to send a group of Swedish military officers to train several thousand Mongols to watch the mountain passes in the borderlands between China and Mongolia. The area was rife with bandits, as well as Communist troops, to the detriment of his own business, among other things. However, this suggestion was refused by the Swedish consul in Shanghai. He did not even want to forward the plan to Stockholm, which Larson later deeply regretted. He felt that enacting this plan would have prevented the communist revolution in China.