Lost China by Earnshaw Graham

Author:Earnshaw, Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Earnshaw Books
Published: 2018-11-27T09:47:41+00:00

5

Oscar Terry Crosby

Tibet & Turkestan

For such an adventurous character, one who managed to push his way into the upper echelons of Great Game politics to feed his wanderlust, Oscar Terry Crosby (1861-1947) had a fairly unexceptional start in life.

He was born in the rural Louisiana town of Ponchatoula, truly a backwater. At the age of eighteen, he joined the US Military Academy at West Point and after graduation he married a hometown girl and dutifully served out a stint in the Army Corps of Engineers, where he specialized in the latest state-of-the-art technology, electricity. He resigned his commission a few years later for a more lucrative and stable career in the burgeoning electricity industry, and achieved the modest distinction of being appointed president of the Potomac Power Company in Washington D.C. in 1896, at the age of 35.

Despite his professional successes, Crosby was not content. In 1900, he abruptly switched gears, left behind his lucrative yet humdrum corporate career in exchange for an adventure tour in Africa. Traveling extensively through Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) and Sudan, he was thrilled by the exotic scenery and his frequent run-ins with danger, proving himself to be fearless and inquisitive. His technical military training also proved valuable in terms of extracting himself from various scrapes. By the end of the trip, he no longer considered himself to be an amateur traveler, but an explorer.

Upon his return to the US, Crosby quickly ingratiated himself with the various anthropological and geographical societies of his day, becoming a frequent and enthusiastic lecturer. And in 1903, he headed out on another adventure, this time to Tibet and Turkestan in 1903, and again in 1913 for an extensive tour of the Middle East and Asia. Both adventures resulted in the collection of priceless artifacts and manuscripts, all of which he conscientiously donated to libraries and museums in the United States. Some of his finds are still being researched by historians, anthropologists and linguists today. By 1909, after the publication of his travelogue Tibet and Turkestan, he was considered to have accumulated such expertise on Asian affairs that he was selected as a candidate for the post of China Minister by the US government, though he was ultimately not selected.

The onset of World War I seemed likely to curb his travels, but Crosby, with his extensive administrative experience in the power industry, was able to secure a post as the director of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium in 1915, allowing travels to Belgium and Northern France. He became increasingly well connected in political circles and by 1917 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the US, and president of the Inter-Ally Council on War Purchases and Finance. At the end of the war, he was named “United States Special Commissioner of Finance in Europe”, making him the American government’s go-to for decisions on post-war reparations, and putting him in close contact with major European public figures like John Maynard Keynes and Austen Chamberlain. While he proved

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