Bock, Carl Alfred

Childhood and Youth

Carl Alfred Bock was born into a family of merchant Carl Henirich Bock (1812–1877) and Regitze Hansen (1826–1900) ^[3] . His birth took place in Copenhagen during a trip of his parents to Sweden, where his father had a cotton factory. But despite this, his childhood passed in Kristiansand . There he received his first education at the Latin high school Kristiansand Cathedral School. He was then sent to men's college at Christiansfeld in Sønderjylland.

In the fall of 1868, Bock arrived in Great Britain . After a year of study and travel, he found work with the Swedish-Norwegian consul in Grimsby, Mr. Steweni. After his death, he moved to London in 1875 to study zoology, and in the same year he married Mary Jane Absalon (1851–1922) ^[3] . Continuing to engage in natural science, Bock creates a circle of contacts that includes members of the London Zoological Society ^{[4] The} work has borne fruit: in the publications of the zoological company, he described several new species of mollusks ^[3] .

Expeditions

In 1877, makes an expedition to Norwegian Lapland . ^[four]

Under the command of the Ninth Marquis Arthur Hay Tweeddale, from whom Bock received funds to equip “scientific and ethnographic studies for the tropics ” ^[2] , in the spring of 1878 he went to Indonesia to study wildlife and collect birds in Sumatra ^{[ 2] [4]} . From here he sent two significant natural and ethnographic collections home. One of them arrived safely in London, which was reported to the London Zoological Society on January 6, 1880. The second, more important, containing species of birds , mammals and reptiles , was lost when the vessel carrying the container sank in the Red Sea ^[4] .

Bok was then instructed to conduct an expedition into the interior of Borneo to collect information on the indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia ^[4] . The past three expeditions failed, and their members died. This island was little studied and, obviously, was commercially attractive ^[3] .

After spending some time near Batavia , Bok went to Borneo, through Java , Bali and Sulawesi . On July 6, 1879, he arrived at the end of the Mahakam River on the east coast of Borneo, and the next day his ship sailed to Makassar and finally turned south to Banjarmasin . In addition to studying the population, he also had the task of finding out the political conditions, as well as collecting ethnography and zoological materials. The results were published in London ( Borneo Bounty Hunters ) and The Hague in 1881, and also appeared in the Norwegian publication two years later. Bock was the first to describe Punan ^[3] .

• East and South Borneo. Color lithographs by K. F. Kelly depicted by Karl Bock
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  View of Longway

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  Dayan Youth from Longway

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  Young married malay woman

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  Longway Dayak

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  Tomb of the Radha Dinda Family

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  Houses on borneo

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  Priestess of Tring Dayak

In the era of Queen Victoria, there was a season for dangerous expeditions of this kind. Bock received great recognition for his efforts and received support for continued travel. Already in 1881 he was preparing another expedition, this time deep into what was once called Bakindia, or Indochina. With the recommendations of the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he arrived in Bangkok, where he stayed for several months before, with the support of King Chulalongkorn , made a self-funded seven-month trip to Thailand and Laos ^[3] . This expedition included visits to the cities of Bangkok and Ayutthaya in central Thailand, Rachen (Tak) in the west, and in the north - Lamphun , Lahon ( Lampang ), Chiang Mai , Fang , Kiang Hai ( Chiang Rai ) and Jiang Tseng ( Chiangsaen ) in the Mekong ^[4] . In 1884, an expedition book , Temples and Elephants, was published in London ^[3] .

In 1893, he traveled to Sichuan and Tibet ^[4] .

Public Service

After these expeditions, Bock lived for some time in Christiania , and then joined the joint Swedish-Norwegian consular service, becoming in 1886 the vice-consul in Shanghai . In 1893, he was appointed to the Consulate General. From 1899 to 1900 he was consul in Antwerp . And from 1900 to 1903 - Consul General in Lisbon . He left the service in 1903 and settled in Brussels ^[3] .

In 1905, Bock divorces his wife and marries Henriette Hoyack (1860–19?), Daughter of Dr. Ernst Fredrik Hoyack, the next year ^[3] .

Karl Bock was a member of the scientific community in Christiania (now the Norwegian Academy of Sciences ), a number of foreign scientific companies, a knight of the 1st class of the Order of St. Olav, and had a number of foreign orders and medals ^[3] . Bock also published Oriental Adventure (1885) and wrote articles in Norwegian newspapers and foreign magazines.

Most of his collections are in museums in London. In particular, artifacts from Thailand and Indonesia are kept in the British Museum. ^[5] Some rare Buddhist bronze figures are kept in the Ethnographic Museum in Oslo . ^[2] .

The species of snake Atractus bocki Collected by him named after him ^[6] .

• Descriptions of two new Species of Shells from China and Japan (1878).
• List of Land and Freshwater. Shells collected in Sumatra and Borneo, with Descriptions of new Species (1881).
• The Head Hunters of Borneo; A Narrative of Travel up the Mahakkam and Down the Barito; Also, Journeyings in Sumatra (1882).
• Temples and Elephants: The Narrative of a Journey of Exploration Through Upper Siam and Lao (1884).

• When writing this article, material from the "Norwegian Biographical Dictionary" was used (1999-2005) .