Chr. Christensen and C. A. Larsen: A comparative analysis of two whaling entrepreneurs

Chr. Christensen and C. A. Larsen are usually considered among the most important pioneers in the transfer of whaling to Antarctic waters in the early twentieth century. After a period of close cooperation during the 1890s, they took different courses and built up their Antarctic enterprises indepen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Maritime History
Main Author: Basberg, Bjørn L.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0843871418822436
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0843871418822436
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0843871418822436
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Summary:Chr. Christensen and C. A. Larsen are usually considered among the most important pioneers in the transfer of whaling to Antarctic waters in the early twentieth century. After a period of close cooperation during the 1890s, they took different courses and built up their Antarctic enterprises independently of each other. While Larsen initiated the foundation of shore station whaling at South Georgia, Christensen sent a floating factory ship to the South Shetland Islands. The main aim of the paper is to make a systematic comparison of the two entrepreneurs and their companies, and focus explicitly on the considerations and decisions they made when whaling was transferred from north to south. They obviously chose different strategies, but we will ask how different they really were in their thinking about how southern whaling was going to develop. Both entrepreneurs brought along their experiences from how whaling had been undertaken in the northern waters. It was not obvious what organizational patterns would work in the south, and we shall study how familiar and new ways of organizing the industry were combined – as is often the case in entrepreneurial innovations.