Much has been written about the different aspects of John Bowring’s amazingly varied and productive life. But there has never been a biography covering his whole life, despite the key roles he played in promoting liberal ideas, global free trade and in relations with China and Siam (Thailand) when Britain was at the height of its global influence.

This book aims to fill that gap while putting his career in literature, linguistics, politics, economics, diplomacy, trade, religion and iron and railway entrepreneurship into the context of the time. It contains significant original material but also owes much to those who...

This book is about a man in his time. Born in 1792 and died in 1872, Bowring deserves to be recognized as one of the most remarkable men of his era, not because he was the most famous in any one field but because of his impact on so many, at the moment when Britain was the world’s leading nation.

Bowring was the original advocate of free trade, which he saw as a key part of the reform movements of the early 19th century, linked to freedom of religion and the development of parliamentary democracy. He acted as its tribune...

On 23 October 1856, Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, acting on the instructions of Sir John Bowring, Her Britannic Majesty’s plenipotentiary in China, attacked and captured the four barrier forts guarding the Pearl River’s access to Guangzhou (Canton), in retaliation for the Chinese seizure of a small merchant ship, theArrow.A few days later, HMSEncountershelled Guangzhou to back up broader British demands for access to the city, as promised by the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. Thus, the liberal trader and intellectual who had once been the secretary of the Peace Society found himself starting what had...

Working for Milford, Bowring lived in London and became acquainted not just with bigger business but with Unitarian and other dissenting circles in the nearby suburb of Hackney. In 1812, his linguistic skills led to what proved the most influential chapter in his young life, a fascination with Spain that would eventually lead him to focus on literature and politics at the expense of business.

Milford had a contract to supply allied forces in the Peninsula War against France. Bowring, with his knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese, was given a major responsibility: to help deliver wheat and other stores to...

Spain, for years the priest-ridden enemy, became for the British a source of romance and political engagement. Its liberal promise engaged the attentions of many, particularly Lord Byron, with his poemDon Juan,and Robert Southey, who translated Spanish poetry and wrote a history of the Peninsular War. But the liberal constitution adopted by Spain in 1812 was rejected, when the king returned after the defeat of France. The institutions of the old regime, including the Inquisition, were restored, setting the scene for years of conflict. Ultimately, the conservative triumph ensured that Spain was left at the margin of Europe’s...

The crushing of the Spanish Revolution in 1823 was a blow to liberal ideas. So too were events in Italy, where secret societies such the Carbonari were formed to promote liberal and nationalist ideas in a country divided between various monarchies and the pope. In 1820, revolutionary movements in Naples and Sardinia had grown so powerful that they forced the rulers to accept constitutional monarchy. But the Holy Alliance would have none of it; Austrian troops crushed the reformers. Meanwhile, another cause, Greek independence, was coming to the fore.

Language-based nationalism had been growing in many peripheral Ottoman possessions, particularly...

The Greek and trading traumas notwithstanding, theWestminster Reviewposition and his Bentham relationship gave Bowring continuing status. He was in constant touch with assorted literary figures from around Europe, entertaining them at Bentham’s Queen Square house and showing off his ability to converse in many tongues—which monolingual English guests found extremely tedious, leading at least one contemporary to refer to him as “Dr. Boring”. That writer, Charles MacFarlane, later described one Bowring gathering as:

A tedious, desolating affair full of foreigners and political refugees from all countries . . . and the agreeable pastime was to hear the...

Despite the exaggerations, Bowring’s linguistic abilities gave him a foothold in the literary and political worlds of Britain and the continent. The honorary doctorate gave special prestige, particularly to someone of modest background who had never been to university and hence was looked down on by many of the British literary elite. However, Bowring’s literary successes, combined with his salary at theWestminster Review,were far from sufficient to support his large household. So to recover both his reputation and financial situation, he fell back on his knowledge of trade. The year 1830 saw his fortunes turn, more as the...

Bowring’s next chance to get elected was in 1835, he stood as a radical for both Blackburn and the Scottish seat of Kilmarnock Burghs, a constituency made of a group of industrial towns southwest of Glasgow. He was again narrowly defeated in Blackburn, but won Kilmarnock by a large margin against both Tory and Whig opponents. That seems to have been a surprise, given that his opponents were well known locally, while he had no connections with Scotland at all. He said the election cost him nothing.

Thus 1835 saw Bowring in parliament for the first time, making speeches and...

As foreign secretary, Palmerston was becoming increasingly concerned about the ambitions of Egypt’s ruler, Mohamed Ali, and wanted to know more about the progress of his modernization efforts and the sources of the revenues financing his increasingly powerful state. He worried that Mohamed Ali’s goals would severely weaken the Ottoman state, hence advancing the interests of Russia expanding into both southeastern Europe and Central Asia, in the direction of British interests in India.¹

Although Palmerston regarded Bowring as “a complete republican in his opinions”, he also found him “a very good-humoured, lively, agreeable, well-informed man”,² with the interest and energy...

Bowring’s first stint in parliament had proven brief as he was unseated in 1837, a result he attributed to his “pro-Catholic and anti-Sabbatical votes in the House of Commons”,¹ but the Whigs remained in power and he was able to get new traderelated commissions from the government. The most significant of these was the Prussian visit in which he conspicuously failed to achieve significant tariff concessions because, or so the Prussians argued, of England’s Corn Laws. This made him determined to fight for Corn Law repeal by getting back into parliament.

Although his trade liberalization efforts were much praised by...

Bowring was in the thick of various radical causes outside as well as inside parliament. He was a strong opponent of slavery, being an early member of the Anti-Slavery Society founded in 1823, which helped toward the 1833 act abolishing slavery in British overseas territories—although it was never recognized in Britain itself. He spoke up in parliament about the extension of slavery into Texas, following its detachment from Mexico in the war of 1835– 36:

The conduct of the United States in this matter was distressing to her best friends. Would it be believed that under her republican auspices...

Anyone as passionate about economic progress as Bowring could not fail to be interested in transport. So he was particularly fortunate when, despite unfamiliarity with the locality, he was elected MP for Kilmarnock, a town very much on the map of progress. The Kilmarnock-to-Troon Railway, which opened in 1807, connecting a coal mine to Troon Harbour, was the first in Scotland; its Leigh Milton viaduct is the world’s oldest surviving railway viaduct.

There had been horse-drawn railway and wagon-way building in the late 18th century using wooden rails, initially more durable than iron ones. Though they could not compete with...

By October 1848, when offered the vacant post of consul in Guangzhou at a salary of £1,800 a year, Bowring was in no position to refuse. It was a huge move for a man of his age and experience, but he was broke, having to borrow from his sons and friends. He owed the job to Palmerston, who disliked his politics but recognized his energy and free-trade zeal, and to his old friend from missions in France, Lord Clarendon, now foreign secretary, who wrote: “My Dear Bowring, I could not see Palmerston yesterday but have done so today—nobody could...

The lofty imperial aims depicted by Eitel were far from Bowring’s mind as he arrived in Guangzhou (Canton) in April 1849 after a stopover in Hong Kong, where he stayed with “Mr. Jardine at his beautiful bungalow close to the large set of buildings where John lives and where the offices are”, but where he was advised by the European informants that the Chinese had “no notion of the claims of veracity and always seem to think that lying is safer than the truth”.¹

Soon enough he was, he wrote to his son Edgar,

overcome with a feeling of loneliness....

Despite the many frustrations of his years at Guangzhou, Bowring made significant but now largely forgotten contributions to China trade and Chinese as well as British interests. One was language training for British officials. Britain had already established a special consular service for China. Consuls there got better pay than elsewhere in recognition of their judicial as well as diplomatic and commercial responsibilities, but they lacked language expertise. At Bowring’s suggestion, Clarendon launched a student interpreter scheme by which young men could study the language while undertaking some official duties. A Parliamentary Select Committee on the Consular Service in 1858...

Bowring landed in Hong Kong in March 1854, accompanied by his wife and two of his daughters. Hard on his heels arrived a new naval commander, Sir James Stirling, the first governor of Western Australia. News of the Crimean War also broke at his time. Remembered in Britain mainly for the glorious blunder of the Charge of the Light Brigade and for Florence Nightingale’s role in caring for wounded soldiers, the war was the biggest international conflict between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War, costing between 300,000 and 400,000 lives. It saw Britain and France...

Despite Palmerston’s victory, these were gloomy times for Bowring, who had to put up with some nasty and untrue accusations. He wrote to Frederick that an acquaintance had said “the story of the poisoning is a lie of mine . . . everyone knows the British flag was not flying on theArrow. . . I am guilty of the massacres at Sarawak.”¹ He also felt it necessary to note: “The Admiral [Seymour] repudiates with absolute indignation and disgust the attempt to dissociate him from the policy which he and I after the most cordial and confidential discussions determined.”...

Bowring’s role as governor of Hong Kong—as distinct from that as plenipotentiary—began with promise and ended in embarrassment. He initially had had little time for Hong Kong affairs, but once he became acquainted with them, he came to realize that his position was anomalous. He was governor in name and occupied Government House, but the actual administrative authority in the colony resided with Lieutenant Governor William Caine, a former army officer who had been in Hong Kong since 1841, first as chief magistrate and head of the police and then as number two to Bonham. Caine had rough...

Bowring’s failure to control his officials was the major cause of his wider failure to implement many good ideas. But he was landed with a cast of officials who would have tried the abilities of all but the most authoritarian figures. Bowring was both too liberal in his attitudes and too lacking in administrative experience. Nor could he easily dismiss his subordinates.

His deputy, Caine, took a low profile after his own demotion when Bowring was made governor in reality, not just in name. Caine displayed neutrality in the feuds that developed between other officials. He and Bowring were polite...

Bowring’s performance of his roles as governor of Hong Kong and as plenipotentiary in China did lasting damage to his reputation. But his time in the East was also marked by what in retrospect was his greatest triumph. His previous roles as linguist, free-trade advocate, poet and parliamentarian are now forgotten, other than in niche circles. But the Bowring Treaty with the Kingdom of Siam remains famous in Thailand and familiar to every student of Southeast Asian history. It also launched Siam on a free-trade path, which it has largely maintained ever since, as a result progressing much faster than...

In late 1858, suffering from ill health, saddened by the news of his wife’s death and beset by the increasingly chaotic situation in Hong Kong, Bowring set out for the Philippines on a journey that was as much a holiday as an official visit to the colony’s nearest non-Chinese neighbour. As he himself put it:

Illness and the despotism of doctors, who ordered me to throw off the cares of my colonial government and to undertake a sea voyage of six or seven weeks duration, induced me to avail myself of one of the many courtesies and kindnesses for which...

The sombre mood in which Bowring left Hong Kong was not the end of his troubles. His youngest surviving daughter, Emily, had officially become a Catholic in 1853, shortly before her father’s posting to Hong Kong. There, she launched into good works in a society where English Catholicism was as alien as her father’s Unitarianism. Her charitable work may well have enhanced Bowring’s reputation among those outside the European establishment. But they were also to dominate her and further depress him. As he was due to depart, Emily announced that she would not be returning with him, but instead would...

Bowring’s ideas and deeds were a microcosm of his age but the man himself fits readily into no simple category. Coming to a conclusion about his life work depends on one’s starting point. Was he a potentially great man who never quite made the top rung? Or one whose sheer diversity of talents and long-term impacts on history overcame the fact that he could claim leadership in a very limited number of fields? The primary flaw in his character was obvious: enthusiasm that tended to outrun judgement, evident in such diverse episodes as the Greek loan, the Llynfi iron works...