page_title: John Bowring
section_title: Governor of Hong Kong
hierarchical_section_title: John Bowring / Governor of Hong Kong
caption_attribution_description: English: 4th Governor of Hong Kong
context_page_description: Sir John Bowring, KCB was an English political economist, traveller, writer, literary translator, polyglot, and the fourth Governor of Hong Kong.
context_section_description: The newly knighted Bowring received his appointment as Governor of Hong Kong and her Majesty's Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China on 10 January 1854.  He arrived in Hong Kong and was sworn in on 13 April 1854, in the midst of the Taiping Rebellion occupying the attentions of his primary protagonists and the Crimean War distracting his masters. He was appointed over strong objections from opponents in London.  Fellow Unitarian Harriet Martineau had warned that Bowring was "no fit representative of Government, and no safe guardian of British interests", that he was dangerous and would lead Britain into war with China, and that he should be recalled.  Her pleas went unheeded.
  Bowring was an extremely industrious reformist governor.  He allowed the Chinese citizens in Hong Kong to serve as jurors in trials and become lawyers. He is credited with establishing Hong Kong's first commercial public water supply system. He developed the eastern Wan Chai area at a river mouth near Happy Valley and Victoria Harbour by elongating the river as a canal, the area being named Bowring City (Bowrington). By instituting the Buildings and Nuisances Ordinance, No. 8 of 1856, in the face of stiff opposition, Bowring ensured the safer design of all future construction projects in the colony.  He sought to abolish monopolies.
  Bowring was impressed by the yawning gulf of misunderstanding between the expatriate and Chinese communities, writing, "We rule them in ignorance and they submit in blindness."  Notwithstanding, in 1856, Bowring went so far as to attempt democratic reform.  He proposed that the constitution of the Legislative Council be changed to increase membership to 13 members, of whom five be elected by landowners enjoying rents exceeding 10 pounds, but this was rejected by Henry Labouchère of the Colonial Office on the basis that Chinese residents were "deficient in the essential elements of morality on which social order rests". The constituency would only have amounted to 141 qualified electors, in any event.
  He was equally impressed by the dearth of expenditure on education, noting that 70 times more was provided for policing than for instruction of the populace, so he rapidly brought in an inspectorate of schools, training for teachers and opening of schools.  Student number increased nearly ten-fold.
  He became embroiled in numerous conflicts and disputes, not least of which was a struggle for dominance with Lieutenant Governor William Caine, which went all the way back to the Colonial Office for resolution.  He won. He was faulted for failing to prevent a scandalous action in slander, in 1856, by the assistant magistrate W. H. Mitchell against his attorney-general T. Chisholm Anstey over what was essentially a misapprehension of fact but which was thought "unique in all the scandals of modern government of the Colonies or of English Course of Justice".
  A Qing-sponsored campaign of civil disruption, threatening the very survival of the British administration, culminated in the arsenic poisoning incident of 15 January 1857 in which 10 pounds of arsenic was mixed in the flour of the colony's principal bakery, poisoning many hundreds, killing Bowring's wife and debilitating him for at least a year. This was a turning point for Bowring who, cornered, all but abandoned his liberality in favour of sharply curtailed civil liberties. He bemoaned:
  It is a perplexing position to know that a price is set on our heads, that our servants cannot be trusted, that a premium is offered to any incendiary who will set fire to our dwellings, to any murderer who will poison or destroy us. ... We have many grievances to redress, and I will try to redress them; many securities to obtain, and I mean to obtain them. ... many unfortunate wretches of all nations (as the hatred of the Chinese is indiscriminating) have been seized, decaptitated; and their heads have been exposed on the walls of Canton, their assailants having been largely rewarded; ... All this is sufficiently horrible ... we shall exact indemnities for the pas
caption: Sir John Bowring, 4th Governor of Hong Kong
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