page_title: John Bowring
section_title: Politician industrialist
hierarchical_section_title: John Bowring / Politician industrialist
caption_attribution_description: English: Marble bust of Sir John Bowring (1792-1872) of Exeter, Governor of Hong Kong, by Edward Bowring Stephens (1815-1882) of Exeter. Collection of Devon and Exeter Institution, Exeter, on display in the library. Plaque affixed to base inscribed: "Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), traveller, scholar and political economist, President of this institution (i.e. Devon and Exeter Institution) 1860-61. Presented by the trustees of George's Meeting 1983. Sculptor E.B. Stephens"
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: Through Bentham connections and in spite of his radicalism, Bowring was appointed to carry out investigations of the national accounting systems of the Netherlands and France in 1832 by the government and House of Commons, respectively.  The mark left by his work in France was not welcomed by all; as one commentator remarked,
   Of all men, high or low, that I ever met in society, this Dr Bowring is the most presuming and the most conceited.  He is a fit charlatan, for Whig employment; pushing and overbearing in his manner, and, like other parvenus, assuming an official importance which is highly ridiculous.
  Yet his work was so highly regarded by the Whig government that he was then appointed secretary of the Royal Commission on the Public Accounts.  He had made his name as something of an expert on government accounting.  He stood the same year for the newly created industrial constituency of Blackburn but was unsuccessful.
  In 1835, Bowring entered parliament as member for Kilmarnock Burghs; and in the following year he was appointed head of a government commission to be sent to France to inquire into the actual state of commerce between the two countries. After losing his seat in 1837, he was busied in further economic investigations in Egypt, Syria, Switzerland, Italy, and some of the states in Imperial Germany. The results of these missions appeared in a series of reports laid before the House of Commons and even a paper delivered to the British Association of Science with his observations on containment of the plague in the Levant.  He also spoke out passionately for equal rights for women and the abolition of slavery.
  On a still narrow, landed constituency, Bowring, campaigning on a radical and, to Marx and Engels, inconsistent platform of free trade and Chartism, secured a seat in parliament in 1841, as member for Bolton, perhaps England's constituency most affected by industrial upheaval and riven by deep social unrest bordering on revolution.  In the House, he campaigned for free trade, adoption of the Charter, repeal of the Corn Laws, improved administration of the Poor Law, open borders, abolition of the death penalty, and an end to flogging in the Army and payments to Church of England prelates.
  During this busy period he found leisure for literature, and published in 1843 a translation of the Manuscript of the Queen's Court, a collection of Czech medieval poetry, later considered false by Czech poet Václav Hanka. In 1846 he became President of the Mazzinian People's International League.
  Without inherited wealth, or salary as MP for Bolton, Bowring sought to sustain his political career by investing heavily in the south Wales iron industry from 1843. Following huge demand for iron rails brought about by parliament's approval of massive railway building from 1844 to 1846, Bowring led a small group of wealthy London merchants and bankers as Chairman of the Llynvi Iron Company and established a large integrated ironworks at Maesteg in Glamorgan during 1845–46. He installed his brother, Charles, as Resident Director and lost no time in naming the district around his ironworks, Bowrington.  He gained a reputation in the Maesteg district as an enlightened employer, one contemporary commenting that 'he gave the poor their rights and carried away their blessing'.
  In 1845 he became Chairman of the London and Blackwall Railway, the world's first steam-powered urban passenger railway and the precursor of the whole London Rail system.
   
  Bowring distinguished himself as an advocate of decimal currency. On 27 April 1847, he addressed the House of Commons on the merits of decimalisation. He agreed to a compromise that directly led to the issue of the florin (one-tenth of a pound sterling), introduced as a first step in 1848 and more generally in 1849. He lost his seat in 1849 but went on to publish a work entitled The Decimal System in Numbers, Coins and Accounts in 1854.
  The trade depression of the late 1840s caused the failure of his venture in south Wales in 1848 and wiped out his capital, forcing Bowring into paid employ
caption: Marble bust of Sir John Bowring (1792–1872) by Edward Bowring Stephens (1815–1882) of Exeter. Collection of Devon and Exeter Institution, Exeter, of which he was president 1860–61
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