Name Index

To

Sir John Bowring, First President of the Devonshire Association

Trans. Devon. Assoc. 2, 4th series (1920), pp. 192-206.

by

Hester Forbes Julian, FGS, FRAI.

Prepared by Michael Steer

Sir John Bowring KCB, was a political economist, traveller, miscellaneous writer, polyglot, and the 4th Governor of Hong Kong. He was born in St Leonards, Exeter, son of Charles Bowring, a wool merchant from an old Unitarian family, and Sarah Jane Anne, daughter of Thomas Lane, vicar of St Ives, Cornwall. His last formal education was at a Unitarian school in Moretonhampstead. In 1849, Bowring was appointed British consul at Canton (today's Guangzhou), and superintendent of trade in China, a post he held for four years. After his return, he was an advocate of decimal currency, and published a work entitled The Decimal System in Numbers, Coins and Accounts (1854). The introduction of the florin as a preparatory step was chiefly due to his efforts. Google with the Archive Organization has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. The Internet Archive makes available, in its Community Texts Collection (originally known as Open Source Books), books that have been digitised by Google from a number of libraries. These are books on which copyright has expired, and are available free for educational and research use. This rare book was produced from a copy held by the Princeton University Library, and is available from the Internet Archive.