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JOHN BOWRING AND THE GLOBAL DISSEMINATION OF FREE TRADE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2008

DAVID TODD
DAVID TODD*
Affiliation:
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
*
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, CB2 1TJfdt20@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

The international diffusion of ideas has often been described as an abstract process. John Bowring's career offers a different insight into the practical conditions that permitted a concept, free trade, to spread across national borders. An early advocate of trade liberalization in Britain, Bowring promoted free trade policies in France, Italy, Germany, Egypt, Siam, and China between 1830 and 1860. He employed different strategies according to local political conditions, appealing to public opinion in liberal Western Europe, seeking to persuade bureaucrats and absolute rulers in Central Europe and the Middle East, and resorting to gunboats in East Asia. His career also helps to connect the rise of free trade ideas in Europe with the ‘imperialism of free trade’ in other parts of the world. Bowring upheld the same liberal ideals as Richard Cobden and other luminaries of the free trade movement. Yet unlike them, he endorsed imperial ascendancy in order to remove obstacles to global communications and spread civilization outside Europe.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 373 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Lord Clarendon and the trustees of the Broadland papers for allowing me to quote from, respectively, the Clarendon papers at the Bodleian Library and the Palmerston papers at the Hartley Library. I would also like to thank Emma Rothschild, Richard Tuck, David Armitage, Frank Trentmann, Gabriel Paquette, and William Nelson for their suggestions and comments.

References

1 Such a view underpinned even otherwise excellent syntheses on the diffusion of free trade in the nineteenth century; see for instance, Kindleberger, C. P., ‘The rise of free trade in Western Europe, 1820–1875’, Journal of Economic History, 35 (1975), pp. 20–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and P. Bairoch, ‘European trade policy, 1815–1914’, in P. Mathias et al., eds., The Cambridge economic history of Europe (10 vols., Cambridge, 1966–89), viii, pp. 1–160. There have been, of course, exceptions, notably L. Brown, The Board of Trade and the free trade movement (Oxford, 1958).

2 B. Hilton, The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988).

3 Trentmann, F., ‘Political economy and political culture: interest, ideology and free trade’, Review of International Political Economy, 5 (1998), pp. 217–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Howe, Free trade and liberal England (Oxford, 1997).

4 On the reception of ‘Cobdenite’ free trade in Continental Europe, however, see A. Howe and S. Morgan, eds., Rethinking nineteenth-century liberalism: Richard Cobden bicentenary essays (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 99–173; see also W. Kaiser, ‘Cultural transfers of free trade at the World Exhibitions, 1851–1862’, Journal of Modern History, 77 (2005), pp. 563–90.

5 G. Stone, ‘Sir John Bowring’, in H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, eds., Oxford dictionary of national biography (60 vols., Oxford, 2004), vi, pp. 987–90.

6 Bowring to G. Villiers, 28 Mar. and 2 May 1833, Oxford, Bodleian Library (BODL), Clarendon MSS, 544, fos. 111, 123.

7 My estimate, based on the integrated catalogue of the British Library.

8 The National Register of Archives records twenty-six collections that contain Bowring papers in eighteen different archives in Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/; last accessed on 17 May 2007.

9 On global connections in the nineteenth century, see C. Bayly, The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2004).

10 Saint-Ferréol, Exposition du système de douanes en France (Marseilles, 1835), pp. 26–7.

11 On Bowring's early years, see G. F. Bartle, An old radical and his brood (London, 1994), pp. 1–34.

12 J. Bentham, Observations on the restrictive and prohibitory commercial system, ed. J. Bowring (London, 1821), p. 2; on Bowring's claim that he inspired the pamphlet, see ‘Free trade recollections – n°7 Jeremy Bentham’, Howitt's Journal, 2 (1847), pp. 123–6, at p. 124.

13 On Thompson, see Turner, M. J., ‘The “Bonaparte of free trade” and the Anti-Corn Law League’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), pp. 1011–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 On these negotiations and for a rather dismissive account of Bowring's mission in France, see B. M. Ratcliffe, ‘Great Britain and tariff reform in France, 1831–1836’, in W. H. Chaloner and B. M. Ratcliffe, eds., Trade and transport (Manchester, 1977), pp. 98–135; see also Brown, The Board of Trade, pp. 121–7.

15 G. Villiers, A vanished Victorian: being the life of George Villiers, 1800–1870 (London, 1938), pp. 41–2.

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18 Bentham, Observations, pp. 28–35.

19 Bowring to Thomson, 13 May 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/2, fos. 106–7.

20 Bowring to Thomson, 11 Feb. 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/1, fo. 67; Thomson to Villiers, 5 Mar. 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 545, fo. 60.

21 Bowring to Villiers, 14 Mar. to 7 Apr. 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 544, fos. 101–18.

22 Scott to Palmerston, 30 Mar. 1833, London, The National Archives (TNA), FO/27/469, fo. 104.

23 Villiers to Bowring, 2 Apr. 1833, Cambridge (Mass.), Houghton Library, English manuscripts, MS 1247, fo. 35.

24 Bowring to Auckland, 27 Feb., 10 Mar., and 13 Mar. 1834, London, British Library (BL), Auckland MSS, Add MS 34460, fos. 17–18, 42, 48.

25 Bowring to Villiers, 23 May and 9 June 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 544, fos. 129–30, 157.

26 Bowring to Thomson, 10 Jan. 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/2, fo. 14; Bowring to Auckland, 4 Apr. 1834, BL, Auckland MSS, Add MS 34460, fo. 87.

27 Bowring to Villiers, 19 Mar. and 7 Apr. 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 544, fos. 103–4, 114–15.

28 Bowring to Thomson, 10 Jan. 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/2, fos. 14–15.

29 Bowring to Thomson, 27 Feb. 1832, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/1, fos. 61–2.

30 TNA, T 1/4001, bundles ‘1832’, ‘1833’, and ‘1834’. The figure in the text corresponds to the period 27 Dec. 1832–26 June 1833.

31 J. Bowring and G. Villiers, First report on the commercial relations between France and Great Britain (London, 1834); J. Bowring, Second report on the commercial relations between France and Great Britain (London, 1835).

32 Bowring to Thomson, 5 July 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/2, fo. 118; Bowring to Auckland, 21 Mar. 1834, BL, Auckland MSS, Add MS 34460, fo. 68.

33 Bowring to Thomson, 5 May 1832, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/1, fo. 123; Bowring to Auckland, 7 Apr. 1834, BL, Auckland MSS, Add MS 34460, fo. 95.

34 Adresse des négociants de Bordeaux aux chambres législatives (Bordeaux, 1834). The statistics used in that manifesto had been provided by Bowring; see minutes of the Bordeaux chamber of commerce, 20 Aug. 1833, Bordeaux, Archives départementales de la Gironde, 02/081/307, register 1830–4, fo. 127.

35 Bowring to Thomson, 7 Feb. 1834, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/3, fo. 17.

36 Petition by Comité des propriétaires de vignes de la Gironde, 20 Feb. 1834, Paris, Archives Nationales, F12 2506.

37 Bowring to Auckland, 24 Mar. and 17 Apr. 1834, BL, Auckland MSS, Add MS 34460, fos. 71, 111–12; Bowring to Thomson, 4 Aug. 1834, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/3, fo. 80.

38 Thompson to Bowring, 3 Nov. 1834, Hull, Brynmore Jones Library, Thompson MSS, 4/5.

39 [T. Perronet Thompson and B. Laroche], Contre-enquête, par l'homme aux quarante écus (Paris, 1834).

40 Bowring to Villiers, 4–6 June 1833, and Bowring to Thomson, 17 June 1833, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 546/1/2, fos. 112–16.

41 F. List, Werke, ed. E. v. Beckerath et al. (10 vols., Berlin, 1927–35), viii, pp. 406–7. List remained an admirer of Bowring's talents even after becoming one of his main adversaries; see List to Robert v. Mohl, 1 Jan. 1846, in Werke, viii, pp. 773–7.

42 Granville to Auckland, [Feb. 1834], Auckland MSS, Add MS 34460, fos. 8–10.

43 De l'économie sociale et politique, et considérations sur le voyage du docteur Bowring en France (Montpellier, 1835), p. 37.

44 Archives parlementaires, ed. E. Colombey and J. Mavidal (126 vols., Paris, 1862–1912), cii, p. 51.

45 Ministère du Commerce, Enquête relative à diverses prohibitions (3 vols., Paris, 1835), i, pp. 85–6, 101, on complaints about Bowring's propaganda.

46 Bowring to Palmerston, 15 Oct. 1835, Southampton, Hartley Library (HL), Palmerston MSS, GC/BO/45.

47 See for example Bowring to Arlès-Dufour, 19 May 1833, letter reproduced in J. Canton-Debat, ‘Un homme d'affaire lyonnais: Arlès-Dufour (1797–1872)’ (Ph.D. thesis, Lyons II, 2000), p. 274.

48 D. Todd, L'identité économique de la France (Paris: Grasset, forthcoming), chs. 9 and 10; see also Romani, R., ‘Political economy and other idioms: French views on English development, 1815–1848’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 9 (2002), pp. 359–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Melbourne to Palmerston, 5 Nov. 1835, cited in K. Bourne, Palmerston: the early years, 1784–1841 (London, 1982), p. 552.

50 Ibid., pp. 552–3.

51 Bowring to Palmerston, 19 Oct. 1835, HL, Palmerston MSS, GC/BO/46.

52 Report on the commerce of Switzerland, Parliamentary Papers, HC 60 (1836), p. 657.

53 Bowring to Palmerston, 22 Dec. 1836, HL, Palmerston MSS, GC/BO/53.

54 Report on the statistics of Tuscany, Lucca, the Pontifical, and the Lombardo-Venetian States; with a special reference to their commercial relations, Parliamentary Papers, HC 165 (1839).

55 Batou, J., ‘L'Egypte de Muhammad-Ali: pouvoir politique et développement économique’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, 46 (1991), pp. 401–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Bowring to Palmerston, 6 Jan. 1838 and 4 Feb. 1838, HL, Palmerston MSS, GC/BO/65 and GC/BO/67.

57 Report on Egypt and Candia and Report on the commercial statistics of Syria, Parliamentary Papers, HC 277 and 278 (1840).

58 ‘Report on Egypt’, TNA, 78/381, fo. 265.

59 A. L. Sayyid-Marsot, Egypt in the reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 235–48.

60 On Bowring's mission in Germany, see W. O. Henderson, The Zollverein (London, 1959), pp. 132–3, 141.

61 Palmerston to Bowring, 18 July 1839, TNA, FO 97/326, fos. 1–2.

62 List to v. Mohl, 1 Jan. 1846, in Werke, viii, p. 774 (my translation).

63 Bowring to Palmerston, 7 and 13 Aug. 1839, TNA, FO 97/326, fos. 11–17.

64 Report on the Prussian commercial union, Parliamentary Papers, HC 225 (1840).

65 ‘Dr. Bowring at home and abroad’ in bundle ‘1840’ and untitled bundle corresponding to the payments made to Bowring in 1838–9, TNA, T 1/4001.

66 Hansard's parliamentary debates, 3rd Series, 55 (1840), pp. 700–14.

67 A. Prentice, History of the Anti-Corn Law League, (2 vols., London, 1853), i, pp. 65–9.

68 Bowring to Ellice, 5 Nov. 1846, TNA, PRO 30/22/5E, fo. 67.

69 Report from the select committee on import duties, Parliamentary Papers, HC 601 (1840), v, pp. 159–76.

70 Bowring was a pious Unitarian, but his equation of free trade with Jesus Christ was a figurative expression of the intensity of his belief rather than a theological statement; see Webb, R. K., ‘John Bowring and Unitarianism’, Utilitas, 4 (1992), pp. 43–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Prentice, History, ii, pp. 66–7.

72 See index of Das nationale System in List, Werke, vi, pp. 658–64.

73 Association belge pour la liberté commerciale, Congrès des économistes réuni à Bruxelles (Brussels, 1847), p. 192.

74 Karl Marx, Discours sur la question du libre-échange (Brussels, 1848), repr. in K. Marx., Misère de la philosophie (Paris, 1908), pp. 273–300.

75 Howe, Free trade, pp. 73–83.

76 M. Taylor, ed., The European diaries of Richard Cobden, 1846–1849 (Aldershot, 1994) pp. 43–60; Cobden stayed in France for eight weeks, from 5 Aug. to 1 Oct. 1846, but did little to promote free trade after leaving Bordeaux on 5 Sept.

77 C. Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung. Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland, 1860–1914 (Göttingen, 2005), pp. 124–36.

78 J. Pitts, A turn to empire: the rise of imperial liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, 2005), chs. 4 and 5.

79 [J. Bowring], ‘Colonization and commerce of British India’, Westminster Review, 11 (1829), pp. 326–53.

80 ‘Report on the commercial statistics of Syria’, TNA, FO 78 380, fos. 78–82.

81 J. Bowring, The influence of knowledge on domestic and social happiness (London, [1842?]), pp. 3–5.

82 P. Baldwin, Contagion and the state in Europe, 1830–1930 (Cambridge, 1999), chs. 1 and 2.

83 Bowring to Palmerston, 16 Oct. 1837, HL, Palmerston MSS, GC/BO/60.

84 J. Bowring, Observations on the oriental plague and on quarantines (Edinburgh, 1838), pp. 4–7.

85 Idem, Resolution relating to quarantine laws and regulations (London, 1844), pp. 3, 6–7.

86 Idem, The political and commercial importance of peace (London, 1846), pp. 4–5, 15, 23–4.

87 D. Armitage, The ideological origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 146–69.

88 Bowring, J., ‘Free trade recollections – n°1 Tuscany and Rome’, ‘n°2 – Isle of Man’, ‘n°3 – Syria’ and ‘n°6 – The Danube’, Howitt's Journal, 1 (1847), pp. 31–3, 58–61, 116–19, 324–8.Google Scholar

89 Bartle, Old radical, pp. 65–7.

90 J. K. Fairbanks and D. Twitchett, eds., The Cambridge history of China (15 vols., Cambridge, 1979–2002), x (1), pp. 213–63.

91 Bowring to his son Edgar Bowring, 24 Nov. 1849, Manchester, John Rylands University Library (JRUL), Bowring MSS, 1228, fo. 17.

92 Bowring to E. Bowring, 12 May 1850, Duke University, Perkins Library (PL), Bowring MSS.

93 Bowring to General Schiller, 5 Nov. 1855, Los Angeles, Young Research Library (YRL), Bowring MSS, 722/2, folder 8.

94 Bowring to E. Bowring, 26 Jan. 1851, JRUL, Bowring MSS, 1228, fo. 46.

95 Bowring to Palmerston, 15 Jan. 1852, HL, Palmerston MSS, GC/BO/101.

96 Bowring to E. Bowring, 26 Mar. 1853, PL, Bowring MSS.

97 Bowring to E. Bowring, 26 Aug. 1855, JRUL, Bowring MSS, 1228, fo. 137.

98 Bowring to Cobden, 11 Jan. 1853, London, BL, Cobden MSS, Add MS 43667 fo. 195.

99 Gallagher, J. and Robinson, R., ‘The imperialism of free trade’, Economic History Review, 6 (1953), pp. 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Macdonagh, O., ‘The anti-imperialism of free trade’, Economic History Review, 14 (1962), pp. 489–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Platt, D. C. M., ‘The imperialism of free trade: some reservations’, Economic History Review, 21 (1968), pp. 296–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 304–6, and idem, ‘Further objections to an “imperialism of free trade”, 1830–1860’, Economic History Review, 26 (1973), pp. 77–91. See also M. Lynn, ‘British policy, trade, and informal empire in the mid-nineteenth century’, in Wm R. Louis, ed., The Oxford history of the British Empire (5 vols., Oxford, 1998), pp. 101–21.

102 W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China, 1833–1860 (Oxford, 1937), pp. 168–76.

103 J. S. Gregory, Great-Britain and the Taipings (London, 1969), pp. 47–63.

104 Bowring to E. Bowring, 21 Apr. 1854, PL, Bowring MSS; Bowring to Clarendon, 26 Jan. 1855, BODL, Clarendon MSS, C37, fo. 151.

105 J. K. Fairbanks, Trade and diplomacy on the China coast (2 vols., Cambridge, MA, 1953), i, ch. 23.

106 Bowring to Clarendon, 26 Jan. 1855, BODL, Clarendon MSS, C37, fo. 151; Bowring to E. Bowring, 28 Jan. 1855, JRUL, Bowring MSS, 1228, fo. 115.

107 Bowring to E. Bowring, 6 Apr. 1856, JRUL, Bowring MSS, 1228, fo. 150.

108 Bowring to A. J. Duijmaer van Twist, 20 Mar. 1855, YRL, Bowring MSS, 722/2, folder 5b.

109 Bowring to Clarendon, 31 Mar. 1855, Clarendon MSS, C37, fo. 181.

110 See also Bowring's account of his mission and description of the country, The people and kingdom of Siam (2 vols., London, 1857).

111 Bowring to E. Bowring, 13 Apr. 1855, JRUL, Bowring MSS, 1228, fo. 125.

112 Bowring to Clarendon, 20 July 1855, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 37, fo. 215.

113 M. Ceadel, The origins of war prevention: the British Peace Movement and international relations, 1730–1854 (Oxford, 1996), p. 232; see also S. Conway, ‘John Bowring and the nineteenth-century peace movement’, Historical Research, 64 (1991), pp. 344–58.

114 Bowring to J. Klentz 18 Mar. 1855, YRL, Bowring MSS, 722/2, folder 5b.

115 Bowring to A. J. Duijmaer van Twist, 31 May 1855, YRL, Bowring MSS, 722/2, folder 5c.

116 Bowring to Cobden, 22 Mar. 1856, BL, Cobden MSS, Add MS 43669, fo. 31.

117 Bowring to Clarendon, 5 June 1854, qu. in Costin, Britain and China, p. 183.

118 Bowring to Clarendon, 10 July, 1 Aug., 27 Nov. 1855, and 5 July 1856, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 37, fos. 210, 217, 271 and 57, fo. 417.

119 J. Y. Wong, Deadly dreams: opium, imperialism and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 84–108, 457–78; G. F. Bartle, ‘Sir John Bowring and the Arrow War in China’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 43 (1961), pp. 293–316.

120 Bowring to Clarendon, 16 Oct. 1856, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 57, fo. 452

121 Bowring to Parkes, q.v. in S. Lane-Pool, The life of Sir Harry Parkes (2 vols., London, 1894), i, p. 245.

122 Bowring to Clarendon, 27 Jan. 1857, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 71, fo. 10.

123 Hansard's parliamentary debates, 3rd Series, 144 (1857), 1391–421, 1810, 1846–50.

124 M. Taylor, The decline of British radicalism, 1847–1860 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 269–79.

125 Wong, Deadly dreams, pp. 216–57.

126 Bowring to Clarendon, 10 May 1857, BODL, Clarendon MSS, 71, fo. 55.

127 Bowring to E. Bowring, 11 June 1857, JRUL, Bowring MSS, 1228, fo. 186.

128 Bartle, Old radical, pp. 110–22.