BOWEN, SIR GEORGE FERGUSON (1821-99) was born in Ireland, the eldest son of Edward Bowen, afterwards rector of Taughboyne, county Donegal. Educated at Charterhouse, he gained a scholarship at Trinity College, Oxford, matriculated in 1840 and graduated B.A. in 1844. He was elected a fellow of Brasenose, and in 1847 graduated M.A. He was twice president of the Union. In 1844 Bowen entered Lincoln's Inn as a student.

In 1844 he was appointed president of the University of Corfu, which post he held for four years. While there he wrote his Ithaca in 1850 (published in the islands, and reprinted in several editions). This established his reputation as a scholar, Gladstone and others believing that it proved the identity of Ithaca with the island of Odysseus. In 1852 he published Mount Athos, Thessaly and Epirus. In 1848 he was in Vienna when desperate fighting took place leading up to the capture of the city by the imperial troops. In the following year before the close of the war he made a journey across Hungary, conveying a letter from refugees at Widin to Sir Stratford Canning, the British ambassador at Constantinople, which saved them from being handed over to the Turks. In 1854 Bowen was chief secretary of the Ionian islands. When Gladstone arrived there in 1858 as Lord High Commissioner to investigate the desire of the people for union with Greece, Bowen advocated surrender of the southern islands to Greece and the incorporation of the strategic islands of Corfu in the British Empire, the population of Corfu and Paxo being more Italian than Hellenic. In 1855 he was created C.M.G. and in 1856 K.C.M.G.

In 1859 Bowen was appointed first governor of Queensland, which had been separated from New South Wales. Landing at Moreton Bay on 10 Dec 1859, he spent some months instituting the machinery of government and then undertook a tour of the interior. Here, as in New Zealand later, he was quick to see the resemblances of social phenomena to those of ancient Greece. He favoured universal suffrage and the ballot as mere conservative measures in such a colony. He urged the British government to establish an efficient volunteer force for the defence of Queensland from foreign attack and to maintain order with the native population. The Queensland mounted rifles were accordingly embodied with several companies of infantry. Bowen gave every encouragement to exploration of the interior, especially to Landsborough and Dalrymple, and he accompanied an expedition which led to the establishment of a coaling station at Cape York. In 1860 he was promoted G.C.M.G. and in 1866 his term of service was extended to eight years. When the failure of the Agra and Masterman's banks caused serious embarrassment in the colony Bowen refused to sanction the Ministry's proposal to issue inconvertible paper money and was for a while unpopular.

Late in 1867 he was appointed to succeed Grey in the governorship of New Zealand and he assumed the duties of that difficult office on 5 Feb 1868. Native affairs were at a very grave pass when he took up his task and the first year of his governorship was one of the darkest periods in the history of New Zealand. Unlike his predecessors, Bowen was not as governor personally responsible for native affairs; that was part of the responsibility of the government as a whole. He cordially assisted Stafford's ministry to bring the war to a conclusion and no disagreements between governor and cabinet marred their co-operation. On the other hand Bowen had to use his pen vigorously and wholeheartedly in defence of the reputation of the settlers and government of New Zealand against charges made in Great Britain, arising in the main out of the inauguration of complete self-reliance and the adjustment of accounts for military assistance from the Home Government. In his first despatch as governor he informed the Secretary of State that the ill-feeling entertained in the colony towards the British government was due to the tone of the despatches from the Colonial Office rather than to the substance, and he hoped the continued discussion of matters which could not be improved thereby would not be insisted upon. Addressing the settlers at Wanganui a few months after his arrival in the Colony Bowen assured them they must rely only on their own stout hearts and strong arms. With fighting rampant in almost all the provinces of the North Island it is probably true, as Saunders suggests, that the only thing that saved the isolated settlements whose men were in the field was the abhorrence in which the Hauhau and their barbarities were held by the King tribes and by the wronged Wiremu Kingi and his friends. Bowen endeavoured to become acquainted with the Maori question by requiring the agents of the government in all Maori districts to make him a detailed report on their condition, numbers and wishes, their opinions of recent events and of the working of measures passed by Parliament for their good.

In an important despatch of 7 Dec 1868, while concurring in the determination of the Imperial government to withdraw all the troops from New Zealand he still advocated: (1) leaving one regiment of regular troops 'to hold the chief towns and to keep up the prestige of the Imperial power in the eyes of the Maoris'; (2) prohibiting the establishment of fresh settlements in exposed and dangerous districts; and (3) making a peaceful arrangement with Tawhiao (q.v.) which would not be inconsistent with the suzerainty of the Queen. The Secretary of State approved the two latter suggestions and guaranteed a loan of £1,000,000 towards the defence of New Zealand instead of leaving one regiment here. Featherston and Bell were sent to England to carry out the requisite negotiations. By the end of 1869 all apprehension of a general rising of disaffected tribes was past. Bowen paid four visits to Waikato, receiving many expressions of goodwill from the natives. He presented swords of honour to the friendly chiefs who had done good service in the war, and called to the Legislative Council the first two of the native race to sit in that chamber (Wi Mokena and Wi Tako Ngatata). Before leaving New Zealand he recommended the granting of a general amnesty for political offences. Thus he saw the long Maori wars brought to a termination.

Bowen conducted with the Imperial government the correspondence relating to the use of the title 'honourable' by retired ministers in the colonies. Stafford and Richmond at first declined the honour if it were only to be valid in New Zealand. Bowen also (in 1869) by order-in-council instituted the New Zealand Cross, which was afterwards sanctioned by Her Majesty. He endowed at the University of New Zealand the Bowen prize for an English essay on British or British colonial history. In 1873 he was appointed to the governorship of Victoria and he left for that post on 19 Mar. His last weeks in New Zealand were marked by ministerial crises owing to the resignation of Waterhouse. Eventually Fox agreed to assume the premiership until the return of Vogel, and Bowen was enabled to take his departure.

In Victoria Bowen encountered a parliamentary controversy between the representative chamber and the Legislative Council (which was elected for life and consequently held a position of unusual independence). Bowen took a strictly impartial attitude in the dispute, which was eventually settled by compromise and the passing of a separate supply bill. He paid a visit to Europe and America during this governorship and received from Oxford University the degree of D.C.L. (1875). On the expiration of his term in Victoria, he was appointed to Mauritius, where he landed on 4 Apr 1879. There his chief task was to inaugurate the labour code devised by his predecessor. In 1882 he was appointed governor of Hongkong, where he reconstructed the legislature and was called upon to exercise great vigilance during the war between France and China (1884-85).

In 1885 ill-health compelled him to pay a visit to Europe and in 1887 he retired from the service. He was nominated a Privy Councillor in 1886 and received the honorary LL.D. from Cambridge University. In 1887 he was chairman of the royal commission to report on the working of the constitution in Malta, his recommendations being adopted with the thanks of the Government. Bowen died at Brighton on 21 Feb 1899. He married, first (1856) Diamantina, countess Roma (d. 1893), daughter of Candiano, Count Roma, president of the Ionian Senate; and second (1896) Florence, daughter of Thomas Luby, and widow of Henry White. Besides the works already mentioned, Bowen wrote Murray's handbook for Greece (1854). Some of his letters and despatches were published by Stanley Lane Poole in 1889 as Thirty Years of Colonial Government.

App. H.R., 1868-73; Who's Who N.Z., 1932; N.Z. Gaz., 10 Mar 1869; D.N.B.; Egerton; Whitmore; Gisborne (p); Morton; Bowen, op. cit.; Saunders; Rusden; Reeves; Des Voeux.

Reference: Volume 1, page 57

🌳 Further sources