Thomas Edward Bowdich

Thomas Edward Bowdich (1790 - 10 January 1824) was an English traveller and author.

He was born at Bristol and educated at Bristol Grammar School. In 1814, through his uncle, J. Hope-Smith, governor of the British Gold Coast settlements, he obtained a writership in the service of the African Company of Merchants and was sent to Cape Coast. In 1817 he was sent, with two companions, to Kumasi on a mission to the king of Ashanti, and chiefly through his skillful diplomacy the mission succeeded in its object of securing British control over the coast natives. In 1818 Bowdich returned to England, and in 1819 published an account of his mission and of the study he had made of the court of Kumasi, entitled "Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, &c." (London, 1819). He presented his African collections to the British Museum. Bowdich publicly attacked the management of the African committee, and his strictures were instrumental in leading the British government to assume direct control over the Gold Coast.

From 1820 to 1822 Bowdich lived in Paris, studying mathematics and the natural sciences, and was on intimate terms with Georges Cuvier, Alexander von Humboldt and other savants. During his stay in France he edited several works on Africa, and also wrote scientific works. In 1822, accompanied by his wife, he went to Lisbon, where, from a study of historic MSS., he published "An Account of the Discoveries of the Portuguese in . . . Angola and Mozambique" (London, 1824). In 1823 Bowdich and his wife, after some months spent in Madeira and Cape Verde Islands, arrived at Banjul at the mouth of the Gambia, intending to go to Sierra Leone and thence explore the interior. But at Bathurst Bowdich died on January 10, 1824.

His widow published an account of his last journey, entitled "Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo . . . to which is added A Narrative of the Continuance of the Voyage to its Completion, &c" (London, 1825). Bowdich's daughter, Mrs Hutchinson Hale, republished in 1873, with an introductory preface, her father's "Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee".