Sir Charles Calvert Bowring KCMG KBE (20 November 1872 – 13 June 1945) was a British colonial administrator, mainly in Kenya, who was later Governor and Commander in Chief of the Nyasaland Protectorate from 1923 to 1929.
[1] Bowring joined the Colonial Audit Branch in 1890 and served in the Far East until 1895 when he was appointed local auditor in the British Central Africa Protectorate.
[7] He became acting governor of the EAP at a time when the colony was recovering from famine, there was a shortage of manpower and settlers were becoming increasingly assertive.
[10] Although supporting the idea of settling veterans of the First World War in the colony, he pointed out that there were shortages both of land and of labour, and said that settlers should have capital of more than £500.
[12] In October 1925, Bowring laid the foundation stone of the new buildings at Livingstonia, which Dr Robert Laws wanted to develop into a university for African students in Nyasaland and neighbouring colonies.
In the second half of 1926 Bowring returned to England on leave and met officials at the Colonial Office in person, but was not able to gain their agreement to his proposal for settling the land problem.
He sought Colonial Office approval to extend its use to unpaid work on road building projects, often taking workers far from their homes.
[19] The Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery, who wanted to avoid a repeat of the Northey scandal, vetoed the proposal and, in 1928, instructed Bowring to consider the introduction of a form of Indirect rule in Nyasaland, appointing chiefs as Native Authorities.
Bowring resisted on the basis that he thought Nyasaland's tribal organisation was disintegrating and his tour of duty was cut short in May 1929.