Bowring was born in Exeter of Charles Bowring (1769-1856), a wool merchant whose main market was China, from an old Unitarian family, and Sarah Jane Anne (d. 1828), the daughter of Thomas Lane, vicar of St Ives, Cornwall. His last formal education was at a Unitarian school in Moretonhampstead and he started work in his father's business at age 13. Bowring at one stage wished to become a Unitarian minister. Espousal of Unitarian faith was illegal in Britain until Bowring had turned 21.

By 1847, Bowring had assembled an impressive array of credentials: honorary diplomas from universities in Holland and Italy, fellowships of the Linnaean Society of London and Paris, the Historical Institute of the Scandinavian and Icelandic Societies, the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, the Royal Society of Hungary, the Royal Society of Copenhagen, and of the Frisian and Athenian Societies. Numerous translations and works on foreign languages, politics and economy had been published. His zeal in Parliament and standing as a literary man were well known.  In 1849, he was appointed British consul at Canton (today's Guangzhou), and superintendent of trade in China. Arriving on the HMS Medea on 12 April 1849, he took up the post in which he was to remain for four years the next day. His son John Charles had preceded him to China, arriving in Hong Kong in 1842, had been appointed Justice of the Peace and was at one point a partner in Jardines.  Bowring was quickly appalled by endemic corruption and frustrated by finding himself powerless in the face of Chinese breaches of the Treaty of Nanking and refusal to receive him at the diplomatic level or permit him to travel to Peking, and by his being subordinate to the Governor of Hong Kong who knew nothing of his difficulties.  For almost a year from 1852 to 1853, he acted as Britain's Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade and Governor of Hong Kong in the absence on leave of Sir George Bonham, who he was later to succeed.  Bowring was instrumental in the formation in 1855 of the Board of Inspectors established under the Qing Customs House, operated by the British to gather statistics on trade on behalf of the Qing government and, later, as the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, to collect all customs duties, a vital reform which brought an end to the corruption of government officials and led modernisation of China's international trade. Concerned for the welfare of coolies being exported to Australia, California, Cuba and the West Indies, and disturbed by the coolie revolt in Amoy in May 1852, Bowring tightened enforcement of the Passenger Act so as to improve coolie transportation conditions and ensure their voluntariness.

Was his time in Canton a success?