Bowdich, Thomas Edward (1790–1824)

‘First day of the yam custom, with king of the Ashanti and British troops’, from Thomas Bowdich's Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (1819). His book provides the first detailed account of the thriving Ashanti kingdom, with descriptions of its customs and culture, the royal court, and the capital of Kumasi. Bowdich also wrote vocabularies of the various languages he encountered, and made notations of traditional music.

English traveller and scientific writer. He led a mission to Ashanti in 1815, and on his return published A Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (1819), and The African Committee in the same year. In 1822 he set out on a second expedition, but died of fever at Bathurst, Gambia.

He was born in Bristol, England. His published works include Discoveries of the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique (1824); he also translated Mollien's Découverte des sources du Sénégal et de la Gambie/Discovery of the sources of the Senegal and Gambia rivers (1820).