On his book Edward Bancroft: Scientist, Author, Spy
Cover Interview of June 07, 2011
In a nutshell
Edward Bancroft was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1745 and died in England in 1821. He is most famous (or infamous) today because from 1777 to 1783 he lived in Paris and worked as a British spy.
Edward Bancroft befriended and served as a general assistant and advisor to Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Paul Jones, the Marquis de Lafayette, and many other prominent Americans and Frenchmen. He kept his superiors in George III’s government in London apprised of all that went on between the American representatives and French ministers.
The story of his espionage involves aliases, secrets codes and ciphers, invisible inks, messages left in the hole of a tree, and other fascinating topics.
More than all that, however, there is the story of the man himself. After I started to work on this book I came to realize that his entire life was worth studying. How did a boy born of a modest New England family end up a famous scientist, author, and friend of prominent statesmen? And why did he agree to spy for the British?
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
Edward Bancroft was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1745 and died in England in 1821. He is most famous (or infamous) today because from 1777 to 1783 he lived in Paris and worked as a British spy.
Edward Bancroft befriended and served as a general assistant and advisor to Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Paul Jones, the Marquis de Lafayette, and many other prominent Americans and Frenchmen. He kept his superiors in George III’s government in London apprised of all that went on between the American representatives and French ministers.
The story of his espionage involves aliases, secrets codes and ciphers, invisible inks, messages left in the hole of a tree, and other fascinating topics.
More than all that, however, there is the story of the man himself. After I started to work on this book I came to realize that his entire life was worth studying. How did a boy born of a modest New England family end up a famous scientist, author, and friend of prominent statesmen? And why did he agree to spy for the British?