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Edward Bancroft (〔 – September 7, 1821) was an American physician, chemist and double-agent spy during the American Revolution. Bancroft served as secretary to the American Commission in Paris during the Revolutionary War. During this period, he acted as a spy for Britain, reporting on dealings between France and the United States. ==Early life== Bancroft was born on January 20, 1745 in Westfield, Massachusetts.〔 His father died of an epileptic seizure when Bancroft was only two years old, and his mother had to support the family alone. His mother remarried five years later, and they moved to Connecticut to live with his stepfather, David Bull.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= Dr. Edward Bancroft )〕 In Connecticut, Bancroft studied under Silas Deane, a schoolmaster who later became an important politician and diplomat, with whom he would work in Paris. At the age of sixteen, Bancroft was apprenticed to a physician in Killingworth, Connecticut, but ran away after a few years. Many years later, Bancroft returned and repaid his debt to his former master. On July 14, 1763, Bancroft departed New England for the sugar-producing slave colonies of Dutch Guiana, where he became a doctor on a plantation.〔 He soon expanded his practice to multiple plantations and wrote a study of the local environment. Based on observations of experiments already being performed on live eels by Dutch colonists in and around Surinam and Essequibo, Bancroft concluded that American eels discharged electricity to stun their prey, rather than by imperceptibly swift mechanical action, as had previously been argued. His was perhaps the first account of the electricity of American eels to be published in English.〔(Edward Bancroft: Electric Medicine )〕 Although he left South America in 1766, he published ''An Essay on the Natural History of Guiana, in South America'' in London 1769, where he embarked on a career as a man of letters with the encouragement of Franklin.〔E. Bancroft (1769) (An Essay on the Natural History of Guiana, in South America ), link from HathiTrust〕 Bancroft later wrote extensively about the chemistry of dyes, based in part on his work in Dutch Guiana, contrasting non-European dyeing techniques unfavorably with the learned 'philosophical chemistry' of natural philosophers such as himself. In London, Bancroft's ''Natural History of Guiana'' (1769) attracted the attention of Paul Wentworth, New Hampshire's colonial agent in London, who hired Bancroft to survey Wentworth's plantation in Surinam and make recommendations for more efficient operation. Bancroft spent two months in Surinam at Wentworth's plantation before returning to London. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1773 as " ''a gentleman versed in natural history and Chymistry, and author of the natural history of Guiana"''〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title= Library and Archive Catalogue )〕 Bancroft now encountered another colonial agent in London, Benjamin Franklin, representative of Pennsylvania. Bancroft and Franklin became friends, and Bancroft agreed to become a spy for Franklin. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Edward Bancroft」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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