Edgar Addison Bancroft

Birth/Death:                             1857 / 1925

League Membership:             American Anti-Imperialist League, 1899

Role in League:                      Active Member

Occupation:                            Corporate Lawyer, Ambassador to Japan 1924-1925

Brief Biography

Bancroft was born in Galesburg, Illinois, but decended from the Bancroft Brahmins of New England, including Arron Bancroft, George Washington's biography and George Bancroft, also a historian, diplomat, and Secretary of the Navy. Edgar graduated from Columbia Law School and was employed by the Santa Fe railroad company and in 1894 was the company's champion against striking laborers. He was one of the lawyers responsible for the arrest of Eugene V. Debs and wrote about the strikes a year later. He was also employed by the International Harvester Company. He earned a reputation from socialists and trade unions as being a anti-labor Republican. Although this reputation caused some to view Bancroft as a unwavering friend of corporate interests, he was also dedicated to ensuring US military isolationism which directed his anti-imperialism. When the split of 1904 occurred, Bancroft gave up on the movement and aligned himself with the Roosevelt and Taft administration's attempts at economic and informal empire. Bancroft was named Ambassador to Japan in 1924 by Calvin Coolidge, but before he even completed a year at his post died of an intestinal haemorrage in Karuizawa.

Primary:

Edgar Addison Bancroft, The Chicago Strike of 1894 (Gunthrop Warren: 1895).

———, Destruction or Regulation? (Chicago, 1907).

———, The Mission of America and Other Wartime Speeches (1927).

Secondary:

Jiuji George Kasai, Foundations of American Japanese Friendship (Tokyo: International Publishers and Print Company, 1925).

M. Patrick Cullinane, Liberty and Anti-Imperialism, June 28, 2009.

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