Everything about Roger Casement totally explained
Roger David Casement (;
1 September 1864 —
3 August 1916), known as
Sir Roger Casement,
CMG between 1911 and until his execution for treason in August 1916, was an
Irish patriot,
poet,
revolutionary and
nationalist. He was a
British consul by profession famous for his reports and activities against human rights abuses in the
Congo and
Peru, but better known for his dealings with
Germany prior to Ireland's
Easter Rising in 1916. An Irish nationalist and Parnellite in his youth, he worked in Africa for commercial interests and latterly in the service of Britain. However the Boer War and his witnessing of atrocities in the Congo led Casement to anti-Imperialist and ultimately
Irish Republican and separatist political opinions.
Early life and education
Casement was born near
Dublin living in very early childhood at Doyle's Cottage, Lawson Terrace,
Sandycove.
His
Protestant father, Captain Roger Casement of (The King’s Own) Regiment of Light Dragoons, was the son of a bankrupt
Belfast shipping merchant (Hugh Casement) who later moved to
Australia. Captain Casement served in the
1842 Afghan campaign. Casement's mother Anne Jephson of Dublin (whose origins are obscure), had him rebaptised secretly as a
Roman Catholic when he was three in
Rhyl; she died in
Worthing when her son was nine. By the time he was thirteen, his father was also dead, having ended his days dependent on the charity of relatives. Roger was afterwards raised by Protestant paternal relatives in
Ulster, the Youngs of Galgorm Castle in Ballymena and the Casements of Magherintemple and was educated at the Diocesan School, Ballymena later
Ballymena Academy. He left school at 16 and took up a clerical job with Elder Dempster, a Liverpool shipping company headed by Sir Alfred Jones, later an enemy on the Congo issue.
The Congo: The Casement Report
In 1903, Roger Casement, then the British Consul in Léopoldville, was commissioned by the British government and delivered in 1904 a long, detailed eyewitness report exposing human rights abuses in the
Congo Free State: The
Casement Report. The Congo Free State had been in the possession of King
Leopold II of Belgium since 1885, when it was granted to him by the Berlin Conference. Leopold exploited the territory's natural resources (mostly rubber) as a private entrepreneur, not as Belgian King. Casement's report would be instrumental in Leopold finally relinquishing his personal holdings in Africa.
When the report was made public, the
Congo Reform Association, founded by
E.D. Morel, with Casement's support, demanded action. Other European nations followed suit, as did the United States, and the British parliament demanded a meeting of the 14 signatory powers to review the 1885 Berlin Agreement. The Belgian Parliament, pushed by socialist leader Emile Vandervelde and other critics of the King's Congolese policy, forced Léopold to set up an independent commission of inquiry, and in 1905, despite the King's efforts, it confirmed the essentials of Casement's report.
On
November 15,
1908, four years after the
Casement Report, the parliament of Belgium took over the Congo Free State from Leopold and its administration as the
Belgian Congo.
Peru: Abuses against the Putumayo Indians
In 1906 Casement was sent as consul to
Pará, transferring to
Santos,
Brazil and lastly was promoted to consul-general in
Rio de Janeiro. He had the occasion to do work similar to that which he'd done in
Congo among the
Putumayo Indians of
Peru when he was attached as a consular representative to a commission investigating murderous
rubber slavery by the British-registered Peruvian Amazon Company, effectively controlled by the archetypal rubber baron Julio César Arana and his brother. Public outrage in Britain over the abuses against the Putumayo Indians had been sparked in 1909 by articles in the British magazine
Truth. Casement paid two visits to the region, first in 1910 with a follow-up in 1911. In a report to the British foreign secretary, dated March 17, 1911, Casement detailed the rubber company's use of stocks to punish the Indians:
Men, women, and children were confined in them for days, weeks, and often months. ... Whole families ... were imprisoned--fathers, mothers, and children, and many cases were reported of parents dying thus, either from starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were attached alongside of them to watch in misery themselves the dying agonies of their parents.
After his return to Britain he repeated his extra-consular campaigning work by organising
Anti-Slavery Society and mission interventions in the region which was disputed between Peru and
Colombia. Some of the men exposed as killers in his report were charged by Peru and others fled. Conditions in the area undoubtedly improved as a result but the contemporary switch to farmed rubber in
Malaya etc was a godsend to the Indians as well. Arana himself was never brought to justice. He instead went on to a successful political career. becoming a senator, and died in
Lima, Peru in 1952 at age eighty-eight.
Casement wrote extensively (as always) in those two years including several of his notorious diaries, the one for 1911 being unusually discursive. They and the 1903 diary were kept by him in
London with other papers of the period, presumably so they could be consulted in his continuing work as 'Congo Casement' and the saviour of the Putumayo Indians. Casement was knighted for his efforts on behalf of the Amazonian Indians.
Irish revolutionary
Casement resigned from the consular service in 1912. The following year, he helped form the
Irish Volunteers with
Eoin MacNeill, later the organisation's chief of staff. In July, 1914, he journeyed to
New York in an effort to promote and raise money for the Volunteers. Through his friendship with men such as
Bulmer Hobson, who was a member of the Volunteers and the
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Casement established connections with the exiled Irish nationalists who constituted the
Clan na Gael. Elements of Clan na Gael didn't trust him completely, as he wasn't a member of the IRB, and held views considered by many to be too moderate. John Devoy, who was initially hostile to Casement for his part in conceding control of the Irish Volunteers to Redmond, in June was won over, while the more extreme Clan leader,
Joseph McGarrity, became and remained devoted to Casement.The Howth gunrunning in late July further improved Casement's reputation.
When the
First World War broke out in 1914, Casement attempted to secure German aid for Irish independence, sailing for
Germany via
Norwaywhere his companion Adler Christensen betrayed him at the British legation which provided London with their first knowledge that Casement was homosexual. He viewed himself as an ambassador of the Irish nation. While the journey was his idea, he managed to persuade the Clan na Gael to finance the expedition.
In November 1914, Casement negotiated a declaration by Germany which stated, "The Imperial Government formally declares that under no circumstances would Germany invade Ireland with a view to its conquest or the overthrow of any native institutions in that country. Should the fortune of this great war, that wasn't of Germany’s seeking ever bring in its course German troops to the shores of Ireland, they'd land there not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy but as the forces of a Government that's inspired by goodwill towards a country and people for whom Germany desires only national prosperity and national freedom.” He negotiated in Berlin with
Arthur Zimmermann then Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office and with the Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.
Most of his time in Germany, however, was spent in an attempt to recruit an "
Irish Brigade" consisting of Irish
prisoners-of-war in the prison camp of
Limburg an der Lahn, who would be trained to fight against Britain. During the war, Casement is also known to have been closely associated with the
Hindu German Conspiracy, recommending
Joseph McGarrity to
Franz von Papen as an intermediary for the plot. The Indian Nationalists may also have followed Casement's strategy in attempting to recruit from amongst Indian prisoners of war for the nationalist cause.
However, both efforts proved unsuccessful. The Irish plan failed as all Irishmen fighting in the British army did so voluntarily, and was abandoned after much time and money was wasted. The Germans, who were sceptical of Casement but nonetheless aware of the military advantage they could gain from an uprising in
Ireland, offered the Irish 20,000
rifles, 10
machine guns and accompanying ammunition, a fraction of the amount of weaponry Casement had hoped for and no German officers. The Hindu-German plot was also uncovered by British agents, opening the longest and most expensive
trial in American legal history at the time that also saw the conviction of notable
Irish nationalists. The
Archbishop of Canterbury asked John Harris of the Anti-Slavery Society and a missionary friend of Casement's to view them. He was shattered when he realised they were authentic. In a time of strong social conservatism, not least among Irish Catholics, the
Black Diaries undermined or at least stifled support for Casement. Certainly he never was married, or engaged or known for his love of women. They also led some of Casement's opponents to suggest that details about colonial sexual atrocities in his reports were based on his personal fantasies, though this wasn't supported by evidence. The diaries may now be inspected at the British
National Archives in
Kew.
Though some believed that the diaries were
forgeries, much as
Charles Stewart Parnell had been the target of the
Pigott forgeries implicating him in the
Phoenix Park Murders, others did not.
H. Montgomery Hyde,
Ulster Unionist Party MP and
barrister who campaigned for the release of the
Black Diaries in parliament in the 1950s and who wrote a book on Casement's trial, had no doubt that Casement had been a pederast.
In an effort to settle the issue, an independent forensic examination of the diaries, funded by RTÉ and the BBC, was recently undertaken by Dr. Audrey Giles, an internationally respected figure in the field of
document forensics. In comparing Casement's
White Diaries (ordinary diaries of the time) with the
Black Diaries, which allegedly date from the same time-span, the study concluded, on the basis of detailed
handwriting analysis, that the
Black Diaries were genuine and had been written by Casement.
This study, commissioned by a team of academics from
Goldsmiths, University of London, was submitted to the forensic expert James Horan for
peer review. Horan rejected the report. His main criticism was that there was no evidence that the comparative material used was the handwriting of Roger Casement. He noted that it was this problem which led to the mistaken authentication of the
Hitler diaries. The comparative material given to Dr Giles by the team from Goldsmiths was taken from the Morel Archive at the
London School of Economics. All of it passed through the hands of
British Intelligence after Morel's arrest in 1917.
State funeral
As was the custom at the time, Casement's body was buried in
quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of
Pentonville Prison, where he was hanged. The precise location of the prison cemetery is . In 1965, Casement's body was repatriated and, after a
state funeral, was buried with full military honours in the Republican Plot in
Glasnevin Cemetery in
Dublin. The
President of Ireland,
Éamon de Valera, who in his mid-eighties was the last surviving leader of the
Easter Rising, defied the advice of his doctors and attended the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 Irish citizens. Casement's last wish, to be buried at
Murlough Bay on the North
Antrim coast has yet to be fulfilled as Harold Wilson's government only released the remains on condition that they were not brought into Northern Ireland.
In the 1990s, doubts were cast as to whether the bones buried in Glasnevin were Casement's. It was suggested that when his prison grave was opened, it was impossible to distinguish his bones from those of other prisoners, and as result a skeleton was assembled from the bones found and arbitrarily described as Casement's.
Legacy
Landmarks, buildings and organisations
Many landmarks, buildings and organisations in Ireland are named after Casement including:
Song, story and verse
Casement was also the subject of ballads and poetry in Ireland in the wake of his death, including:
The ballad "Lonely Banna Strand" tells the story of Casement's role in the prelude to the Easter Rising, his arrest, and subsequent execution.
Arthur Conan Doyle used Casement as an inspiration for the character of Lord John Roxton in the 1912 novel The Lost World.
W. B. Yeats wrote a poem demanding the return of Casement's remains, which begins, "The ghost of Roger Casement is knocking on the door". Brendan Behan refers to the poem in his autobiographical novel Borstal Boy, and speaks of the repect his family had for Casement, noting that his older brother Rory Behan had been named after Casement.
Footnotes
Bibliography
By Roger Casement:
1914. The Crime against Ireland, and how the War may right it. Berlin: no publisher.
1914. Ireland, Germany and freedom of the seas: a possible outcome of the War of 1914. New York & Philadelphia: The Irish Press Bureau. Reprinted 2005: ISBN 1-421-94433-2
1915. The Crime against Europe. The causes of the War and the foundations of Peace. Berlin: The Continental Times.
1916. Gesammelte Schriften. Irland, Deutschland und die Freiheit der Meere und andere Aufsätze. Diessen vor München: Joseph Huber Verlag. Second expanded edition, 1917.
1918. Some Poems. London: The Talbot Press/T. Fisher Unwin.
1997. Roger Casement's diaries: 1910. The Black and the White. Sawyer, Roger, ed. London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-7375-X
??. The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. Angus Mitchell, ed. Anaconda Editions.
Secondary Literature, and other materials cited in this entry:
Dudgeon, Jeffrey, 2002. Roger Casement: The Black Diaries with a Study of his Background, Sexuality and Irish Political Life. Belfast. ISBN 0-9539287-2-1.
Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold's Ghost.
Hyde, H. (Harford) Montgomery, 1960. Trial of Roger Casement. London: William Hodge. Penguin edition 1964.
Hyde, H. Montgomery, 1970. The Love That Dared not Speak its Name. Boston: Little, Brown.
Inglis, Brian, 2002. Roger Casement, ISBN 0-14-139127-8.
Minta, Stephen, 1993. Aguirre: The Re-creation of a Sixteenth-Century Journey Across South America. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 0-8050-3103-0.
Mitchell, Angus, 2003. Casement (Life & Times Series). Haus Publishing Limited. ISBN 1-904-34141-1
O’Siochain, Séamas, 2008. Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary. Dublin: Lilliput Press.
O’Siochain, Séamas and Michael O’Sullivan, eds., 2004.The Eyes of Another Race: Roger Casement's Congo Report and 1903 Diary. University College Dublin Press. ISBN 1-900-62199-1
Reid, B.L., 1987. The Lives of Roger Casement. London: The Yale Press. ISBN 0-300-01801-0
Sawyer, Roger, 1984. Casement: The Flawed Hero. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Singleton-Gates, Peter, & Maurice Girodias, 1959. The Black Diaries. An account of Roger Casement's life and times with a collection of his diaries and public writings. Paris: The Olympia Press. First uncensored edition of the Black Diaries.
Wolf, Karin, 1972. Sir Roger Casement und die deutsch-irischen Beziehungen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. ISBN 3-428-02709-4.Further Information
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