In the 1880s the Ulster Protestant Roger Casement worked as one of HM Stanley's volunteers in the Congo, before joining the British consular service. In 1904 he produced a devastating report which showed how the Congo Free State, far from being the model colony Leopold II of Belgium claimed it to be, was a ruthless commercial enterprise run with unrelenting cruelty for Leopold's profit. Six years later he provided an even more horrifying report on how Amazonian Indians were exploited by the Peruvian Amazon company, a British-based rubber company. For this he was knighted in 1911. An Irish nationalist, when war broke out in 1914 he went to Germany to secure a treaty giving Ireland formal recognition of her nationhood. Upon returning in a u-boat to Ireland in 1916 he was captured, brought to London and sentenced to death as a traitor. To blacken his name further, rumours about his black diaries claimed that he was a practising homosexual. The author Brian Inglis was allowed access to the relevant files at the Public Record Office in order to help research this biography.
In this revised and expanded second edition with more photographs, all Roger Casement's Black Diaries are, uniquely, again published together, including the never-before-seen erotically-charged 1911 Diary over which London threatened an obscenity prosecution. A number of new characters are introduced and some old mysteries solved. The volume provides both a comprehensive view of the diaries' texts, with explanations for many of the cast of characters, famous, infamous, and fleeting, and a context for the author whose significance and seminal role in the political development of independent Ireland has been masked by the debates over the diaries' authenticity. This is a uniquely fresh and original look at the Irish patriot and humanitarian, hanged in 1916 for treason. It was the same Casement whose reports on rubber slavery and genocide in King Leopold's Congo and the Peruvian Amazon, in 1904 and 1911, reflected in two of his Black Diaries, that shocked Edwardian England. The book also deals with the neglected sides of Casement's life, his involvement in Ulster politics, his family background in Co. Antrim, his Belfast boyfriend Millar Gordon, and his sociopathic companion, the Norwegian sailor, Adler Christensen, as well as a comprehensive view of the authenticity controversies, Casement's homosexuality, and his time in Africa and Brazil. Roger Casement had iconic status in life and after death was sanctified and vilified in equal measure. His real self was consequently obscured. This book combines a rigorous academic study of Casement, the public and political figure (with over 1,000 references and an extensive bibliography, updated to 2016), alongside an account of his personal life, sexuality, and consular career, and an informed view of how they all interlocked and originated. It also provides a fresh assessment of the events leading up to the Easter Rising and British intelligence failings, and an up-to-date account of the controversies that have swirled around Casement to this day, including the attempts made in Dublin, from the 1930s, to threaten the truth about the Black Diaries. '"No Roger Casement - No Easter Rising"' Casement groomed the key personnel who set about creating the Irish Republic, from 1904 to 1923. He commissioned the first arms for the IRA - on two occasions, in 1914 and 1916. To know about Roger Casement is to know why Ireland achieved independence and why Ulster stayed separate remaining in the UK after partition. This volume therefore provides an insight into the political conflict in the north and suggests how it could be diminished by both learning and respecting each other's stories and agreeing to disagree.
A fascinating examination of the extraordinary life of Roger Casement, executed as part of the 1916 rising, fighting the empire that had previously knighted him. Roger Casement was a British consul for two decades. However, his investigation into atrocities in the Congo led Casement to anti-Imperialist views. Ultimately, this led him to side with the Irish Republican movement, leading up to the 1916 rising. Arrested by the British for gun trafficking, he was incarcerated in the Tower of London and then placed in the dock at the Royal Courts of Justice in an internationally-publicised state trial for high treason. He was hanged in Pentonville prison on the 3 August—two years to the day after Britain's declaration of war in 1914.
A New York Times Notable Book from the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author. “An imaginative exploration of the tragedy of lost friendship” (Los Angeles Times). In prose that is darkly humorous and alive with detail, Valiant Gentlemen reimagines the lives and intimate friendships of humanitarian and Irish patriot Roger Casement; his closest friend, Herbert Ward; and Ward’s extraordinary wife, the Argentinian American heiress Sarita Sanford. Valiant Gentlemen takes the reader on an intimate journey, from Ward and Casement’s misadventurous youth in the Congo—where, among other things, they bore witness to an Irish whiskey heir’s taste for cannibalism—to Ward’s marriage to Sarita and their flourishing family life in France, to Casement’s covert homosexuality and enduring nomadic lifestyle floating between his work across the African continent and involvement in Irish politics. When World War I breaks out, Casement and Ward’s longstanding political differences finally come to a head and when Ward and his teenage sons leave to fight on the frontlines for England, Casement begins to work alongside the Germans to help free Ireland from British rule. What results is tragic and riveting, as both men are forced to confront notions of love and betrayal in the face of the vastly different tracks their lives have taken. Reminiscent of the work of Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje, Valiant Gentlemen is a uniquely human account of some of early twentieth century’s larger historical figures from a “ravishing” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and “brilliant” voice in fiction today (The Boston Globe).
One Bold Deed of Open Treason describes the astonishing journey by Roger Casement to Germany in 1914, via New York and Norway. Arriving into Berlin under a false identity, Casement entered a space of conspiracy and subterfuge. Through his vivid and gripping diary entries, a picture emerges of a man caught in the crossfire of international events and spiralling towards a tragic denouement. In recording his daily thoughts, emotions and movements, Casement chronicles his despair at the conflict he witnessed, his hopeless mission to raise an Irish brigade and his attempts to promote the cause of Ireland in an escalating world crisis. With an expert editorial hand, Angus Mitchell provides clear context to Casement’s diaries, revealing his gruelling visit to the Western Front, the shocking interplay between the Easter Rising and the international theatre of the First World War, and the grand, sacrificial conclusion of his life.
This is one title in a series of short, illustrated biographies. They tellhe stories of those who have shaped our present and our past, from Beethoveno Dietrich and from Einstein to Churchill.;Roger Casement (1864-1916) isemembered in England as a "traitor", but passionately revered in Ireland as founding father of the Irish state. By 1913, with an internationaleputation as a saviour of the oppressed in Africa and South America, Siroger Casement resigned from the Foreign Office and devoted himself openly tohe cause of Irish independence. He was a founder of the Irish Volunteers andoon after the outbreak of World War I travelled to Germany to seeknternational guarantees for Irish independence. Returning to Ireland in 1916,e was arrested on the eve of the Easter Rising, given a state trial inondon and executed for high treason.
"This book, from the previously unpublished manuscript in the National Library of Ireland, is a valuable and deeply detailed edition of the diary kept by Casement during his journey into the South American rainforests. He had been sent by the British government to report on atrocities against tribal people while being forced to collect rubber in the Putumayo region in the north-west Amazon. Genocide among the Amazon Indians has continued, but external investigations of this kind have been rare. The way in which Roger Casement carried out his work is still relevant to all kinds of humanitarian and whistle-blowing activities. It is also a key text charting Casement's transition from observer to anti-imperial revolutionary and Irish independence leader, culminating in his execution by the British government in August 1916 after the Easter Rising."
Roger Casement, the retired British consular official tried for treason and executed for securing German rifles to help the 1916 Rising in Ireland, has been a focus of controversy since the 1930s, with specific reference to the so-called Black diaries allegedly forged by British intelligence in c.1916. Forensic tests on the diaries commissioned by a committee chaired by W.J. McCormack have now shown that the diaries were written by Casement. This work is centred on W.J. Maloney, whose 1936 book, "The Forged Casement Diaries", brought the topic to the attention of the Irish public, and was part of an Irish-American campaign to influence the domestic politics of the Irish Free State. The book raises questions about intelligence work, archival engineering, IRA unofficial action, Nazi propaganda and new light is shed on major figures such as Eamon de Valera and W.B. Yeats, as well as on a cast of colourful bit players.
"Martin Duberman is a national treasure." —Masha Gessen, The New Yorker Roger Casement was an internationally renowned figure at the beginning of the 20th century, famous for exposing the widespread atrocities against the indigenous people in King Leopold's Congo and his subsequent exposure—for which he was knighted in 1911—of the brutal conditions of enslaved labor in Peru. An Irish nationalist of profound conviction, he attempted, at the outbreak of World War I, to obtain German support and weapons for an armed rebellion against British rule. Apprehended and convicted of treason in a notorious trial that captured worldwide attention, Casement was sentenced to die on the gallows. A powerful petition drive for the commutation of his sentence was inaugurated by George Bernard Shaw and a host of other influential figures. A gay man, Casement kept detailed diaries of his sexual escapades, and the British government, upon discovering the diaries, circulated its pages to public figures, thereby crippling what had been a mounting petition for clemency. In 1916, he was hanged. In this gripping reimagining, acclaimed historian Martin Duberman paints a full portrait of the man for the first time. Tracing his evolution from servant of the empire to his work as a humanitarian activist and anti-imperialist, Duberman resurrects and recognizes all facets—from the professional to the personal—of the fantastic life of this pioneer for human rights.
