An appeal on behalf of the “weird little guys” of history
Often, when studying history, you come across what I like to call “weird little guys“. These are figures that stay with you in your journey through history. For me, that “little guy” is Sir Roger Casement. Regarded by many as the ‘father of human rights’, his life followed a particularly dramatic arc.
Born in Dublin in 1864 to a Protestant father and Catholic mother, Casement was raised in the Church of Ireland but secretly baptised in his mother’s faith at 3 years old. Orphaned by his teens, he was taken in by relatives in Liverpool, where he worked until he joined the consular service. There, he was given the responsibility of setting up the British consulate in Congo.
As consul of Boma, Casement was sent to investigate reports of the cruelties of the rubber trade in the Congo Free State (CFS) – a large area of Africa controlled by the Belgian king Leopold II as an absolute monarchy. Here, Casement exposed “‘great mal-administration”. He collected first-hand accounts of violence, including flogging, hostage-taking, mutilation, and murder, against all workers, despite his instructions only concerning British subjects. Casement wrote emotional letters back to the Foreign Office which, believing them to be sensationalist, recalled him to write what became the Casement Report. His draft, a graphic and comprehensive document, was undermined by Foreign Office fears of legal repercussions: the names of victims, perpetrators and villages were censored. Frustrated with the lack of action, Casement supported the creation of the Congo Reform Association. Although Leopold II held onto the CFS until 1908, scholars agree that its eventual annexation by the Belgian state would have been impossible without his work.
“I am sick at the heart for the lot of these people and ashamed of my own skin and colour, where to be a whiteman means to be a greedy and pitiless oppressor”
Casement in in a letter to the Foreign Office while in Congo, 6 September 1903
Casement set the precedent for modern investigations of ‘human rights violations’ which he would take further as consul-general in Rio de Janeiro. Here, Casement investigated cruelties of the British-associated Peruvian Amazon Company in the Putumayo River region. Although only tasked with investigating cruelties against Barbadian/British subjects he again extended his remit to the treatment of native workers, travelling extensively to do so. Casement discovered conditions equally, if not more, horrific than the CFS. In 1911, his report was published and a Select Committee set up in response. Although most perpetrators evaded justice, the recommendations of the committee expanded the protective role of British consuls to include native populations as ‘stateless peoples’ and introduced the concept of an ‘international consular service’. Casement’s reputation rose and he was awarded a knighthood.
“I would hang every one of the band of wretches with my own hands if I had the power and do it with the greatest pleasure”
Casement in a private letter from his time in Putumayo, 29 September 1910
Putumayo, 1910 (NPA CAS14A)
“the ‘White Indians’ of Ireland are heavier on my heart than all the Indians of the rest of the world”
Note by Casement on a letter to him from Charles Roberts, chairman of the Select Committee on the Putumayo, 6 June 1913
Despite this, Casement’s resentment toward the British state was growing. He increasingly felt the British treatment of workers in its colonial regions was no different from its oppression of the Irish. He began publishing anti-British essays before resigning from consular service in 1913. Shortly after the beginning of WW1, he travelled to Berlin to recruit Irish POWs to fight in an insurrection in Ireland with German weapons. Unsuccessful, he returned to Ireland just before the Easter Rising, likely to stop it. Casement was intercepted, arrested and tried for treason. On the stand, he argued that his country was Ireland, not Britain, and so he could not be treasonous. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to death and stripped of his knighthood.
“Surely his long record of splendid work for humanity, and the way in which in the past he sacrficed health, comfort and all thought of the ordinary happiness of home life, should tell in his favour…”
Excerpt from a petition for celemency for Roger Casement, found in the belongings of John Howard Whitehouse, a former parliamentary private secretary to Lloyd George
The British Government feared that by executing Casement they would create an ‘Irish martyr’. Notable figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle publicly called for clemency. The solution came in the “Black Diaries”, discovered by police while investigating Casement. These dairies contained explicit descriptions of sexual encounters with young men and boys throughout his time in Congo, Putumayo and beyond. Excerpts were distributed amongst journalists, politicians, and notable Irish-Americans who came to his defence. Casement was abandoned, labelled a pervert, and hung 3 August 1916. During his postmortem, the medical examiner even inspected Casement’s anus, deeming him an “addict”.
“I made the examination, which was the subject of our conversation at the Home Office on Tuesday, after the conclusion of the inquest today, and found unmistakeable evidence of the practices to which, it was alleged, the prisoner in question had been addicted. The anus was at a glance seen to be dilated and examination (rubber gloves) I found that the lower part of the bowel was dilated as far as the finger could reach.”
A memo, marked “secret” regarding Casement’s postmortem from the Pentonville medical officer to the medical comissioner of prisons
Casement’s work in Congo and Putumayo successfully exposed the violence of colonial enterprises against both British subjects and, crucially, native populations. Perhaps Casement should never have been in these regions in the first place, he was, after all, part of Britain’s colonial endeavours. But Casement was certainly more than just a tool of colonial power. His advocacy for the rights of indigenous populations is admirable, despite it, in his own words, “far exceeding” his instructions and at “all personal costs”. His letters, both work and private, are emotionally driven, possibly a tad dramatic, but undeniably sincere. It would be too cynical to discredit the great personal lengths Casement went to collect oral accounts from all victims of violence. It is hard not to see Casement’s work as the foundation for the humanitarian groups we see today.
Yet, Casement’s legacy has been clouded by his “Black Diaries”. Many Irish Nationalists maintained the diaries were forgeries, planted by the British government, to rob him of any moral superiority regarding Irish independence. Multiple analyses of the dairies have tried to prove their authenticity, or lack thereof. The most recent and comprehensive, ordered by the Irish government in 2002, concluded they were genuine. On the results, a spokesman said: “You can’t call for an inquiry and reject the results. But this will be a blow to some people“. Therein lies the problem.
Can Casement not just be gay? To continue to speculate on his sexuality preserves the idea that his queerness undercuts both his groundbreaking humanitarian work and contribution to Irish Nationalism. This sentiment perpetuates the notion that his sexuality damages his legacy. I do not mean to celebrate Casement as a ‘gay icon’. The repetition of “about 18” in his description of his sexual encounters is uncomfortable and, today, he could be called a “sexual imperialist”. Moreover, we know very little about how Casement felt about homosexuality, and what we do contradicts itself. He must simply be allowed to exist in the historical narrative as a gay man, alongside his achievements.
In short, Casement is “too interesting to be airbrushed for any particular cause” or… , as I said, a fascinatingly weird little guy. He perhaps sums up the best way to approach it himself:
“I made awful mistakes, and did heaps of things wrong, confused much and failed at much – but I very near came to doing some big things… It was only a shadow they tried on June 26; the real man was gone”
Casement to Richard Morten, 28 July 1916
and Revolutionary’ by Sarah Henrietta Purser, 1914
(NGI.1376)
FURTHER READING:
- Brian Lewis, ‘The Queer Life and Afterlife of Roger Casement‘ Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14. 4 (2005), pp. 363–82.
- Angus Mitchell, ‘Black Diaries: Roger Casement and the History Question‘ History Ireland, 24. 4 (2016), pp.34–37.
- On the political ramifications of Casement’s exhumation see:
- Kevin Grant, ‘Bones of Contention: The Repatriation of the Remains of Roger Casement.‘ Journal of British Studies 41. 3 (2002) pp. 329–53.
- Chris Reeves, ‘The Penultimate Irish Problem: Britain, Ireland and the Exhumation of Roger Casement.‘ Irish Studies in International Affairs, 12 (2001), pp. 151–78.
- Although sometimes clumsy surrounding Casement’s sexuality, Reid and Sawyer offer incredibly detailed biographies. Both are available via the Internet Archive.
- B.L. Reid, The Lives of Roger Casement (Yale University Press, 1976)
- Roger Sawyer, Casement, The Flawed Hero (Routledge & K. Paul, 1984)