The Casement Report

Reproduction of the original: The Casement Report by Roger Casement

In September 1910, the human rights activist and anti-imperialist Roger Casement arrived in the Amazon to investigate reports of widespread human rights abuses in the vast forests stretching along the Putumayo river. There, the Peruvian entrepreneur Julio Csar Arana ran an area the size of Belgium as his own private fiefdom; his British registered company operated a systematic programme of torture, exploitation and murder. Fresh from documenting the scarcely imaginable atrocities perpetrated by King Leopold in the Congo, Casement was confronted with an all too recognisable scenario. He uncovered an appalling catalogue of abuse: nearly 30,000 Indians had died to produce four thousand tonnes of rubber. From the Peruvian rainforests to the City of London, Jordan Goodman recounts a crime against humanity that history has almost forgotten, but whose exposure in 1912 sent shockwaves around the world. Drawing on a wealth of original research, The Devil and Mr Casement is a story of colonial exploitation and corporate greed with enormous contemporary political resonance.

"King Leopold of Belgium's exploits up the Congo River in the 1880s were central to the European partitioning of the African continent. The Congo Free State, Leopold's private colony, was a unique political construct that opened the door to the savage exploitation of the Congo's natural and human resources by international corporations. The resulting 'red rubber' scandal—which laid bare a fundamental contradiction between the European propagation of free labor and 'civilization' and colonial governments' acceptance of violence and coercion for productivity's sake—haunted all imperial powers in Africa. Featuring a clever introduction and judicious collection of documents, Michael Rutz's book neatly captures the drama of one king's quest to build an empire in Central Africa—a quest that began in the name of anti-slavery and free trade and ended in the brutal exploitation of human lives. This volume is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the history of colonial rule in Africa." —Jelmer Vos, University of Glasgow

The story of the colonisation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium during the scramble for Africa is one of the greatest human rights tragedies of recent history. At its core was the exploitation of wild rubber, then in increasing demand in Western markets. The population of the region was subjected to what was in effect slave labour - a regime of unbridled savagery which included imprisonment, whipping, bodily mutilations and killing. On 5 June 1903, Roger Casement left his consular base on the Lower Congo River and made a journey through the regions of the Upper Congo to investigate at first hand reports of alleged atrocities. After three months travelling, he arrived back in Leopoldville on Stanley Pool on 15 September and telegraphed the Foreign Office immediately: 'I have returned from the Upper Congo today with convincing evidence of shocking misgovernment and wholesale oppression.' Towards the end of the year Casement returned to London, where he put together his formal report in consultation with officials of the Foreign Office. The Congo Report was presented to Parliament in 1904. It was a crucial instrument in the British government's efforts to bring about change in King Leopold's Congo Free State. This edition includes not only the report, which has long been unavailable in English, but also Casement's diary of that year. The diary provides invaluable glimpses of the details of his investigation of the human relationships involved and of the life of a remarkable consul during a key year of his life. Both documents have been carefully edited: names which were omitted from the original published report have been reinstated, and explanatory notes provided for the report and diary. -- Publisher description.

A fascinating study that explores the power of the racially identified hand as a narrative symbol in Victorian literature and culture.

The humanitarian movement against Leopold’s violent colonisation of the Congo emerged out of Europe, but it depended at every turn on African input. Individuals and groups from throughout the upper Congo River basin undertook journeys of daring and self-sacrifice to provide evidence of atrocities for the colonial authorities, missionaries, and international investigators. Combining archive research with attention to recent debates on the relation between imperialism and humanitarianism, on trauma, witnessing and postcolonial studies, and on the recovery of colonial archives, this book examines the conditions in which colonised peoples were able to speak about their subjection, and those in which attempts at testimony were thwarted. Robert Burroughs makes a major intervention by identifying African agency and input as a key factor in the Congo atrocities debate. This is an important and unique book in African history, imperial and colonial history, and humanitarian history.

This narrative of the creation, development and collapse both of King Leopold's regime, and of the Belgian colony that replaced it, provides insight into the nature of European colonialism in Africa and the consequences for Europe itself.

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.