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"This book, from the previously unpublished manuscript in the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."
Executed by the British in 1916 for treason, Roger Casement is one
of Ireland's most colorful, mythologized, and controversial
figures. His infamous Black Diaries, with their homosexual
materials, were famously published by the Olympia Press in a
suspect edition in 1959. In 1903 when he was a British consul, he
left his base on the Lower Congo River and made a Conrad-like
journey through the "heart of darkness" regions of the Upper Congo
to personally investigate reports of alleged atrocities (Conrad
found Casement to be "most intelligent and sympathetic"). His
subsequent report gained him fame by exposing the appalling
cruelties of the colonial and commercial regime there, and was a
crucial instrument in the British government's efforts to bring
about change in King Leopold's Congo Free State. He later exposed
similar exploitation in Niger, Mozambique, and South America. This
carefully edited work brings together Casement's report, as well as
his diary of that year, with previously excised names restored and
explanatory notes provided. The editors provide an overview of
Casement's career and a thorough historical background to these
documents. Seamus O Siochain teaches at the National University of
Ireland and is completing a major biography of Casement. Michael
O'Sullivan was at Dublin City University until his death in 2002.
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