Book Review
Sir Roger Casement’s Heart Of Darkness, The 1911 Documents, Angus Mitchell
While the student of Roger Casement’s life must engage with the ‘Black Diaries’, it is important not to neglect the real Casement as distinct from the false one portrayed in those diaries and various biographies.
Casement must be allowed speak for himself, which is what Angus Mitchell facilitates in this book and his other one The Amazon Journal Of Roger Casement (see review in the Irish Political Review, April 2026).
The existence of the genuine documents is a refutation of the forgeries. The former portrays an interesting human being, whereas to read the latter is an exercise in tedium.
The Casement that comes across in this book is a hardheaded thinker who always attempted to find practical solutions to political problems. This is most evident in his mission to investigate the allegations of slavery in the Putumayo region of South America.
The Putumayo region was a contested area between Colombia and Peru. Formally, it was part of Peru, but Peru and Colombia agreed to withdraw all garrisons from contested areas. Consequently, there was no semblance of law in the Putumayo region.
The Peruvian Amazon Company operated without legal restraints. It was financed by British capital. Mitchell points out that the British had a long involvement in South America.
In 1876 Sir Clements Markham (Royal Geographical Society) and Dr. Joseph Hooker (Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew), in a scheme financed by Henry Alexander Wickham, took (or stole) 70,000 rubber seeds from Peru, and brought them back to Kew. Once they were cultivated in England, they were transplanted to British colonies in Asia. Earlier they had done the same with the quinine yielding cinchona trees.
Interestingly, Mitchell notes that Markham was a homosexual, according to Francis Spufford in his book I May Be Some Time (London, 1996).
Markham massaged the truth regarding Scott of the Antarctic’s heroism and competence by forging entries in his Diaries. He was at the centre of the British Naval Intelligence community and supported Peru’s claims to Putumayo.
While the capital was raised in Britain, the person who directed the system of exploitation was Julio Arana, a Peruvian businessman. Prior to his involvement with the Peruvian Amazon Company, he had many years’ experience in the Rubber industry. The French ethnographer, Eugene Robuchon, accused him of committing atrocities against the Indian population. Robuchon was killed not long afterwards. It is widely believed that it was on Arana’s orders.
Robuchon’s diary was published posthumously but is suspected of being forged.
In 1909 the atrocities in the Putumayo were brought to the attention of the British public by an article in the investigative magazine Truth by Walter Hardenburg and Thomas Whiffen.
This was what prompted the British authorities to commission Roger Casement to investigate the allegations. Casement was acutely aware of the background. In a letter (9.12.1911) to his cousin, Gertrude Bannister, he says Arana accused Hardenburg and Whiffen of “sexual immorality” (Mitchell, p671).
To put it mildly, this was an extremely perilous assignment for Casement. To make matters worse, the mission was circumscribed by the US Monroe Doctrine. The British could not be seen to be interfering in the political affairs of Peru which was in America’s backyard.
The British interest in the matter resulted from the fact that the Peruvian Amazon Company was registered in England, and many of the employees were British subjects (from Barbados).
Casement could not interview individuals who were not British subjects, but he could be present when those individuals were interviewed. In short, his authority was extremely limited. He had to sneak around like a spy, except unlike most spies the objects of his spying were aware of what he was doing.
The easiest thing in the world would have been to denounce what he saw and condemn the activities of the Peruvian Amazon Company. That would have bolstered his reputation as a great humanitarian, but would have had no effect on the plight of the Indians. It would have been his word against that of the Peruvian authorities. The Peruvian Amazon Company would have been dissolved with the assets reverting to Arana, allowing him to continue as before without the scrutiny of anyone from Britain!
Instead, Casement embarked on the arduous task of collecting evidence for his Report. The Peruvian Amazon Company had divided the geographical area into sections. The head of each section was an absolute dictator over his domain. There were between 25 and 30 of these. Many of them were not unlike the Colonel Kurtz character played by Marlon Brando in the film Apocalypse Now—which in turn was based on a character in the famous novel Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Casement knew Conrad when he was in Africa.
The common element of the Putumayo and the Congo was the absence of a State.
Below the level of the section chiefs were about 250 overseers of which about 30 were from Barbados.
At the bottom of the pyramid were the thousands of Indians—who were hunted like wild animals and forced to extract rubber.
Casement’s approach was to seek Witness Statements from the Barbadian overseers. The difficulty he had was that they were complicit in the genocide of the Indian population that was taking place. (The Indian population had been reduced from 50,000 to about 7,000).
Also, he needed to protect his sources. He arranged for the Barbadians who helped him to leave the country as their lives were in danger.
As well as interviewing witnesses, he took photographs of the Indians showing the scars from the floggings. He weighed and documented the loads that the Indians (adults and children) were compelled to carry. He photographed the torture equipment, such as the cepos or stocks in which the Indians were held.
While the job of the overseers was to implement the punishment decreed by the chiefs of the sections, they were also victims. The overseers were indebted to the company because of purchases that they made from company supplies. The company, of course, was in a monopoly position in this remote region. In short, the company operated a system of bonded labour or peonage in relation to the overseers.
Casement did a thorough audit of the depots of the company and valued their stock. He showed that the overseers were grossly overcharged for the goods that they bought.
As a result the company was forced to adjust the accounts so that most of the overseers had their liabilities transformed to assets.
But, not only did he do this, he examined the purchase price of the low-quality items that the company was buying. He concluded that the company itself was buying at exorbitant prices. It was obvious that the section chiefs were obtaining kickbacks from local suppliers. So, the company was stealing from its overseers, and the section chiefs were stealing from the company. The Indians, of course, were not paid anything!
Casement’s thoroughness extended to investigating the contracts of the Barbadians. Their contracts included free accommodation, medical expenses, and meals. But these obligations were not honoured by the company.
It is noticeable that British foreign minister Edward Grey deferred to Casement in handling the investigation. Casement advised holding off on publication of his Report, to give the Peruvian authorities an opportunity to conduct their own investigations and take responsibility for the situation. Nevertheless, he occasionally leaked extracts of the Report to keep the pressure on the Peruvians. He also lobbied President Taft to make sure that the Americans were on board.
The explorer and physician Dr. Herbert Spencer Dickey, who accompanied Casement on his Amazon journey in 1911, gave the following insightful commentary on Casement:
“He did not at all do what even the competent representative of Empire would have done. He thought further and played always to produce a protective, practical effect instead of just coming out of the woods, hollering to high heaven, stirring up the criminals and getting a lot of publicity—for which, of course, everyone of his informants and every last Indian would have paid. Instead, he worked from within and in a sense with the ‘enemy’ to bring about enough change—or promise of it —to make sure of a better deal for the Indians—who after all were his first consideration. If he had busted the thing right open, he would, almost overnight, have ruined the only authority that, in the circumstances, could have at that time been exercised in the Putumayo—the Peruvian Amazon Company. A less thoughtful and practical investigator would have tumbled down the house of cards, and, just as he said, left the Indians at the hands of smaller bands of pirates…
“All this becomes clear as the diary record is pursued. I am certain that when I come to summarize, Casement will appear as an astonishingly astute and balanced investigator, completely without the slightest thought of himself, his laurels or the possibilities of penalties to his career. He was the rarest of all individuals—the man who wanted the best results for the other fellow, regardless. And you can’t tell me he was impractical”.
Casement largely succeeded in forcing the Peruvians to take some responsibility for the atrocities. The Peruvians commissioned a report by Dr. Romulo Parades which confirmed the substance of Casement’s Report. Indeed, it identified atrocities of which Casement was unaware.
This vindicated Casement’s strategy. If he had published his own Report in advance—to much fanfare—the natural instincts of the Peruvians would have been to dismiss it and condemn it as British imperialist interference in a sovereign country. But, by holding back on his own report, he gave the Peruvians the opportunity to do the right thing and ‘take ownership’ of the problem.
Of course, there is a completely different view of Casement—unburdened by evidence—from Basil Thomson, the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police in 1916. In his memoirs he says of Casement:
“Casement struck me as one of those men who are born with a strong strain of the feminine in their character. He was greedy for approbation, and he had the quick intuition of a woman as to the effect he was making on the people around him. He had a strong histrionic instinct. I have read many of his early letters. They are full of high ideals that ring quite true, and his sympathy with the down-trodden and his indignation against injustice were instinctive; but, like a woman, he was guided by instinct and not by reason, and where his sympathies were strongly moved it is very doubtful whether any reliance could be placed upon his accuracy. I have often wondered since how much exaggeration there was in his revelations about the Congo and Putumayo. Colleagues who served with him in his official days have told me that they never took his statements quite literally. They always allowed for an imaginative colouring. A few days before his execution he received a telegram from the person [Julio Arana, JM] who had been most injured by his statement about Putumayo, imploring him at that solemn moment to retract his unjust charges.”
That poor slaver Julio Arana!
Obviously, this account is complete rubbish. As indicated, Casement’s Report was confirmed by the report of Dr. Romulo Parades. Indeed, far from exaggerating, Casement understated the horror of the system of slavery over which Arana presided!
Later on, Thomson says:
“I have made special inquiry with a view to ascertaining how long Casement had been under the obsessions disclosed in the pages of his diary, and I feel certain that they were of comparatively recent growth, probably not much before the year 1910. This would seem to show that some mental disintegration had begun to set in, though it was not sufficient to impair his judgment or his knowledge of right and wrong.”
But Thomson seems to have forgotten that the 1903 Diary contains obsessional sexual material (long before 1910). All of which shows that even a professional liar can have difficulty keeping his story straight!
The facts are that Casement may have been passionate against injustice, but he never abandoned reason. He certainly was not “greedy for approbation”.
The following letter to the industrialist and philanthropist, William Cadbury, from Casement shows his practical orientation. It refers to a meeting of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. Casement thought that a Catholic Mission might do some good in the Putumayo. Since Peru was a Catholic country, it was not practical to propose missions from other denominations. He also thought it was pointless issuing moral denunciations of the Peruvian Amazon Company. But here is Casement in his own words:
“The idea of a Catholic Mission was one that, with one or two exceptions, they could not stand at all. Equally they seemed to think far more of ‘showing up’ the London Board than by reform and change and creating a sensible commerce out there. I spoke pretty plainly and said for my part I was not going to talk or ‘show up’ anybody—all I could and would work for was for any sensible scheme of bringing kindlier life and better men among these hunted tribes and I thought dogma and creed could be left out of the discussion… they seem to think that having taken a hand in finding out the truth is in itself an end. I told them I thought nothing had yet been done —we had only discovered how great the need for work was. So much for them”.
The correspondence in this book ranges beyond the subject of the Putumayo. A related subject concerned E.D. Morel, who was the head of the Congo Reform Association. Unlike Casement, he didn’t have a state income. He was an unpaid full-time activist who also happened to have a family to support. Casement was active in raising money to support Morel so that the latter could continue his work.
The correspondence gives a fascinating insight into his fund-raising activities and again shows Casement’s practical side. There is one incident in which he is meeting a wealthy Liverpool businessman. It was obvious to Casement that he was not going to receive any money from this miserable person but, rather than hitting his head against a brick wall, he asked this person to give him the names and addresses of his wealthy friends!
One of the tactics of Casement was to leverage existing contributions to obtain new contributions. So, for example, one of his donors, John Holt, was prepared to give £1,000 on condition that £9,000 was received from other donors.
Casement attempted to obtain funds from the Hartley company, which was a Jam manufacturer. But he refused to engage on the phone as the Hartley management wanted. He insisted on meeting in person, which would have made it more difficult for such managers to resist the force of his personality.
Casement had a hard-headed approach to politics. In a letter to Morel he gently rebuked the latter for taking a too high-minded attitude to the industrialist, W. H. Lever, for investing in Africa. He suggested to Morel that there was no point in opposing that: the most that could be achieved would be to influence Lever and his operation in Africa. He advised Morel not to disagree with Lever on inessentials.
In 1911 Casement was something of a poster boy for the Empire, but he did not wish to be a tool of British Imperialism. He was very far from being “greedy for approbation”.
In 1911 Lord Kitchener organised a mission to Turkey to investigate atrocities in the Balkans. Casement was to accompany Noel Buxton MP, but Casement refused to go! In his explanation to Buxton he said that he had—
“…doubts as to the authenticity of Turkish atrocities in general and of English sympathy for the victims in particular… With those considerations I could not sympathise, for the object really aimed at was not the betterment of the Balkan people but the attainment of British aims against Germany.”
The other subject that Casement was engaged with was the cause of Irish Nationalism. As indicated in a previous article, this was what angered the British the most: particularly since he placed Irish nationalism in an international context.
When Thomson wrote about Casement’s “obsessions”, that began just before 1910, it is likely that what he was really referring to was Casement’s nationalism, which was beginning to attract the attention of the British State.
There aren’t as many letters on this topic. One reason for this is that Casement was aware that he was watched. In a letter (16.6.1911) to Alice Stopford Green, he suggested that she burn a letter he’d given her from Bulmer Hobson. It was not just that he wanted to protect himself, but he also did not wish to undermine the position of those with whom he was communicating.
This caginess by Casement has been interpreted as an attempt to hide his “dark secrets”. But a far more straightforward explanation is that he wished to conceal his involvement in nationalist politics from the British authorities. To take the example above, it is inconceivable that correspondence with Bulmer Hobson, which was shared with Stopford Green, would have anything of a sexual nature contained within it!
In 1911 Casement was anxious for Stopford Green’s book on Irish history to achieve a wide audience. Accordingly, he applied his mind to the practical business of promoting the book. In a letter (19.4.1911) to Bulmer Hobson he outlined some of his ideas.
He wanted Hobson to be an agent for selling the book. Other ideas included giving 500 copies of consignment stock to Tom Clarke to sell in his shop, allowing Clarke to keep 25% profit. Another idea was to have sandwich boys walking up and down O’Connell Street in kilts advertising the book!
In the course of the letter he mentions: “a bicycle or motor bike might soon come in”. It is likely that this was the motor bike registered in J.M. Gordon’s name. The bike was not a personal gift to Gordon, but a means to distribute nationalist literature.
The key point is to control the distribution! In this connection he says:
“If it is left to Easons etc, they may sell 2,000 all told thro’ all Ireland—my plan of special agency etc, will sell 20,000 copies”.
A reading of Mitchell’s book presents a coherent practical Casement. There is nothing mysterious about him. T here is no need to resort to abstruse psychological theories to explain him. There is a consistent pattern to his behaviour. Every piece in the Casement jigsaw puzzle fits.
The “puzzle” only becomes difficult if the reader allows extraneous pieces to distort the picture. Once these fabricated pieces have been discarded the picture becomes clear.
Mitchell’s work is an essential counter to the distorted view of Casement that was first disseminated in 1916 (although planned much earlier)—a plan of character assassination that has had its apologists right up to the present day.
John Martin
