Background
Roger David Casement was born at Sandycove, County Dublin, on Sept. 1, 1864, the son of a captain in the British Army.
humanitarian activist Irish nationalist poet
Roger David Casement was born at Sandycove, County Dublin, on Sept. 1, 1864, the son of a captain in the British Army.
His father's family were Ulster Protestants, and Casement was educated at Ballymena Academy, a Protestant school in County Antrim.
In 1887, Roger David Casement joined an expedition organized for the exploration of the Congo. Between 1892 and 1895 he was traveling commissioner in the Nigerian Protectorate for the Colonial Office. From 1895 to 1898 he was British consul at LourençoLourenco Marques, in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. He then became consul at Luanda in Portuguese Angola and in 1901 at Boma, which was the capital of the Congo Free State at that time.
In 1903, the British government sent Casement up the Congo to inquire into the alleged mistreatment of British non-white colored subjects. He returned with a scathing indictment of the system of rubber collection forced on the Congolese people by the Belgian authorities and furnished detailed evidence of wholesale mutilations and killings. His report aroused deep international concern. An official Belgian commission substantiated most of Casement's charges; and in 1908 the Free State--hitherto a personal possession of the Belgian king--came to an end, being formally ceded to Belgium.
Casement had been transferred in 1906 to Brazil, where he served first as consul at Santos, then at ParáPara (1907), and finally, beginning in 1908, as consul-general at Rio de Janeiro. In this capacity he was sent out in July 1910 to investigate allegations of further atrocities being committed against native rubber collectors, in this instance by the London-owned Peruvian Amazon Company. It had been charged that as a result of these atrocities the Huitotos Indians, a Peruvian tribe living on the Putumayo (a tributary of the Upper Amazon), had almost been exterminated. At the risk of his life, Casement established the truth of the charges; his report was published in another blue book in 1912. Next year the company was dissolved by Parliament.
For his services on the Putumayo, Casement was knighted in 1911. In 1913 after 19 years of distinguished service to the British foreign office, his health ruined by malaria and tropical fevers, Sir Roger retired on a small pension and settled in Ireland. Since boyhood he had been an ardent Irish nationalist, and he now threw himself vehemently into the Home Rule movement and the Gaelic League.
In July 1914 he visited the United States seeking financial and political support for the cause of Irish freedom. He was in New York when World War I broke out, and he determined to seek German help for an independent Irish republic. Evading the British blockade, Sir Roger arrived in Berlin on Oct. 31, 1914.
His plan to recruit an Irish brigade from Irish prisoners in German camps failed completely. By 1916 he was convinced that Germany would not furnish adequate support to any Irish rebellion. Knowing that a rising had been planned for Easter, 1916, and realizing that he was risking death, Casement resolved to go to Ireland in a German submarine. His declared intention was to warn the Irish leaders, if possible, that without German help the revolt was doomed or, failing that, to die with his compatriots.
Sir Roger landed on the coast of Kerry on Good Friday, April 21; he was captured almost at once and sent to London, where he was imprisoned in the Tower. Convicted of high treason on June 29, he was hanged in Pentonville Gaol on Aug. 3, 1916. The day before his execution he became a Roman Catholic. His last request to be buried in Ireland was refused by successive British governments. Finally, in 1965, this last wish was granted and Sir Roger's remains were returned to Ireland for burial.
Originally a Protestant, Casement converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before his death.
Quotations: "Loyalty is a sentiment, not a law. "