Roger Casement

16 Lives

by Angus Mitchell

A fascinating examination of the extraordinary life of Roger Casement, executed as part of the 1916 rising, fighting the empire that had previously knighted him.
Roger Casement was a British consul for two decades. However, his investigation into atrocities in the Congo led Casement to anti-Imperialist views. Ultimately, this led him to side with the Irish Republican movement, leading up to the 1916 rising.
Arrested by the British for gun trafficking, he was incarcerated in the Tower of London and then placed in the dock at the Royal Courts of Justice in an internationally-publicised state trial for high treason. He was hanged in Pentonville prison on the 3 August—two years to the day after Britain’s declaration of war in 1914.

Genres: History, Biography, Ireland, Irish Literature

414 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2013

About the author

Angus Mitchell was born in Africa and educated in England. From 1987 to 1992 he lived in Spain where he wrote extensively on Spanish culture, food and cinema and published the widely-acclaimed Spain: Interiors, Gardens, Architecture, Landscape. From 1992-98 he lived in Brazil where he worked as a film and television correspondent and helped to develop the award-winning historical drama, Carlota Joaquina: Princess of Brazil (1995). Since 1998, he has lived in Ireland. For over two decades, he has studied the life and legacy of Roger Casement and a group of associated radicals, pacifists, feminists, cosmopolitan nationalists, internationalists and other critics of empire. He sits on the editorial board of History Ireland and is a regular contributor to the on-line Dublin Review of

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Casement is the most enigmatic martyr of the Rising, his life full of ambiguities, his biography crowded with questions. He kept secrets: he concealed his work for British intelligence from his corporate employers, his investigations into human rights abuses from the government of the Congo, his commitment to Irish freedom by revolutionary means from his British masters, and his active homosexuality from almost everybody. The result? He was distrusted by everyone, from the British political establishment to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The knighthood he received for human rights activism in Peru was stripped from him, his loyalty to the Irish cause called into question, and his reputation tarnished by a sexually explicit “private diary” (almost certainly—in the opinion of our author Angus Mitchell—a forgery.)

Still, amid the swirl of ambiguities, a vivid picture emerges. Casement was a man who loved Ireland deeply, and, as he investigated thoroughly the human rights abuses of the age, he came to feel, with profound conviction, that the exploitation of indigenous peoples by foreign empires was pre-figured—with indisputable clarity—in Britain’s treatment of the Irish nation. Roger Casement—universally acknowledged as a champion of human rights and a pioneer in the development of NGO’s (non-governmental organizations dedicated to universal justice)--sacrificed his life without ambiguity for sake of the Irish people.

Because of the problematic nature of Casement’s life, this biography of Mitchell’s is really more of a meta-biography, an exploration of the questions which inevitably arise in the examination of Casement’s life. Mitchell is an excellent writer, in full command of his subject, and has produced an enlightening and informative book on the life of this admirable, complicated man.

[Deirdre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Casement is a man whose reputation was destroyed by wartime expedience and propaganda. Glossed over in Irish history because of supposed homosexuality. I don't care, and the murk of propaganda has obscured any truth that may be, the facts are that he didn't marry, that he had both female and male friends and that he often stayed with male friends.

Casement gave his health in the service of the crown, he investigated atrocities in both Congo and Brazil. He started asking inconvenient questions about colonialism and when he did this he also had to ask inconvenient questions about Ireland and it's experience and this led to his sympathies with Irish Nationalists.

This doesn't go into much about Casement as a person, though I suspect he was quite driven and probably got very mono-focused when he had something to research. He made friends and then drove them away and was probably quite a complicated man to deal with. Still he has influence and his legacy of talking about fair trade exists to this day.

His trial was a mess, his legal council let him down and the country that held his actions treasonous actually treated him so badly it wasn't funny.

A complex man and this is probably not the last biography to be written about him.

[Nion · Rating 4 out of 5]

这书基本解释了Casement从英国的明星外交官和情报人员转变为死于英国绞刑架上的爱尔兰民族主义者的过程和思想逻辑，但是在历史背景上着墨甚少，Casement揭露比利时和秘鲁公司在非洲和南美洲的殖民暴行，使他成为呼吁人权平等、环境保护、公平贸易的先锋，但作者没有进一步说明这背后国家间的利益纠葛，这段时间英政府大力支持他必然有自身的利益考量而不是仅仅良心发现？同样的，如果对爱尔兰争取独立的过程不太了解，看到一些名词和事件时也会有点迷糊。
书的重点还是Casement推动爱尔兰独立运动，反抗英国对爱尔兰的殖民式剥削和压迫，特别强调他的职业生涯使他对政治黑幕的内部操作十分熟悉，察觉到英国的外交渐渐沦为统治阶层内部的秘密协定，预见到帝国主义的扩张野心和鹰派势力会在英德之间掀起战争，经过篡改和修剪的新闻则会激起民众对德仇恨，把帝国战争美化成正邪之战，而爱尔兰会像其他殖民地一样为此流尽鲜血。但是他因此认为德国是抵抗英国霸权的希望，转向德国寻求支持爱尔兰独立是否过于天真，还是对英国的仇恨已经超越理智判断，亦或是两害择其轻的绝望之举？很遗憾作者并没有在这点上进行讨论。
时代的确对Casement不利，Home Rule因为一战爆发而被搁置，温和路线被极端行为取代，Easter Rising时索姆河战役还未打响，被战争神化的牺牲精神仍有强大的号召力，对德国的仇恨使得Casement很难在被德军俘虏的爱尔兰士兵中找到支持他反抗英国的听众(因此失去了德国支持)，而英政府更不会允许在此时出现国家分裂，即使伪造证据、修改法律也要给这位曾经蜚声国际的人道主义者安上道德沦丧、叛国欺世的罪名，不让他成为烈士。
Casement生前过着四处漂泊的生活，许多工作都涉及机密，他在被捕前就意识到保存第一手资料将是他对付谎言和抹黑的重要武器，但是很可惜仍有不少文件缺失。他在狱中被限制发声，许多故事随之消失。他死后被草草无名下葬，尸骨上撒了石灰加速分解，英政府也将他的大量文件列为机密，希望他的事迹尽快被遗忘在档案馆的灰尘中，直到90年代才被迫解密，黑日记的真伪至今仍然让研究者们争论不休(作者否认了黑日记的真实性，说它和Casement的个人成就完全不相关，但没有讨论Casement的性取向，后面又说他超越了许多限制，可以是gay icon也是让我迷惑作者在这点上到底怎么想的)。Casement曾强烈批判英国的官方正史中存在篡改事实的虚假信息，一战中英国最先对新闻展开系统审查，利用大众媒体操纵舆论走向，这种行为至今依然普遍存在。拒绝遗忘、寻求真相，是和爱尔兰独立运动同样重要的遗产。
Casement的人生经历真的很吸引人继续挖掘，我觉得只看这一本传记可能会片面，但是前坑未出再跳新坑...啊啊啊不要!

[Nick Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and in depth look into the life and subsequent death of Casement. An interesting view of the first world war, jaded by his earlier life in Africa and South America.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short biography of Sir Roger Casement makes the argument that—long before he was arrested for running guns to Irish nationalists—Casement was making strong intellectual contributions not only to the cause of Irish nationalism, but also to a broader international anti-imperialist freedom fight. Central to this book’s theme is the use of “terminological inexactitude” (that is, lying) deployed in the cause of one’s view of the good of the country. Winston Churchill was a famous and unabashed practitioner, who once vowed to an opponent that history would prove the opponent wrong because Churchill himself would write the history—as he in fact did. Churchill and others in power therefore receive much abuse in 16 Lives for the terminological inexactitude with which they treated Casement, which still dogs his reputation into the present. The author largely steers clear of the issues of Casement’s sexual orientation and spends little time on the infamous Black Diaries (concluding tentatively, they were likely terminologically inexact forgeries invented by the British to tarnish Casement’s reputation and prevent him from becoming a martyr in the middle of the World War). Instead, Casement’s evolving revolutionary spirit, even as he remains almost to the end a servant of the Crown, is the main focus here. Other books are probably better histories of his famous work exposing atrocities in the Congo and South America (e.g., King Leopold’s Ghost).

[Crowley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fantastic man, but the book is a bit shakey at times.

More detail could have been given regarding his human rights escapades e.g. the exact crimes which were occurring. Really compared with the some of the other ‘16 leaders, he was a great man who sought to make the world a more just society. Also his relation with the volunteers could have been better established.

Also the author is fairly certain about that the black diaries were fakes. As someone who has never read these diaries, it was strange that the writer did not include any extracts from them to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. The author frequently ignores any material from these books, so when he suddenly describes Casement as a gay icon, it left me very puzzled. If the author believes the diaries are fake, how can casement be a gay icon?

Comparatively recently, a forensic examination was carried out which claimed to have verified the fact that the diaries were genuine. If the author has spent more time debunking these claims and others I would have been more satisfied. However the information which he gives and the logic behind why the diaries are fake make sense, but reader comes away feeling like there is an unanswered question.

Sometimes I found the book a bit difficult to read and found it difficult to remain motivated to complete it. The way in which the prose was written, while informative, did not really captivate my interest.
In order to keep reading I had to stop reading and really think about Casement, and had a desire to find out the exact detailed of his ending.

I think what I crave for in a biography is to get a sense of a person, to fully understand their motivations. This book didn’t do it for me. An example of where this occurs is in the book’s description of Casement’s last minute conversion. Still i do not understand casement’s reasoning behind this change. The author pegs it down to being one last F you to England and imperialism, but given that it was previously established that Irish Catholic’s refused to support any action against the barbaric atrocities being committed by Catholic Belgians in the Congo, to me it seems like there is a flaw in the way the novel was written or some information is missing.


TLDR: the book needed more details, better explanation of points, more interesting prose

[Differengenera · Rating 5 out of 5]

very detailed biography, giving not only a vivid picture of Casement's life, work and activism in the Congo and Peru but also his seriousness as a political thinker, in the context of imperialism, environmentalism, language rights and Republicanism. Casement's forecast of the grave world-historical consequences of an Anglo-American geopolitical alliance stood out to me, as did his account of how extractive industries and the processes of de-forestation they necessitate are anathema to indigenous ways of life. This comes through most clearly in his writings on the Putumayo Indians, whose history Casement locates within a long-durée reaching back to Columbus; he later took what he learned here and applied it to the task of pedagogical reform in Irish-speaking areas of Connemara and Armagh.

Aside from this biography much of Mitchell's writings on Casement speak directly to the controversy surrounding 'the Black Diaries', a series of writings circulated among journalists, politicians and other public figures while Casement awaited his execution for high treason; the Black Diaries record, among other things, affairs Casement supposedly had with young male prostitutes. At the time these writings completely destroyed Casement's credibility and respectable humanitarians, Fabians and moderate Irish nationalists deserted his cause or identified the diaries as forgeries, often for homophobic reasons in both instances.

As far as I can see, based on material provided in this book, there is no comprehensive evidence either way. Mitchell's account emphasises the ways in which the destruction of Casement's reputation benefitted the Brits in their diplomatic relationship with the Americans, as well as powerful figures within the British secret service, but there is no smoking gun and we don't need to come down on one side or the other to recognise that this is, as with so many other disputes in Irish historiography, a proxy war fought between those who accept and foreground the legitimacy of Irish Republican claims on a tradition of socially egalitarian self-determination that is internationalist and anti-sectarian, and those who regard it as a blood-thirsty product of primitive minds.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good read which taught me a lot about Roger Casement, someone of whom I knew little apart from the headlines which you get in history books. I felt Mitchell's portrayal of him as an early fighter for human rights in his exposure of the brutal colonialism carried out in both the Belgian Congo and in the Amazon was well done. His life as a British crown employee and at the same time informant working quasi under cover led to him being at times difficult to pin down, but Mitchell managed to persuade me of his argument that Casement's espousal of the Irish nationalist cause was rooted in his discovery of the horrific treatment of those colonised by the European powers in Africa and South America.
Mitchell pulls no punches when it comes to Casement's treatment by the British government at his trial. That process was all but a political show trial and the verdict a foregone conclusion, but Casement was not helped by poor representation from his barrister. Mitchell is convinced that the so-called Black Diaries which were deliberately leaked to influencers and opinion formers to try and forestall any movement for clemency following his conviction and sentencing to hanging were forgeries, although his evidence remained for me a bit patchy. The only firm argument he offered was that the Black Diaries and another set of diaries kept by Casement cover a similar period - why would anyone write two different sets of diaries for the same period? I might have expected some forensic evidence, such as comparison of hand writing or even analysis the paper used, would have been put forward to prove forgery, but maybe the Black Diaries have never actually been released, only transcripts of the contents. The fact that the British government would go to such underhand lengths is hardly surprising though, especially given the characters which populated it at the time (FE Smith, Winston Churchill).

[Chris Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 16 Lives is a series of biographies of the sixteen leaders of the the Irish Easter Rising in 1916 who were tried and executed after the failure of the plot. It is somewhat ironic that Casement was attempting to stop the rising as he arrived in Ireland via a German submarine and was supposed to be rendesvouing with a German Freighter bringing in arms and 3 million rounds of ammunition. Such is the dichotomy of this brave, complicated and resourceful man. He served in the British Foreign Service, primarily in Africa. His was a style of management by walk-about. His experiences in the Congo were reminiscent of his friend, Joseph Conrad, whose book, Heart of Darkness, was modeled on them. He was one of the first to point out the inhumanity of the rule of Leopold of Belgium, and his report, according to Mitchell, opened the era of human rights concerns. He followed this up with an in depth report on the treatment of indigenous South Americans by London rubber concerns, that brought oversight, disgust, and disdain on those involved (In both cases, it brought exposure more than change) even as he worked with non-government organizations to change empires in general. Mitchell brings together this aspect of Casement with the Irish issues after Home Rule for Ireland is delayed until after WWI. He sees the Irish fighting for empire as a schitzophrenic attack on themselves, and works against the war and for Home Rule. It is a fascinating life that Mitchell explains clearly and concisely, with a great deal of exposure to how countries lie, cover-up and obfuscate to their people in myriad ways. Outstanding.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. I didn't really know much about Roger Casement other that he was a Martyred following the 1916 rising. He was the most unlikely of the leaders of the Rising coming from an affluent Dublin Protestant background, working as a spy for Britain and receiving a Knighthood for his services. However he saw too much of the evil of Imperialism in his work for Britain and when he looked at his homeland and also saw this evil he could do nothing but follow his conscience and throw his lot in with Irish Nationalism.

His speech from the dock at his show trial is clinical take down of British Colonialism in Ireland and is included in the Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Speeches.
The Speec h can be found here

[Paddy Reddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed learning about this stretch of history.

[Aaron McCormick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great & through biography of a forgotten figure in Irish history