Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Debliey Chuck Awardy. And by
the time this publishes, it's going to be a little
bit after St. Patrick's Day and just a little bit
(00:21):
before Easter, So I figured that is perfect timing to
discuss the Irish revolutionary and English trader Sir Roger David Casement,
and casement story really involves much more than just treason
or patriotism, which are of course interesting subjects on their own.
The listener who suggested it to us wrote that it
also includes quote war, espionage, adventure, gay history, and worldwide
(00:47):
first and human rights on three continents. And then add
to that friends like podcast regular Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
enemies like podcast regular King Leopold the Second and ex
friends like Joseph Conrad, plus an exhimation and a reputation
that's still debated today nearly one hundred years after his execution.
(01:10):
So that's a lot of stuff, it is. So in
this episode we'll talk about the dual identities of Roger Casement,
his career as a crusading diplomat of Britain, his disgrace
as a German collaborator in World War One, and the
secret diaries that very likely cost him his life. The
interesting thing to me about Casement, though, is that the
duality that characterizes his life really started quite early. He
(01:34):
was born September one, eighteen sixty four, near Dublin, to
a family with a very long history of military or
civil service to the British Crown. His father, for example,
with a pensioned army captain who had moved the family
around Ireland, England and Europe, just kind of looking for
cheap rent and a good climate because he was in
poor health. Casement's father was also Church of Ireland and
(01:56):
he raised his sons to be Protestant, but caseman mother
was Catholic, and when he was only three years old,
she had him and his brother's baptized Catholic in secret though,
so that's the first main duoity I think in Casement's
upbringing and eventually his life. By his teens, Casement was
orphaned and he spent the rest of his youth in
(02:17):
Ulster and in Liverpool, where he began working as a
clerk for an English based shipping company at nineteen. His
work first took him to West Africa, which is where
he joined the falsely benevolent African International Association run by Leopold,
the second King of the Belgians. And that was just
to remind you, Empress Carlotta's brother and Queen Victoria's cousin.
(02:39):
So he popped up in podcasts from time to time too,
yes you may remember him. And this job had Casement
reporting to a governor general installed by none other than
Henry Morton Stanley, So a lot of regular names of
the Kevin Bacon I think of our podcast at things Um.
Casement's later work in Africa involved all sorts of work
British consular bisin this surveys of the Lower Congo organizing
(03:02):
shipping transportation, and that last job, the shipping transportation organization,
was something that introduced Casement to the writer Joseph Conrad
in Conrad has had, of course arrived in the Congo
to captain and Belgian steamer and Casement was there arranging
the transport service, and the two wound up spending several
weeks together. And Conrad's initial almost awe struck assessment of
(03:27):
Casement was one that really stuck one that you'll see
referring to Casement pretty frequently. It was I can assure
you that he has a limpid personality. There is a
touch at the conquistador and him too, for I've seen
him start off into an unspeakable wilderness, swinging a crook
handled stick for all weapon. He could tell you things,
things I have tried to forget, things I never did know.
(03:51):
So we need to stop and talk about this Conrad
association for a second, because there are probably already alerts
going off in your head with the mention of both
the Congo and Joseph Conrad, and that quote probably set
off a few more. Actually the end, they're right. According
to Julie F. Codal, author of Imperial co Histories, some
of those trips into the interior directly inspired scenes in
(04:12):
Conrad's book Heard of Darkness. Some have even speculated that
Casement partly inspired the character of Curts, although to be fair,
apparently there are a lot of inspirations behind Kurts. But
you can see certain comparisons between that character and this man.
But we shouldn't make Casement sound too much like a
tough guy though, because according to an article by Robert
(04:35):
Burrows and the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. His
writings from these early years in Africa, you know, before
he was working as a consul, really set him apart
from guys like Stanley. And there are a few reasons
behind that. One is that he freely acknowledges his misadventures, like,
for instance, when he was attacked by a form of bees,
(04:57):
not just a natural swarm of the beas used as
a as a biological weapon. I suppose another main difference,
and this is when Conrad emphasized too, is that Casement
kind of relished his lack of firearms almost and it
was something that he believed made him more popular with
the local people. And then a final reason, which, having
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read a little bit of Stanley's work too, something that
really makes Casement stand apart is he freely acknowledged help
he received from people and how much how much he
was reliant on that help. Another thing that set him
apart he seemed to have left his various posts in
Africa sort of jumping around, partly because of the violence
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that he saw inflicted by his colleague, because he wasn't
willing to stay put after he saw something exactly by
nineteen dred. He was put in charge of setting up
a British consulate in the Congo. By this point, King
Leopold the Second and his Congo Free State were on
worldwide watch due to charges of human rights atrocities and slavery.
Part of Darkness had recently been published as a serial,
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and more than a few people were noticing that considering
how much was exported from the Congo, there really wasn't
much besides weapons going in. So finally public attention got
hot enough for the British Foreign Office to send Casement
on a trip to the interior in nineteen o three,
and he outlined those atrocities that were taking place. Women, children,
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elders and chiefs all being held hostage, for example, while
young men were sent into the jungle to collect rubber,
and there were massed shootings of those who refused to
do the work and mutilations. I mean, I think that's
probably the most famous atrocity associated with the Congo. You'll
see pictures of little children who have had hands, arms
and feet cut off to force their parents to go
(06:47):
into the jungle and collect rubber. When his report went public,
it caused a huge stir. Eventually Leopold was forced to
sell his private interests to Belgium in nineteen o eight
and that marked the end of the worst atrocities. Meanwhile,
though across the globe, Newspaperman was starting to publish all
these stories about similar atrocities committed against another indigenous rubber
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gathering population, this time in the Putumayo River region of
the Amazon Rainforest. And the landing question where these atrocities
were supposedly taking place was controlled by the London based
Peruvian Amazon Company, which exported rubber from Peru to Britain,
so that was kind of buzzing. People were getting concerned
(07:34):
about that. But when further claims of abuse from workers
from Barbados who were working in Peru but were of
course British subjects started to trickle in, the Anti Slavery
and Aborigines Protection Society got involved in the whole thing,
and the organization eventually pressured the British government to form
a team of corporate investigators head down to the site
(07:57):
where the atrocities or the region where the atrocities are
believed to be taking place, and examine the claims find
out if there was truth behind them. So Casement with
his already stellar human rights record, he seemed like the
perfect man to represent the government in this investigation. So
in nineteen o eight he had been made console in
Rio de Janeiro and in nineteen ten he started work
(08:17):
on exposing the atrocities of the Peruvian Amazon Company and
its president, the incredibly wealthy Julio says are Arana. What
he found was as bad, if not worse than what
he found in the Congo forced cannibalism, gang rape, beheadings
and floggings just for minor infractions. Children were regularly put
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into stocks in case it gathered all this information and
he backed up his work with photos even plus affidavits
from the Barbadian workers who were basically treated as indentured servants,
And just like with the Congay Report, he put it
all together and it was eventually published as the Putumayo
Report or the Blue Book. And when it was public
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there's had a long delay actually, while officials in England
were trying to figure out what they were going to
do about it, since this, after all, was a London
based company. Um But once it did finally get out there,
it had a similar effect as the Congo Report, at
least initially, the company was forced into liquidation, and Casement
(09:20):
even told a friend quote, I have blown up the
devil's playground in Peru. I told you I should, and
I have done it. He was knighted after that, and
then he resigned from service due to his health, and
after that it was back to Ireland. So while Casement
was accepting these honors, he was also publishing anti British essays,
(09:40):
So you might find that a little bit confusing. But
the disconnect between his service on behalf of the Empire
and his increasing desire for Irish independence really isn't quite
as great as it seems. He simply saw the Irish
as another oppressed people. He even wrote the quote white
Indians of Ireland are heavier on my heart than all
(10:00):
the Indians of the rest of the earth. And I
read an article by Richard Kirkland in the Irish Studies
Review that even noted the sympathetic understanding of oppression may
have been what motivated him in his diplomatic or his
human rights work. In the first place. He quotes Casement
is saying, the more we love our land and wish
(10:21):
to help our people, the more keenly we feel we
cannot turn a deaf ear to suffering an injustice in
any part of the world. So the other way you
look at it, the UM work with people in the
Congo and the Amazon influencing his later feelings about Ireland,
or the other way around. He certainly turned into a
(10:42):
ardent Irish republican. Initially, though Casement kept to the focused domestic,
helping to form the Irish National Volunteers in late nineteen thirteen.
He also wrote open letters urging Irish not to fight
and what seemed like an approaching World war. But by
July nineteen fourteen, he was looking for even more aggressive
ways to put Ireland against England, and so he traveled
(11:03):
to New York City to meet with the German consular officials.
There he hoped to secure by doing this UM German
support for an Irish revolt, something that would divert England's
attention from the continent and create a two front war.
So from that point Caseman actually traveled on to Germany
by way of Neutral Norway for further talks. So from
(11:23):
that point, once he was in Germany, it was agreed
that the German government would help support Irish independence and
even allow Casement to raise an all Irish brigade from
Irish prisoners of war who were detained in Germany. Um
So Casement was enthusiastic about that. Unfortunately for him, though,
(11:43):
the Irish POWs were not so enthusiastic. He could only
get fifty three volunteers interested. And um, I mean, I
was trying to imagine how this would have gone down,
And to me, it doesn't really seem that surprising that
after you were being held a prisoner of war by
the German you might not want to join them. But
I mean, I'm sure there were other concerned that play
(12:06):
for these POWs. So raising troops eventually turned into another enterprise,
and that was gun running. And by mid February, when
the Germans got word that the Irish we're going to
plan arising on Easter nineteen sixteen, they agreed to send
some weapons to help, twenty five thousand Russian rifles and
one million rounds, maybe even some German trained officers, all
(12:28):
of course to support the Irish, and again, like you
just mentioned, to create a two fronted war, divert England's attention.
But the problem was rifles. Sounds like a lot. But
Caseman realized at the time that it was the most
of Germans were going to be able to do, and
it wasn't going to be enough to support their rising,
(12:48):
so he asked the German authorities to send him back
off to Ireland on a U boat, and he was
hoping to stop the rising before it was too late,
except the British had already been aware of a lot
of what was going on all along, and upon landing,
Casement was arrested. That same day, the Royal Navy captured
the arm ship, which had missed its rendezvous point as well.
(13:10):
So at this point Caseman is looking at gun running,
negotiating with Germany, trying to raise troops against England, all
signs which clearly point to treason, and there really wasn't
that much of a defense for him, except that Casement
believed Ireland was an independent country and he had been
acting as an ambassador. Basically England had no rights over him.
(13:32):
So of course, just days after his capture that the
rising had taken place anyway, so it really looked bad
from from his perspective. It looked more like he had
come home to help lead the rising rather than try
to stop it, so not good at all for his defense.
According to John Campbell in History Today, Casement initially didn't
(13:52):
even want to offer a defense, but he was ultimately
convinced to do so and argue the case on technicalities.
Campbell for they suggest that during peacetime, casement stellar record
of service might have actually made this tactic work, or
at least result in a lenient sentence. As it was,
though after a famous defense speech that took place from
(14:13):
the doc Casement was found guilty of treason and sentenced
to die. But that's where things started to get a
little bit messy. All the controversy comes in. So Casement
understandably had a lot of friends, a lot of supporters
from this long career as a British diplomat, you know,
a very celebrated British diplomat, and many influential people didn't
(14:34):
want to see him die. Through Arthur Conan Doyle, as
you mentioned, organized a petition to appeal for clemency. So
that's a good name to have in your corner. There
was also a wild card among all of these high
profile appeals and that was Irish American. So Britain was
deeply concerned that influential Irish American politicians and businessmen wouldn't
(14:54):
look so favorably on joining the war. You know, the
US was still neutral at this point, wouldn't look favorably
on joining the war effort if case met were executed.
So this was serious business. You know, there was a
lot at stake here, and it was decided to bring
in some dirty tactics to deal with it. And these
dirty tactics were made possible by something they had actually
(15:17):
had in their back pocket for a little while since
casements arrest. Actually, British authorities had had in their possession
a set of secret diaries that had been left behind
in a trunk in his London flat. And those diaries
covered a span of years and it contained lots of
day to day notes, but they also contained sexually explicit
entries that outed Casement as a homosexual who regularly pursued
(15:39):
anonymous sex with young men and sometimes even teenagers. So
both the defense and the prosecution knew of the so
called Black Diaries, But after the sentence in Scotland, Yard
and the Foreign Office began circulating them among casements more
prominent supporters, many like the Archbishop of Canterbury, quickly withdrew
their support. Journal lists also received experts, American politicians and
(16:02):
diplomats got copies. The American ambassador to London warned the
Secretary of State to avoid the diaries for their quote
unspeakably filthy character, So the diaries really had their intended effect.
Casements support pretty much vanished, and he was executed August third,
nineteen sixteen, in London, his body interred in a pit
of quicklime. But debate over the diaries use and their
(16:26):
authenticity started almost immediately. Even the London Times, which supported
the sentence, complained of the quote irrelevant, improper and un
English campaign of inspired innuendo. A lot of a lot
of eyes in that complaint. But you know, there were
people raising issues about the very use of the diaries.
(16:47):
Others thought that releasing the diaries was more than just
improper and in no way related to the crime of treason.
They thought that they were actual forgeries that had been
cooked up purposely to discredit case sment. And it didn't
really help build confidence that after Casement's execution, the Home
Office kept those diaries and almost total secrecy, even denying
(17:09):
their existence in nineteen sixteen. Plus few could offer any
indication other than the diaries that Caseman had been a homosexual.
Friends and family started offering a possible theories regarding the
diaries origins, even suggesting that they were crafted somehow from
notes Casemen had taken while preparing has put to my report.
In nineteen fifty nine, however, the British Home Secretary allowed
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scholars to examine the diaries and most agreed that the
passages in question were written in Caseman's hand. In two
thousand two, a further study was done, led by Dr
Audrey Giles and jointly funded by the BBC and the RTE,
which is Ireland's national TV and radio broadcaster. After forensic
examination in handwriting analysis, she concluded that the five documents
(17:54):
were in fact written by Casement, which had been the
common assessment by that point. Anyway, some people do still
believe the documents are fake. I mean, we have a
lot of angles to cover here and some that we're
not going to be able to cover. But some do
still believe that documents are entirely fake. Some believe that
parts are faked, especially those that seem more predatory focus
(18:15):
more on what today we might consider sexual tourism, or
that some of the entries were written by Casement, but
they were written as kind of a fantasy. There's another
side to this too, though, people who have fully embraced
that Casement did write the diaries, and according to Brian
Lewis in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, many
(18:35):
gay activists in Ireland have embraced their authenticity and almost
taken up Casement as a second Oscar Wilde, a famously
Irish and famously gay man in the nineteen sixties. Casements remains,
which for some reason hadn't been dissolved by that quicklime yet,
were returned to Ireland in a good wild gesture from
England Prime Minister Harold Wilson called it a quote satisfactory
(18:58):
end to an unhappy chapter, and Casement was reinterured with
full military honors and a state funeral. In March two
thousand eleven, London Metropolitan Police returned casement sword and hatch
shortly before Queen Elizabeth's historic state visit to Ireland. They
had been seized when Casement was arrested, and were ironically
the same sword and hat used when he was knighted
(19:19):
by George the Fifth Over time too, I mean, I
think they're returning the body, returning the hat suggests that
there has been sort of the change in feelings about Casement,
but over time it also seems like that traitor patriot
debate has gotten a lot less rigid. And one of
Casement's own relatives, Patrick Casement, talked with the BBC Northern
Ireland about how his family had dealt with their famous
(19:42):
kinsman's legacy and he said that at the time, at
the time of Casement's trial and execution, his actions were
considered by the family a real dishonor since many of
his relatives were at the time serving in World War One,
and he said quote for them, it was an appalling
disgrace on the family, very very difficult for them to
(20:02):
live with. And I think that carried on for another generation.
But my own generation, I think, are coming more to
terms with it, looking at it in a much more
objective way, and seeing Sir Roger as the remarkable and
interesting character that he was. And I mean, I think
that that much is pretty hard to deny. He's certainly remarkable,
he's certainly interesting, with such a varied career and obviously
(20:24):
with such strong opinions and passions. Yeah, it's interesting how
time changes are perspective on things. And I think it
will be cool to see how his legacy kind of
develops throughout the years after this too, certainly will so
I think that's probably a good time to transition to
kind of a lighter listener. Mail. Yes please. So this
(20:48):
message is from Sarah, who is a PhD candidate in
art history and archaeology, and I chose this one because
she is writing to us about the bronte Is, another
famous family of Irish descent. So, Sarah wrote, you mentioned
that the girls were sort of amateur artists, and although
drawing was a skill that had been practiced by women
for centuries, a late eighteenth century development made art making
(21:12):
available to a much wider audience the mass production of
watercolor kit. These kits were small and inexpensive. People could
take them out to the countryside and paint landscapes or
use them in their homes. This is in stark contrast
to the grand academies of art that traditionally excluded women,
but still give a broader audience more tools for making art. Um. So,
(21:35):
I thought that was a really neat thing, and you don't.
It's it's at least hard for me to imagine a
time when watercolor kits don't exist. That's true, but it
reminded me a little bit of our Van Go episode
where Vango is like toting all these paints and his
easel and his canvases out to paint his sunflowers, and
the local kids are messing with him and thinking how
(21:56):
practical a watercolor kit does sound. So it was nice
to imagine the bronte Is, after so much tragedy in
their lives, just maybe roaming the moors with their watercolored kids. Well,
thank you for sending that, Sarah and Sarah Downy. I've
noticed that you often pick listener mail with your from
people with your own name. I never do that. I
(22:17):
just want to point that out. We did have that
one listener name to Blina Went. She spelled it differently
than you, that's true. But did we read her letter?
But I mean, I'm pretty sure that we both commented
on it because it's a rare occurrent, It's true. I
promise I'm not purposely packing out emails from Sarah's. It's
just a cool high will. If there are any need
to blein is out there, you can send me a letter,
(22:39):
I'll purposely pick it out and read it. We'll make
sure you send her something good then yes. But regardless
of what your name is, of course, you're always welcome
to write to us where History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
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(23:03):
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