Roger David Casement (Ruairí Mac Easmainn; 1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG between 1911 and until his execution for treason in August 1916, was an Irish patriot, poet, revolutionary and nationalist. He was a British consul by profession famous for his reports and activities against human rights abuses in the Congo and Peru, but better known for his dealings with Germany prior to Ireland's Easter Rising in 1916. An Irish nationalist and Parnellite in his youth, he worked in Africa for commercial interests and latterly in the service of Britain. However Casement‘s witnessing of atrocities in the Congo led him to anti-Imperialist and ultimately Irish Republican political opinions.

Early life and education

Casement was born near Dublin living in very early childhood at Doyle's Cottage, Lawson Terrace, Sandycove. His Protestant father, Captain Roger Casement of (The King’s Own) Regiment of Light Dragoons, was the son of a bankrupt Belfast shipping merchant (Hugh Casement) who later moved to Australia. Captain Casement served in the 1842 Afghan campaign. Casement's mother Anne Jephson of Dublin (whose origins are obscure), had him rebaptised secretly as a Roman Catholic when he was three in Rhyl; she died in Worthing when her son was nine. By the time he was thirteen, his father was also dead, having ended his days dependent on the charity of relatives. Roger was afterwards raised by Protestant paternal relatives in Ulster, the Youngs of Galgorm Castle in Ballymena and the Casements of Magherintemple and was educated at the Diocesan School, Ballymena later Ballymena Academy.

The Congo: The Casement Report

In 1903, Roger Casement, then the British Consul in Léopoldville, was commissioned by the British government and delivered in 1904 a long, detailed eyewitness report exposing human rights abuses in the Congo Free State: The Casement Report. The Congo Free State had been in the possession of King Leopold II of Belgium since 1885, when it was granted to him by the Berlin Conference. Leopold exploited the territory's natural resources (mostly rubber) as a private entrepreneur, not as Belgian King. Casement's report would be instrumental in Leopold finally relinquishing his personal holdings in Africa.

When the report was made public, the Congo Reform Association, founded by E.D. Morel, with Casement's support, demanded action. Other European nations followed suit, as did the United States, and the British parliament demanded a meeting of the 14 signatory powers to review the 1885 Berlin Agreement. The Belgian Parliament, pushed by socialist leader Emile Vandervelde and other critics of the King's Congolese policy, forced Léopold to set up an independent commission of inquiry, and in 1905, despite the King's efforts, it confirmed the essentials of Casement's report.

On November 15, 1908, four years after the Casement Report, the parliament of Belgium took over the Congo Free State from Leopold and its administration as the Belgian Congo.

Peru: Abuses against the Putumayo Indians

In 1906 Casement was sent as consul to Pará, transferring to Santos, Brazil and lastly was promoted to consul-general in Rio de Janeiro. He had the occasion to do work similar to that which he had done in Congo among the Putumayo Indians of Peru when he was attached as a consular representative to a commission investigating murderous rubber slavery by the British-registered Peruvian Amazon Company, effectively controlled by the archetypal rubber baron Julio César Arana and his brother. Public outrage in Britain over the abuses against the Putumayo Indians had been sparked in 1909 by articles in the British magazine Truth. Casement paid two visits to the region, first in 1910 with a follow-up in 1911. In a report to the British foreign secretary, dated March 17, 1911, Casement detailed the rubber company's use of stocks to punish the Indians:

Men, women, and children were confined in them for days, weeks, and often months. ... Whole families ... were imprisoned--fathers, mothers, and children, and many cases were reported of parents dying thus, either from starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were attached alongside of them to watch in misery themselves the dying agonies of their parents.

After his return to Britain he repeated his extra-consular campaigning work by organising Anti-Slavery Society and mission interventions in the region which was disputed between Peru and Colombia. Some of the men exposed as killers in his report were charged by Peru and others fled. Conditions in the area undoubtedly improved as a result but the contemporary switch to farmed rubber in Malaya etc was a godsend to the Indians as well. Arana himself was never brought to justice. He instead went on to a successful political career. becoming a senator, and died in Lima, Peru in 1952 at age eighty-eight.

Casement wrote extensively (as always) in those two years including several of his notorious diaries, the one for 1911 being unusually discursive. They and the 1903 diary were kept by him in London with other papers of the period, presumably so they could be consulted in his continuing work as 'Congo Casement' and the saviour of the Putumayo Indians. Casement was knighted for his efforts on behalf of the Amazonian Indians.

Irish revolutionary

Casement resigned from the consular service in 1912. The following year, he helped form the Irish Volunteers with Eoin MacNeill, later the organisation's chief of staff. When the First World War broke out in 1914, he attempted to secure German aid for Irish independence, sailing for Germany via America. He viewed himself as a self-appointed ambassador of the Irish nation. While the journey was his idea, he managed to persuade the exiled Irish nationalists in Clan na Gael to finance the expedition. Many members of Clan na Gael never trusted him completely, as he was not a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and held views considered by many to be too moderate.

In November 1914, Casement negotiated a declaration by Germany which stated, "The Imperial Government formally declares that under no circumstances would Germany invade Ireland with a view to its conquest or the overthrow of any native institutions in that country. Should the fortune of this great war, that was not of Germany’s seeking ever bring in its course German troops to the shores of Ireland, they would land there not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy but as the forces of a Government that is inspired by goodwill towards a country and people for whom Germany desires only national prosperity and national freedom.” His contact in Berlin was Secretary of State Arthur Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office.

Most of his time in Germany, however, was spent in an attempt to recruit an "Irish Brigade" consisting of Irish prisoners-of-war in the prison camp of Limburg an der Lahn, who would be trained to fight against Britain. During the war, Casement is also known to have been closely associated with the Hindu German Conspiracy, recommending Joseph McGarrity to Franz von Papen as an intermediary for the plot. The Indian Nationalists may also have followed Casement's strategy in attempting to recruit from amongst Indian prisoners of war for the nationalist cause.

However, both efforts proved unsuccessful. The Irish plan failed as all Irishmen fighting in the British army did so voluntarily, and was abandoned after much time and money was wasted. The Germans, who were sceptical of Casement but nonetheless aware of the military advantage they could gain from an uprising in Ireland, offered the Irish 20,000 rifles, 10 machine guns and accompanying ammunition, a fraction of the amount of weaponry Casement had hoped for. The Hindu-German plot was also uncovered by British agents, opening the longest and most expensive trial in American legal history at the time that also saw the conviction of notable Irish nationalists.

Casement did not learn about the Easter Rising until after the plan was fully developed. The IRB purposely kept him in the dark, and even tried to replace him. Casement may never have learned that it was not the Volunteers who were planning the rising, but IRB members such as Patrick Pearse and Tom Clarke who were pulling the strings behind the scenes.

The German weapons never reached Ireland. The ship in which they were travelling, a German cargo vessel, the Libau, was intercepted, even though it had been thoroughly disguised as a Norwegian vessel, Aud Norge. All the crew were German sailors, but their clothes and effects, even the charts and books on the bridge, were all Norwegian. The British, however, had intercepted German communications out of Washington and knew there was going to be an attempt to land arms even if the Royal Navy was not aware precisely of what was anticipated. After the arms ship was eventually intercepted, the ship's captain scuttled the Libau.

Capture, Trial and Execution

Casement left Germany in a submarine, the U-19, shortly after the Aud sailed. Believing that the Germans were toying with him from the start and providing inadequate aid that would doom a rising to failure, he decided he had to reach Ireland before the shipment of arms and convince Eoin MacNeill (who he believed was still in control) to cancel the rising.

In the early hours of 21 April 1916, three days before the rising began, Casement was put ashore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Too weak to travel, he was discovered at McKenna's Fort (an ancient ring fort now called Casement's Fort) in Rathoneen, Ardfert and subsequently arrested on charges of treason, sabotage and espionage against the Crown.

Following a highly publicized trial, to their embarrassment, the courts found little legal basis to prosecute Casement because his crimes had been carried out in Germany and the Treason Act seemed to apply only to activities carried out on British soil. However, closer reading of the medieval document allowed for a broader interpretation, leading to the accusation that Casement was "hanged by a comma". The court decided that a comma should be read in the text, crucially widening the sense so that "in the realm or elsewhere" meant where acts were done and not just where the "King's enemies" may be. After an unsuccessful appeal against the death sentence, he was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916, at the age of 51. He converted to Catholicism while awaiting execution and went to his death, he said, with the body of his God as his last meal.

Among the people who pleaded for clemency for him were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who became acquainted with Casement through the work of the Congo Reform Association, and George Bernard Shaw. Edmund Dene Morel could not visit him in jail, being under attack for his pacifist position. On the other hand, Joseph Conrad could not forgive Casement for his treachery toward Britain.

Speech from the Dock

My Lord Chief Justice, as I wish to reach a much wider audience than I see before me here, I intend to read all that I propose to say. What I shall read now is something I wrote more than twenty days ago. I may say, my lord, at once, that I protest against the jurisdiction of this Court in my case on this charge, and the argument that I am now going to read is addressed not to this Court, but to my own countrymen.

With all respect I assert this Court is to me, an Irishman, not a jury of my peers to try me in this vital issue for it is patent to every man of conscience that I have a right, an indefeasible right, if tried at all, under this Statute of high treason, to be tried in Ireland, before an Irish Court and by an Irish jury. This Court, this jury, the public opinion of this country, England, cannot but be prejudiced in varying degree against me, most of all in time of war.

I did not land in England; I landed in Ireland. It was to Ireland I came; to Ireland I wanted to come; and the last place I desired to land in was England. But for the Attorney General of England there is only “England”—is no Ireland, there is only the law of England—no right of Ireland; the liberty of Ireland and of Irish is to be judged by the power of England. Yet for me, the Irish outlaw, there is a land of Ireland, a right of Ireland, and a charter for all Irishmen to appeal to, in the last resort, a charter that even the very statutes of England itself cannot deprive us of—nay, more, a charter that Englishmen themselves assert as the fundamental bond of law that connects the two kingdoms.

This charge of high treason involves a moral responsibility, as the very terms of the indictment against myself recite, inasmuch as I committed the acts I am charged with, to the “evil example of others in the like case.” What was this “evil example” I set to others in “the like case,” and who were these others? The “evil example” charged is that I asserted the rights of my own country, and the “others” I appealed to to aid my endeavour were my own countrymen.

The example was given not to Englishmen but to Irishmen, and the “like case” can never arise in England, but only in Ireland. To Englishmen I set no evil example, for I made no appeal to them. I asked no Englishman to help me. I asked Irishmen to fight for their rights. The “evil example” was only to other Irishmen who might come after me, and in “like case” seek to do as I did. How, then, since neither my example nor my appeal was addressed to Englishmen, can I be rightfully tried by them? If I did wrong in making that appeal to Irishmen to join with me in an effort to fight for Ireland, it is by Irishmen, and by them alone, I can be rightfully judged.

From this Court and its jurisdiction I appeal to those I am alleged to have wronged, and to those I am alleged to have injured by my “evil example,” and claim that they alone are competent to decide my guilt or my innocence. If they find me guilty, the statute may affix the penalty, but the statute does not override or annul my right to seek judgment at their hands.

This is so fundamental a right, so natural a right, so obvious a right, that it is clear the Crown were aware of it when they brought me by force and by stealth from Ireland to this country. It was not I who landed in England, but the Crown who dragged me here, away from my own country to which I had turned with a price upon my head, away from my own countrymen whose loyalty is not in doubt, and safe from the judgment of my peers whose judgment I do not shrink from. I admit no other judgment but theirs. I accept no verdict save at their hands. I assert from this dock that I am being tried here, not because it is just, but because it is unjust. Place me before a jury of my own countrymen, be it Protestant or Catholic, Unionist or Nationalist, Sinn Feineach or Orangemen, and I shall accept the verdict and bow to the statute and all its penal ties. But I shall accept no meaner finding against me than that of those whose loyalty I endanger by my example and to whom alone I made appeal. If they adjudge me guilty, then guilty I am. It is not I who am afraid of their verdict; it is the Crown. If this be not so, why fear the test? I fear it not. I demand it as my right.

That, my lord, is the condemnation of English rule, of English-made law, of English Government in Ireland, that it dare not rest on the will of the Irish people, but it exists in defiance of their will—that it is a rule derived not from right, but from conquest. Conquest, my lord, gives no title, and if it exists over the body, it fails over the mind. It can exert no empire over men’s reason and judgment and affections; and it is from this law of conquest without title to the reason, judgment, and affection of my own country men that I appeal. I would add that the generous expressions of sympathy extended me from many quarters, particularly from America, have touched me very much. In that country, as in my own I am sure my motives are understood and not misjudged for the achievement of their liberties has been an abiding inspiration to Irishmen and to all men elsewhere rightly struggling to be free in like cause.

My Lord Chief Justice, if I may continue, I am not called upon, I conceive, to say anything in answer to the inquiry your lordship has addressed to me why Sentence should not be passed upon me. Since I do not admit any verdict in this Court, I cannot, my lord, admit the fitness of the sentence that of necessity must follow it from this Court. I hope I shall be acquitted of presumption if I say that the Court I see before me now is not this High Court of Justice of England, but a far greater, a far higher, a far older assemblage of justices—that of the people of Ireland. Since in the acts which have led to this trial it was the people of Ireland I sought to serve—and them alone—I leave my judgment and my sentence in their hands...

My counsel has referred to the Ulster Volunteer movement, and I will not touch at length upon that ground save only to say this, that neither I nor any of the leaders of the Irish Volunteers who were founded in Dublin in November, 1913, had quarrel with the Ulster Volunteers as such, who were born a year earlier. Our movement was not directed against them, but against the men who misused and misdirected the courage, the sincerity and the local patriotism of the men of the north of Ireland. On the contrary, we welcomed the coming of the Ulster Volunteers, even while we deprecated the aims and intentions of those Englishmen who sought to pervert to an English party use—to the mean purposes of their own bid for place and power in England—the armed activities of simple Irishmen. We aimed at winning the Ulster Volunteers to the cause of a united Ireland. We aimed at uniting all Irishmen in a natural and national bond of cohesion based on mutual sell-respect. Our hope was a natural one, and if left to ourselves, not hard to accomplish. If external influences of disintegration would but leave us alone, we were sure that Nature itself must bring us together.

How did the Irish Volunteers meet the incitements of civil war that were uttered by the party of law and order in England when they saw the prospect of deriving political profit to themselves from bloodshed among Irishmen? I can answer for my own acts and speeches. While one English party was responsible for preaching a doctrine of hatred designed to bring about civil war in Ireland, the other, and that the party in power, took no active steps to restrain a propaganda that found its advocates in the Army, Navy, and Privy Council—in the Houses of Parliament and in the State Church—a propaganda the methods of whose expression were so “grossly illegal and utterly unconstitutional” that even the Lord Chancellor of England could find only words and no repressive action to apply to them. Since lawlessness sat in high places in England and laughed at the law as at the custodians of the law, what wonder was it that Irishmen should refuse to accept the verbal protestations of an English Lord Chancellor as a sufficient safe guard for their lives and their liberties? I know not how all my colleagues on the Volunteer Committee in Dublin reviewed the growing menace, but those with whom I was in closest co-operation redoubled, in face of these threats from without, our efforts to unite all Irishmen from within. Our appeals were made to Protestant and Unionist as much almost as to Catholic and Nationalist Irishmen.

We hoped that by the exhibition of affection and good will on our part towards our political opponents in Ireland we should yet succeed in winning them from the side of an English party whose sole interest in our country lay in its oppression in the past, and in the present in its degradation to the mean and narrow needs of their political animosities. It is true that they based their actions, so they averred, on ‘‘fears for the Empire’’ and on a very diffuse loyally that took in all the people of the Empire, save only the Irish. That blessed word “Empire” that bears so paradoxical a resemblance to charity! For if charity begins at home, “Empire” means in other men’s homes and both may cover a multitude of sins. I for one was determined that Ireland was much more to me than “Empire,” and that if charity begins at home so must loyalty.

Since arms were so necessary to make our organisation a reality, and to give to the minds of Irishmen, menaced with the most outrageous threats, a sense of security, it was our bounden duty to get arms before all else.

We have been told, we have been asked to hope, that after this war Ireland will get Home Rule, as a reward for the life-blood shed in a cause which whoever else its success may benefit can surely not benefit Ireland. And what will Home Rule be in return for what its vague promise has taken and still hopes to take away from Ireland? It is not necessary to climb the painful stairs of Irish history—that treadmill of a nation whose labours are in vain for her own uplifting as the convict’s exertions are for his redemption—to review the long list of British promises made only to be broken—of Irish hopes raised only to be dashed to the ground. Home Rule when it comes, if come it does, will find an Ireland drained of all that is vital to its very existence—unless it be that unquenchable hope we build on the graves of the dead.

We are told that if Irishmen go by the thousand to die, not for Ireland, but for Flanders, for Belgium, for a patch of sand on the deserts of Mesopotamia, or a rocky trench on the heights of Gallipoli, they are winning self-government for Ireland. But if they dare to lay down their lives on their native soil, if they dare to dream even that freedom can be won only at home by men resolved to fight for it there, then they are traitors to their country, and their dream and their deaths alike are phases of a dishonourable phantasy.

But history is not so recorded in other lands. In Ireland alone in this twentieth century is loyalty held to be a crime. If loyalty be something less than love and more than law, then we have had enough of such loyalty for Ireland or Irishmen. If we are to be indicted as criminals, to be shot as murderers, to be imprisoned as convicts because our offence is that we love Ireland more than we value our lives, then I know not what virtue resides in any offer of self-government held out to brave men on such terms. Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself—than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers or to love our kind. It is only from the convict these things are withheld for crime committed and proven—and Ireland that has wronged no man, that has injured no land, that has sought no dominion, over others—Ireland is treated to-day among the nations of the world as if she were a convicted criminal.

If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel, and shall cling to my “rebellion” with the last drop of my blood. If there be no right of rebellion against a state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then I am sure that it is better for man to fight and die without right than to live in such a state of right as this. Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours—and even while they beg, to see things inexorably withdrawn from them—then surely it is a braver, a saner and a truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

My lord, I have done. Gentlemen of the jury, I wish to thank you for your verdict. I hope you will not take amiss what I said, or think that I made any imputation upon your truthfulness or your integrity when I spoke and said that this was not a trial by my peers. I maintain that I have a natural right to be tried in that natural jurisdiction, Ireland my own country, and I would put it to you, how would you feel in the converse case, or rather how would all men here feel in the converse case, if an Englishman had landed here in England and the Crown or the Government, for its own purposes, had conveyed him secretly from England to Ireland under a false name, committed him to prison under a false name, and brought him before a tribunal in Ireland under a statute which they knew involved a trial before an Irish jury? How would you feel yourselves as Englishmen if that man was to be submitted to trial by jury in a land inflamed against him and believing him to be a criminal, when his only crime was that he had cared for England more than for Ireland?

The Black Diaries and Casement’s sexuality

Prior to his execution, photographs of a diary which the Crown claimed belonged to Casement were circulated to those urging commutation of his death sentence. These documents, supplied to King George V, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others in Britain, Ireland and the United States, showed Casement to have been a promiscuous homosexual with a fondness for very young men, a crime at the time. In a time of strong social conservatism, not least among Irish Catholics, the Black Diaries undermined or at least stifled support for Casement. They also led some of Casement's opponents to suggest that details about colonial sexual atrocities in his reports were based on his personal fantasies, though this was not supported by evidence. The diaries may now be inspected at the British National Archives in Kew.

Though some believed that the diaries were forgeries, much as Charles Stewart Parnell had been the target of the Pigott forgeries implicating him in the Phoenix Park Murders, others did not. H. Montgomery Hyde, the Unionist MP and barrister who campaigned for the release of the Black Diaries in parliament in the 1950s and who wrote a book on Casement's trial, had no doubt that Casement had been a pederast.

In an effort to settle the issue, an independent forensic examination of the diaries, funded by RTÉ and the BBC, was recently undertaken by Dr. Audrey Giles, an internationally respected figure in the field of document forensics. In comparing Casement's White Diaries (ordinary diaries of the time) with the Black Diaries, which allegedly date from the same time-span, the study concluded, on the basis of detailed handwriting analysis, that the Black Diaries were genuine and had been written by Casement. This study, commissioned by a team of academics from Goldsmiths, University of London, was submitted to the forensic expert James Horan for peer review. Horan rejected the report. His main criticism was that there was no evidence that the comparative material used was the handwriting of Roger Casement. He noted that it was this problem which led to the mistaken authentication of the Hitler diaries. The comparative material given to Dr Giles by the team from Goldsmiths was taken from the Morel Archive at the London School of Economics. All of it passed through the hands of British Intelligence after Morel's arrest in 1917.

The case for forgery of the Black Diaries has always been predicated on the fact that Casement was a uniquely admired and respected public figure in Britain among the 1916 leaders. It has also been claimed that the extremely active homosexual sex life described in the diaries is unlikely to be genuine, but it has been argued that this would not refute the authenticity of the diaries, as they may have been sexual fantasies.

State funeral

As was the custom at the time, Casement's body was buried in quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of Pentonville Prison, where he was hanged. The precise location of the prison cemetery is . In 1965, Casement's body was repatriated and, after a state funeral, was buried with full military honours in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. The President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who in his mid-eighties was the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, defied the advice of his doctors and attended the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 Irish citizens. Casement's last wish, to be buried at Murlough Bay on the North Antrim coast has yet to be fulfilled as Harold Wilson's government only released the remains on condition that they were not brought into Northern Ireland.

In the 1990s, doubts were cast as to whether the bones buried in Glasnevin were Casement's. It was suggested that when his prison grave was opened, it was impossible to distinguish his bones from those of other prisoners, and as result a skeleton was assembled from the bones found and arbitrarily described as Casement's.

Legacy

Landmarks, buildings and organisations

Many landmarks, buildings and organisations in Ireland are named after Casement including:

• Casement Park, the Gaelic Athletic Association ground on Andersonstown Road in west Belfast.
• Several Gaelic Athletic Association clubs, for instance the Roger Casements GAA Club in Coventry and the Roger Casements GAC in Portglenone.
• In Dundalk there is an estate named after him called Árd Easmuinn "Casement Heights."
• Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, the Irish Air Corps base in Dublin.
• Casement Rail & Bus Station in Tralee, near the site of Casement's landing on Banna Strand. Operated by Iarnród Éireann and Córas Iompair Éireann
• Monument in County Kerry at Banna Strand. Open to the public at all times.
• Many streets, particularly in the north-west Dublin suburb of Finglas, and in the Loyalist heartland of Harryville, Ballymena, County Antrim, although the street is actually named for his great-grandfather who was a solicitor in Henryville as it was then called.

Song, story and verse

Casement was also the subject of ballads and poetry in Ireland in the wake of his death, including:

• The ballad "Lonely Banna Strand" tells the story of Casement's role in the prelude to the Easter Rising, his arrest, and subsequent execution.
• Arthur Conan Doyle used Casement as an inspiration for the character of Lord John Roxton in the 1912 novel The Lost World.
• W. B. Yeats wrote a poem demanding the return of Casement's remains, which begins, "The ghost of Roger Casement is knocking on the door". Brendan Behan refers to the poem in his autobiographical novel Borstal Boy, and speaks of the repect his family had for Casement, noting that his older brother Rory Behan had been named after Casement.

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Casement, Roger, The Crime against Europe. The causes of the War and the foundations of Peace. Berlin, The Continental Times, 1915.
• Casement, Roger, The Crime against Ireland, and how the War may right it. Berlin, no publisher, 1914.
• Casement, Roger: The Eyes of Another Race: Roger Casement's Congo Report and 1903 Diary. Séamas Ó SÍOCHÁIN and Michael O’Sullivan (editors). University College Dublin Press, 2004. ISBN 1-900-62199-1
• Casement, Roger, Gesammelte Schriften. Irland, Deutschland und die Freiheit der Meere und andere Aufsätze. Diessen vor München, Jos. Huber's Verlag, 1916. Second expanded edition, 1917.
• Casement, Roger, Ireland, Germany and freedom of the seas: a possible outcome of the War of 1914. New York & Philadelphia, The Irish Press Bureau, 1914. Reprinted 2005: ISBN 1-421-94433-2
• Casement, Roger, Roger Casement's diaries: 1910. The Black and the White. Edited by Roger Sawyer. London, Pimlico, 1997. ISBN 0-7126-7375-X
• Casement, Roger, Some Poems. London, The Talbot Press / T. Fisher Unwin, 1918.
• Casement, Roger The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. Edited by Angus Mitchell. Anaconda Editions
• De Rosa, Peter, Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916
• Dudgeon, Jeffrey, Roger Casement: The Black Diaries with a Study of his Background, Sexuality and Irish Political Life, ISBN 0-9539287-2-1, Belfast, 2002
• Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold's Ghost
• Mitchell, Angus, Casement (Life & Times Series). Haus Publishing Limited, 2003. ISBN 1-904-34141-1
• Hyde, H. (Harford) Montgomery, Trial of Roger Casement, William Hodge, London 1960, Penguin edition 1964.
• Hyde, H. Montgomery, The Love That Dared not Speak its Name. Boston, Little, Brown, 1970.
• Inglis, Brian, Roger Casement, ISBN 0-14-139127-8 (2002)
• Minta, Stephen, Aguirre: The Re-creation of a Sixteenth-Century Journey Across South America. Henry Holt & Co., 1993, ISBN 0-8050-3103-0
• Reid, B.L., The Lives of Roger Casement. London, The Yale Press, 1976. ISBN 0-300-01801-0
• Sawyer, Roger, Casement: The Flawed Hero, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1984
• Singleton-Gates, Peter, & Maurice Girodias, The Black Diaries. An account of Roger Casement's life and times with a collection of his diaries and public writings. Paris, The Olympia Press, 1959. First edition of the "uncensored" Black Diaries.
• Wolf, Karin, Sir Roger Casement und die deutsch-irischen Beziehungen. Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1972. ISBN 3-428-02709-4

External links

• Photographs of and about Casement in the National Library of Ireland (no charge for reproduction)
• Brief biography of Roger Casement
• A BBC investigation into the "Black Diaries"
• A BBC News analysis from 2006 of Roger's legacy amongst the different communities in Northern Ireland
• 1916 Rising timeline.
• Roger Casement's speech from the Dock at the end of his trial for treason.
• Report of the British Consul, Roger Casement, on the Administration of the Congo Free State.
• Times report on his execution
• Works by Roger Casement at Project Gutenberg
• BBC Radio 4 Documentary, September 1993, plus article in Ireland's Hot Press magazine
• Roger Casement's Gravesite
• A documentary about how King Leopold II of Belgium colonized the Congo.
• Short version of James J. Horan's review of the Giles report
• Kevin Mannerings and Marcel B. Matley, The “Black Diaries” Attributed to Sir Roger Casement. 2003-2004
• Sean Murphy, Irish Historical Mysteries: The Diaries of Roger Casement. A critical article