Roger Casement in Irish and World History
Book Details
Published by Royal Irish Academy
January 2005
HardbackNumber of pages: 252
ISBN: 1904890040
Sir Roger Casement was a British consul who came to prominence for his work on human rights abuses in the Congo, as revealed in the Casement Report in 1904, and in South America. Something of a folk hero and martyr, he was a humanitarian turned republican organiser who was stripped of his knighthood in 1911 and executed for treason in 1916.
Here numerous scholars assess his contribution and legacy. This volume’s absorbing essays include: examinations of Casement’s work on behalf of the Congolese natives and the Amazonian Indians, for which he was knighted; studies of Casement’s roots in County Antrim for answers on his republicanism and his defence of the underdog, including an essay delving into his poetry manuscripts; a study of Casement’s relationship with the Irish Volunteers; an analysis of the work of the British Intelligence on the Casement trial, in which his ‘Black Diaries’ possibly written during his time in Africa and displaying a promiscuous interest in young boys were used to undermine the campaign for his clemency; and a sequence of specialised studies on his court cases. Casement’s infamous ‘Black Diaries’, are contested, debated and critiqued in depth.
Edited and introduced by Professor Mary E. Daly, this stunning volume adds a store of new research to the scholarship on one of Ireland’s most complex historical figures and the world’s early humanitarians.
About the authors
Mary E. Daly
Mary E. Daly was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1991 and in 2014 made history by becoming the first female president in the 230 year history of the Academy. Professor Daly is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Dublin (UCD) and served for seven years as Principal of UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies; she has also held visiting positions at Harvard and Boston College. From 2000 to 2004 she was Secretary of the Royal Irish Academy and vice-chair of the Academy's Working Group on Higher Education. Over the course of her distinguished career, Professor Daly has researched widely and published prolifically, notably: Dublin, the Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History, 1860-1914 (1984); Women and Work in Ireland (1997); The Slow Failure: Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920-1973 (2006); and, with Theo Hoppen, Gladstone: Ireland and Beyond (2011). She has edited the Royal Irish Academy publications 1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising (2007) and Roger Casement in Irish and World History (2005).
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