Roger David Casement (Irish: Ruairí Dáithí Mac Easmainn; 1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916) — known as Sir Roger Casement Kt. CMG between 1911 and shortly before his execution for treason, when he was stripped of his knighthood
[1] — was an Irish nationalist, activist, patriot and poet.
A British
consul by profession, Casement became famous for his reports and activities against human rights abuses in the
Congo and
Peru, and also for his dealings with Germany before Ireland's
Easter Rising in 1916. An Irish nationalist and
Parnellite supporter in his youth, in Africa he worked for commercial interests and latterly in the service of the UK.
However, the
Boer War and his consular investigation into atrocities in the Congo led Casement to anti-Imperialist and ultimately to
Irish Republican and separatist political opinions. He sought to obtain German support for a rebellion in Ireland against British rule. Shortly before the Easter Rising, he landed in Ireland and was arrested. He was subsequently convicted and executed for treason. There has been controversy over a set of
Black Diaries, copies of which were circulated selectively by the British authorities following Casement's conviction, which, if accepted as genuine, would portray Casement as a promiscuous
homosexual with a fondness for young men. Given prevailing views on homosexuality at the time, circulation of the diaries helped undermine support for clemency for Casement.
Casement's mother, Anne Jephson of Dublin (whose origins are obscure), had him rebaptised secretly as a
Catholic when he reached the age of three, in
Rhyl.
[3][4] According to an 1892 letter, Casement believed that she was descended from the
Jephson family of
Mallow, County Cork.
[5] However, the Jephson family's historian provides no evidence of this.
[6] She died in
Worthing when her son was nine. By the time Casement was 13 years old his father was also dead, having ended his days in Ballymena dependent on the charity of relatives.
After his father's death he was looked after 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 the
Ballymena Academy. He left school at the age of 16 and took up a clerical job with
Elder Dempster, a Liverpool shipping company headed by Alfred Lewis Jones, later an enemy on the Congo issue.
[7]
Casement was appointed British Consul for the Eastern part of
French Congo in August 1901.
[8]
In 1903, Roger Casement, then the British Consul at
Boma in neighbouring
Congo Free State, was commissioned by the British government to investigate the human rights situation in that colony. A long, detailed eyewitness report exposing abuses, the Casement Report, was delivered in 1904. 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.
Casement and his friend
Herbert Ward, who he met in the Congo
Leopold had exploited the territory's natural resources (mostly rubber) as a private entrepreneur, not as King of the Belgians. 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. In 1905, despite his efforts, it confirmed the essentials of Casement's report. On 15 November 1908, the parliament of Belgium took over the Congo Free State from Leopold and organised its administration as the
Belgian Congo.
Peru: Abuses against the Putumayo Indians[edit source | editbeta]
In 1906, Casement was sent to Brazil, first as consul in
Pará, then transferred to
Santos, and lastly promoted to consul-general in
Rio de Janeiro. 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 Cesar Arana and his brother, Casement had the occasion to do work among the
Putumayo Indians of
Peru similar to that which he had done in the
Congo. Public outrage in Britain over the abuses against the Putumayo had been sparked in 1909 by articles in the British magazine
Truth. Casement paid two visits to the region, first in 1910 and then a follow-up in 1911. In a report to the British foreign secretary, dated 17 March 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, while others fled. Conditions in the area undoubtedly improved as a result, but the contemporary switch to farmed rubber in other parts of the world was a godsend to the Indians as well. Arana himself was never prosecuted. He instead went on to have a successful political career, becoming a senator and dying 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. In 1911, Casement was
knighted for his efforts on behalf of the Amazonian Indians, having been reluctantly appointed
Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1905 for his Congo work.
In Ireland on leave from Africa in 1904-05, in 1904 Casement joined the
Gaelic League established in 1893 to preserve the
Irish language. He also met the leaders of the Home Rule
IPP to lobby for his work in the Congo, but did not support them as he felt that the
House of Lords would always veto their efforts. He was more impressed by
Arthur Griffith's new
Sinn Féin party which called for Irish independence by using a non-violent series of strikes and boycotts, modelled on the policy of
Ferenc Deák in Hungary, and he joined it in 1905.
[9]
Roger Casement's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery
Casement retired from the consular service in the summer of 1913.
[10] In November that year, he helped form the
Irish Volunteers with
Eoin MacNeill, later the organisation's chief of staff. They co-wrote the Volunteers' manifesto. In July 1914, Casement journeyed to the U.S. to promote and raise money for the Volunteers. Through his friendship with men such as
Bulmer Hobson, who was a member of the Volunteers and the
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Casement established connections with exiled Irish nationalists, particularly in
Clan na Gael.
[11]
Elements of the Clan did not trust him completely, as he was not a member of the IRB and held views considered by many to be too moderate, although others such as
John Quinn regarded him as extreme.
[citation needed] John Devoy, who was initially hostile to Casement for his part in conceding control of the Irish Volunteers to Redmond, in June was won over, while the more extreme Clan leader
Joseph McGarrity became and remained devoted to Casement.
[12] The
Howth gun-running in late July 1914 which he had helped to organise and finance further enhanced Casement's reputation.
In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Casement and John Devoy arranged a meeting in New York with the Western Hemisphere’s top-ranking German diplomat,
Count Bernstorff, to propose a mutually beneficial plan: if Germany would sell guns to the Irish rebels and provide military leaders, the rebels would stage a revolt against England, diverting troops and attention from the war on Germany. Bernstorff appeared sympathetic, but Casement and Devoy decided to send an envoy, Clan na Gael president
John Kenny, to present their plan personally. Kenny, unable to meet the
German Emperor, was nonetheless given a warm reception by Flotow, the German ambassador to Italy, and by
Prince von Bülow. In October, Casement himself set sail for Germany, via Norway. He viewed himself as an ambassador of the Irish nation. While the journey was his idea,
Clan na Gael financed the expedition. In
Christiania, his companion
Adler Christensen was taken to the British legation and, according to him, offered a reward if Casement was "knocked on the head".
[13]
The British minister, in contrast, advised London that Christensen had approached them, and also said that he "implied that their relations were of an unnatural nature and that consequently he had great power over this man."
[14] It was this episode that first provided London with the intimation that Casement was
homosexual.
[15]
In November 1914,
[16] 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".
[17] In Berlin Casement negotiated with
Arthur Zimmermann, then Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, and with the Imperial Chancellor,
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.
Casement plaque commemorating his stay in Bavaria during the summer of 1915
[21]
However, both efforts proved unsuccessful. The Irish plan failed, as all Irishmen fighting in the British army did so voluntarily, while recruits to Casement's brigade knew they would be liable to the death penalty if Britain won the war. It was largely abandoned after much time and money were wasted. The Germans, who were sceptical of Casement, but nonetheless aware of the military advantage they could gain from an uprising in Ireland, only in April 1916 offered the Irish 20,000
Mosin–Nagant 1891 rifles, ten
machine guns and accompanying ammunition, a fraction of the quantity of the arms Casement had hoped for, and no German officers.
[22] A detailed account of Casement's Irish Brigade in Germany was written by Michael McKeogh, recruiting officer and Sergeant Major in the Irish Brigade in Germany and Casement’s adjutant.
[23]
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 were never landed in Ireland. The ship transporting them, a German cargo vessel called
SMS 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 Norwegian. The British, however, had intercepted German communications coming from Washington and knew there was going to be an attempt to land arms, even if the
Royal Navy was not precisely aware of the location. The arms ship, under Captain
Karl Spindler, was eventually apprehended by HMS
Bluebell on the late afternoon of Good Friday. About to be escorted into Queenstown (now
Cobh,
County Cork) on the morning of Saturday, 22 April, after surrendering, the
Aud Norge was scuttled by pre-set explosive charges. She lies at 40 metres depth.
[citation needed] Her crew became prisoners of war.
Casement confided his personal papers to Dr. Charles Curry, with whom he had stayed at
Riederau on the
Ammersee, before he left Germany. He departed with Robert Monteith and Sergeant Daniel Beverley (Bailey) of the Irish Brigade in a
submarine, initially the
SM U-20, which developed engine trouble, and then the
SM U-19, shortly after the
Aud sailed.
According to Monteith, Casement believed that the Germans were toying with him from the start and providing inadequate aid that would doom a rising to failure, and that 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.
[24] Indeed, Casement sent a recently arrived Irish-American,
John McGoey, through Denmark to Dublin, ostensibly to advise of what military aid was coming from Germany and when, but with Casement's orders "to get the Heads in Ireland to call off the rising and merely try to land the arms and distribute them".
[25] McGoey however did not make it to Dublin, nor did his message. His fate was unknown until recently but he survived, joining the Royal Navy later in 1916, and dying in the US in a 1925 building accident.
[26] Despite any view ascribed to Monteith,
[27] Casement expected to be involved in the rising if it went ahead.
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. He was taken straight to the
Tower of London where he was imprisoned,
[28] but not before he was able to send word to Dublin about the inadequate German assistance. The Kerry Brigade of the
Irish Volunteers might have tried to rescue him over the next three days, but was ordered by its leadership in Dublin to "do nothing".
[29]
At Casement's highly publicised trial for
treason, the prosecution had trouble arguing its case as Casement's crimes had been carried out in Germany and the medieval
Treason Act 1351 seemed to apply only to activities carried out on English (or, arguably, British) soil. A close reading of the medieval Act allowed for a broader interpretation: the court decided that a comma should be read in the text, crucially widening the sense so that "in the realm or elsewhere" referred to where acts were done and not just to where the "King's enemies" may be. This led to the claim that Casement was "hanged on a comma".
Casement made an unsuccessful appeal against the conviction and death sentence. Among the many people who pleaded for clemency were
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was acquainted with Casement through the work of the Congo Reform Association, the
Anglo-Irish poet
W. B. Yeats and the playwright
George Bernard Shaw.
Edmund Dene Morel could not visit Casement in prison, being under attack for his own
pacifist position. On the other hand, the author
Joseph Conrad, who had a son serving at the front, could not forgive Casement for his treachery towards Britain, nor could Casement's friend the sculptor
Herbert Ward. Members of the Casement family in Antrim contributed discreetly to the defence fund, although they had sons in the British Army and Navy.
Casement was received into the Catholic Church while awaiting execution and was attended by a Catholic priest, Father James McCarroll, who said of Casement that he was "a saint ... we should be praying to him [Casement] instead of for him".
[30] Casement was
hanged by
John Ellis and his assistants at
Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916, at the age of 51.
The Black Diaries and Casement's sexuality[edit source | editbeta]
The
Black Diaries are a set of diaries, claimed to have been written by Casement and covering the years 1903, 1910 and 1911 (twice). If genuine, the diaries would portray Casement as a promiscuous
homosexual sex tourist with a fondness for young men.
[31] In 1916, after Casement's conviction for treason, photographs of the diaries were circulated by the British government to individuals urging commutation of Casement's death sentence. At a time of strong social conservatism, not least among Irish Catholics, the
Black Diariesundermined support for Casement.
The question of whether the diaries are genuine or forgeries has been much debated. However, a detailed forensic investigation in 2002 concluded that the diaries had indeed been written by Casement.
[32] The diaries were declassified for public inspection in August 1959.
[33] The original diaries may be seen at the British
National Archives in
Kew.
The Carriage on which Casement's coffin was drawn during the 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. In 1965, Casement's body was repatriated to Ireland and, after a
state funeral, was buried with full military honours in the Republican plot in
Glasnevin Cemetery in
Dublin after lying in state at Arbour Hill for five days, during which time an estimated half a million people filed past his coffin. 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 released the remains only on condition that they not be brought into Northern Ireland. Interestingly, the 1966
British Cabinet record of the decision refers to him as
Sir Roger Casement.
[34]
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.
[35]
Landmarks, buildings and organisations[edit source | editbeta]
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 GACin Portglenone.
- In Dundalk there is an estate named after him in Árd Easmuinn called "Casement Heights."
- Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, the Irish Air Corps base near Dublin.
- Casement Rail & Bus Station in Tralee, near the site of Casement's landing on Banna Strand. Operated by Iarnród Éireann andCóras Iompair Éireann
- In Cork, there is an estate named after him in one of the west suburbs, Glasheen, named Roger Casement Park.
- 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.
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, with the refrain, "The ghost of Roger Casement/Is beating on the door". Brendan Behan refers to the poem in his autobiographical novel Borstal Boy, and speaks of the respect his family had for Casement, noting that his older brother Rory Behan had been named after Casement.
- Casement is the subject of the play Prisoner of the Crown, which was written by Richard Herd and Richard Stockton and which premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 15 February 1972.[36]
- Roger Casement appears in the "Giant's Causeway" of French Academician Pierre Benoit in 1922, telling of his capture and execution and presenting him as a noble martyr and scapegoat.
- In 1968 a German TV series Sir Roger Casement was made about his time in Germany during the First World War.
- In 1973, BBC Radio aired a critically acclaimed radio play by David Rudkin about the life of Casement, called Cries from Casement as His Bones are Brought to Dublin.
- On 3 November 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa (2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature) published El sueño del celta, or The Dream of the Celt, based on Casement's life.[37]
- American Noise Rock band ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead released an instrumental entitled "The Betrayal of Roger Casement & the Irish Brigade" on their 2008 Festival Thyme EP.
- ^ The London Gazette: no. 29651. p. 6596. 4 July 1916. Retrieved 3 August 2008.
- ^ Dr Noel Kissane (2006). "The 1916 Rising: Personalities & Perspectives an online exhibition" (PDF). National Library of Ireland/Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
- ^ Angus Mitchell, Casement, Haus Publishing, 2003 p.11.
- ^ Brian Inglis (1974, op cit.) commented at p.115 that "..although she allowed the children to be brought up as Protestants, she had them baptised 'conditionally' when Roger was four years old."
- ^ Sawyer R. Casement the Flawed Hero (Routledge, London 1984) quoted at pp. 4-5. ISBN 0-7102-0013-7
- ^ Maurice Denham Jephson, An Anglo-Irish Miscellany, Allen Figgis, Dublin 1964
- ^ Seamas O Siochain, Roger Casement, Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary p.15
- ^ The London Gazette: no. 27354. p. 6049. 13 September 1901.
- ^ Brian Inglis, "Roger Casement"; Harcourt Jovanovich, 1974; pp.118-20; 134-139
- ^ Séamas Ó Síocháin, Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary, p. 357-8.
- ^ Inglis, p.263
- ^ O Síocháin, Séamas, Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary p.382
- ^ Mitchell, Angus, Casement, p. 99
- ^ National Archives, Kew, PRO FO 95/776)
- ^ O Síocháin, Séamas, Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary p. 394
- ^ http://www.drb.ie/essays/casement-s-war, by Jeffrey Dudgeon, March 2013
- ^ The Continental Times, 20 November 1914
- ^ An anonymous but detailed account of Casement's unwelcome reception at the camp appears in The Literary Digest Vol 52, No. 1, 13 May 1916 (New York: Funk and Wagnall) pp. 1376-77 [NB, the PDF download is 358MB]
- ^ On 27 December 1914, Casement signed an agreement in Berlin to this effect with Arthur Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office. Only 52 men volunteered for the Brigade. Contrary to German promises, they received no training in the use of machine guns, which at the time were relatively new and unknown weapons.
- ^ Plowman, Matthew Erin. "Irish Republicans and the Indo-German Conspiracy of World War I," New Hibernia Review. 7.3 (2003) 81-105
- ^ translated: Here lived in summer 1915 Sir Roger Casement, a martyr for Ireland's freedom, a magnanimous friend of Germany in grave times. He sealed the love of his country with his blood.
- ^ Estimates of the weapons shipment hover around the 20,000 mark. The BBC gives the figure the German government originally agreed to ship as "25,000 captured Russian rifles, and one million rounds of ammunition" here.
- ^ With Casement's Irish Brigade
- ^ Keith Jeffery in 1916 The long Revolution, The First World War and the Rising: Mode, Moment and Memory p. 93, Ed. G. Doherty & D. Keogh, (2007) ISBN 978-1-85635-545-2.
- ^ Casement's diary entry for 27 March 1916, National Library of Ireland MS 5244
- ^ http://www.irishbrigade.eu/other-men/goey/goey.html
- ^ see Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion, p. 127.
- ^ Olwen Hedley, Her Majesty's Tower of London, p.19, Pitkin Pictorials Ltd., 1976.
- ^ Memoir of Willie Mullins, quoted at a Casement commemoration in 1968; a subsequent internal enquiry attached "no blame whatsoever" to the local Volunteers. See theIrish Times 29 July 1968.
- ^ Life at Ricorso
- ^ Bill Mc Cormack (Spring 2001). "The Casement Diaries: a suitable case for treatment". Research Hallmark, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Archived from the original on 2008-03-16. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
- ^ Paul, Tizley. "Roger Casement: Secrets of the Black Diaries". BBC. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
- ^ The Times, Authors Examine Casement Diaries, 11 August 1959
- ^ National Archives, London, CAB/128/39
- ^ [1]
- ^ Keeler, William. Review of Prisoner of the Crown.Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 24, no. 3 (Oct. 1972), pp. 327-328 The Johns Hopkins University Press
- ^ Mario Vargas Llosa Publishes New Novel The Dream of the Celt
By Roger Casement:
- 1910. Roger Casement's diaries: 1910. The Black and the White. Sawyer, Roger, ed. London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-7375-X
- 1911. The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. Mitchell, Angus, ed. Anaconda Editions.
- 1914. The Crime against Ireland, and how the War may right it. Berlin: no publisher.
- 1914. Ireland, Germany and freedom of the seas: a possible outcome of the War of 1914. New York & Philadelphia: The Irish Press Bureau. Reprinted 2005: ISBN 1-4219-4433-2
- 1915. The Crime against Europe. The causes of the War and the foundations of Peace. Berlin: The Continental Times.
- 1916. Gesammelte Schriften. Irland, Deutschland und die Freiheit der Meere und andere Aufsätze. Diessen vor München: Joseph Huber Verlag. Second expanded edition, 1917.
- 1918. Some Poems. London: The Talbot Press/T. Fisher Unwin.
Secondary Literature, and other materials cited in this entry:
- Doerries, Reinhard R., 2000. Prelude to the Easter Rising: Sir Roger Casement in Imperial Germany. London & Portland. Frank Cass.
- Dudgeon, Jeffrey, 2002. Roger Casement: The Black Diaries with a Study of his Background, Sexuality and Irish Political Life. Belfast Press. ISBN 0-9539287-2-1. (Includes first publication of 1911 diary).
- Goodman, Jordan, The Devil and Mr. Casement: One Man's Battle for Human Rights in South America's Heart of Darkness, 2010. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-13840-0
- Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold's Ghost.
- Hyde, H. Montgomery, 1960. Trial of Roger Casement. London: William Hodge. Penguin edition 1964.
- Hyde, H. Montgomery, 1970. The Love That Dared not Speak its Name. Boston: Little, Brown (in UK The Other Love).
- Inglis, Brian, 1973. Roger Casement, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Republished 1993 by Blackstaff Belfast and by Penguin 2002.ISBN 0-14-139127-8.
- Keogh, Michael, 2010. "With Casement's Irish Brigade". Dublin: Choice Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907107-41-2
- Lacey, Brian, 2008. Terrible Queer Creatures: Homosexuality in Irish History. Dublin: Wordwell Books.
- Mc Cormack, W.J., 2002. Roger Casement in Death or Haunting the Free State. Dublin: UCD Press.
- Minta, Stephen, 1993. Aguirre: The Re-creation of a Sixteenth-Century Journey Across South America. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 0-8050-3103-0.
- Mitchell, Angus, 2003. Casement (Life & Times Series). Haus Publishing Limited. ISBN 1-904341-41-1.
- Ó Síocháin, Séamas and Michael O’Sullivan, eds., 2004.The Eyes of Another Race: Roger Casement's Congo Report and 1903 Diary. University College Dublin Press. ISBN 1-900621-99-1.
- Ó Síocháin, Séamas, 2008. Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary. Dublin: Lilliput Press.
- Reid, B.L., 1987. The Lives of Roger Casement. London: The Yale Press. ISBN 0-300-01801-0.
- Sawyer, Roger, 1984. Casement: The Flawed Hero. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Singleton-Gates, Peter, & Maurice Girodias, 1959. 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. First edition of the Black Diaries.
- Thomson, Basil, 1922. Queer People (chapters 7 & 8) An account of the Easter Uprising and Casement's involvement from the head of Scotland yard at the time. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
- Clayton, Xander: Aud, Plymouth 2007.
- Wolf, Karin, 1972. Sir Roger Casement und die deutsch-irischen Beziehungen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. ISBN 3-428-02709-4.
- Eberspächer, Cord/Wiechmann, Gerhard. "Erfolg Revolution kann Krieg entscheiden". Der Einsatz von S.M.H. Libau im irischen Osteraufstand 1916 ("Success revolution may decide war". The use of S.M.H. Libau in the Easter Rising 1916), in: Schiff & Zeit, Nr. 67, Frühjahr 2008, S. 2-16.
- "Ireland, Germany and Europe", From the Digital Library@Villanova University.
- 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"
- "Casement: Traitor or patriot?". BBC News. 2006-08-02. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
- 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
- White King, Red Rubber, Black Death (2003) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database
- 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
- Jeffrey Dudgeon reviews Séamas Ó Síocháin’s biography of Casement
- Links by Jeffrey Dudgeon MBE to images related to Roger Casement
- THE ROGER CASEMENT PAPERS - House of Commons Deb. 3 May 1956
- Arana,rey del caucho, by Ovidio Lagos (Spanish)