Research Catalog

Title

The devil and Mr. Casement : one man's battle for human rights in South America's heart of darkness / Jordan Goodman.

Author

Goodman, Jordan.

Publication

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

viii, 322 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., map; 24 cm.

Summary

"In September 1910, the activist Roger Casement arrived in the Amazon jungle on a mission for the British government: to investigate reports of widespread human rights abuses in the forests along the Putumayo River. Accusations against the Peruvian rubber baron Julio Cesar Arana had been making their way back to London, and the rumors were on everybody's lips: Arana was enslaving, torturing, and murdering the local Indians. Arana's Peruvian Amazon Company, with its headquarters in London's financial heart, was responsible." "Casement was outraged by what he uncovered: nearly thirty thousand Indians had died to produce four thousand tons of rubber. When Casement's seven-hundred-page report of the Putumayo violence was published in London in 1912, it set off reverberations throughout the world. People were appalled that murderous acts were being carried out in the name of profit, all under the cloak of British respectability and fairness. The Peruvian Amazon Company was forced into liquidation, and its board of directors, including an aristocrat with ties to the royal family, was publicly shamed." "From the Amazonian rain forests to the streets of London and Washington, D.C., Jordan Goodman recounts a tragedy whose exposure pulled back the curtain on exploitation and the wholesale abuse of human rights. Drawing on a wealth of original research, The Devil and Mr. Casement is a haunting story of modern capitalism with enormous contemporary political resonance."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• Atrocities > Putumayo River Valley > History > 20th century
• Casement, Roger, 1864-1916
• Consuls > Great Britain > Biography
• Human rights > Putumayo River Valley > History > 20th century
• Imperialism > History > Putumayo River Valley > 20th century
• Indians of South America > History > Putumayo River Valley > 20th century
• Irish > Great Britain > Biography
• Peru > History > 20th century
• Peruvian Amazon Company > History
• Putumayo River Valley > History > 20th century
• Rubber industry workers > Putumayo River Valley > History > 20th century

Note

• "Originally published, in slightly different form, in 2009 by Verso Books, Great Britain"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-302) and index.

ISBN

• 9780374138400 (hardcover)
• 0374138400 (hardcover)

LCCN

• 2009029528
• 40017647096

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries