My found object is twofold, as I found two objects that are inexplicably tied to each other, one having spawned the other.  One is The Casement Report, a report upon the events in the Congo that helped end King Leopold's controlling regime in the Congo Free State, and the other is its author, a gay humanitarian Irishman named Roger Casement. Here, I'll focus only upon Casement, but his report is linked below, along with an article about Casement's execution for treason. (His execution hinged on ambiguously related charges involving The Black Diaries, a diary detailing his liaisons with black men in the Congo, and more relevant charges about importing German arms for Ireland's Easter uprising. See more at the second link.)

Roger Casement is important to our discussion of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, because his report of the atrocities in the early 1900s Congo was both accurate and vastly noted, giving him the nickname "Congo Casement."  He was knighted for his writings on the Congo in 1911, where he visited specifically to document the mutilation, murder, and disenfranchisement of the nation's native people.  His arrest for importing arms to aid the Easter rebellion in Ireland led to later charges of treason, and he was largely unsupported by his contemporaries due to his Black Diaries, mentioned above, that the government had in this possession.  He was executed by hanging, and his body was thrown, naked, into a pit of lime for treason against the British Crown.

Casement's Report was a sanctioned report that both he and Conrad worked towards- the pair met up in 1890 to talk about the atrocities, and Casement's report became a important piece that helped end King Leopold's regime in the Congo, and was sanctioned partly because of Casement's insistence on the terrible conditions in the Congo.  His focus on facts, rather than eloquent satirical work like Twain's, or the more inflammatory Doyle's, makes me wonder about the power of facts vs. elegant, powerful fiction.  Which is more powerful, or are they equally powerful forms of writing in different contexts?  Did factual reports upon the Congo sway other world powers to action, or was it the collective influence of fiction writers speaking to historically true events?

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Link to The Casement Report (very long, hence the focus on the article instead of the report) here.

Link to the article about Roger Casement here.

Written by Selina Mixner