ABSTRACT
Roger Casement was an experienced 'Africa hand'. He briefly accompanied Stanley on the Emin Pasha expedition and also met Conrad, who enjoyed his company and noted that he 'thinks, speaks well, most intelligent and very sympathetic'. In 1900 he was reporting to the Foreign Office that the root of the evil lies in the fact that the government of the Congo is above all a commercial trust, that everything else is orientated towards commercial gain. In asking Casement to report, the Foreign Office can have had little doubt what the outcome would be. Casement's instructions arrived in June 1903 and he immediately set out, chartering, at his own expense, a steamboat belonging to the American Baptist Missionary Union, which enabled him to retain his freedom of movement and independence from the authorities. Towards the end of his report Casement dealt at length with a number of his experiences in the Anglo-Belgian Rubber Company district.
