ECU Libraries Catalog

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

Author/creator Goodman, Jordan
Format Book and Print
Edition1st American ed.
Publication InfoNew York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.
Descriptionviii, 322 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
Supplemental Content Contributor biographical information
Supplemental Content Publisher description
Supplemental Content Sample text
Subject(s)
Contents Introduction: La selva comes to London -- Across the Andes -- Iquitos and rubber -- Arana's world -- Saldaña Rocca's world -- Over to the Foreign Office -- An officer and a gentleman -- Our man in the Putumayo -- Eyes of another race -- The uttermost parts of the Earth -- La Chorrera -- Godforsaken hell-haunted wilds -- A system of armed extortion -- Deus ex machina -- The veil over the Putumayo mystery -- Publish and be damned -- An international scandal -- The old gang -- The canon and the board -- La selva returns to Parliament -- The Peruvian, the American, and the Select Committee -- The devil and Mr. Casement -- Epilogue : a crime against humanity -- Dramatis personae and chronology.
Abstract "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 César 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." -- dust jacket.
General note"Originally published, in slightly different form, in 2009 by Verso Books, Great Britain"--T.p. verso.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references (p. [289]-302) and index.
LCCN 2009029528
ISBN9780374138400 (hc)
ISBN0374138400
ISBN9780312680589 (pbk.)
ISBN0312680589 (pbk.)

Available Items

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks F3451.P94 G66 2010 ✔ Available Place Hold