Further information required by the reader can be requested through the publishers’ web-sites (http://www.anaconda.win-uk.net/ and http://indigo.ie/~lilliput) where relevant excerpts from the Black Diary for 1910 are available for those interested in making their own comparisons with The Amazon Journal. The web-sites will also serve as a forum for debate on the subject and will include reviews and articles relevant to Casement and his humanitarian investigations.

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All references to the collections of papers held at the National Library of Ireland, in the Public Record Office at Kew, Rhodes House Library, the National Archive of Ireland, London School of Economics and at the Franciscan Library at Killiney have been detailed in the text.

Some of the statements collected by Hardenburg and part of Casement’s report were published in W.E. Hardenburg, The Putumayo; The Devil’s Paradise – Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed Upon the Indians Therein (Fisher Unwin 1912). The Company prospectus, allegedly written by Eugenio Robuchon, En el Putumayo y sus afluentes (Lima 1907), is a rare book. Casement’s annotated copy is in the N.L.I. There is a microfilmed copy at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The copy at the British Library has disappeared.

Unfortunately there is not enough space within this volume to go into the whole economic and social background of South America and the Amazon rubber boom in the detail it deserves. Those who wish to know more should consult Barbara Weinstein, The Amazon Rubber Boom 1850–1920 (Stanford 1983) and, for a more botanical and environmental interpretation, Warren Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber (Cambridge University Press 1987). A fine bibliography is to be found in G. Pennano, La economía del caucho (Iquitos 1988). Howard and Ralph Wolf, Rubber: A Story of Glory and Greed (New York 1936), despite the purple prose, is a good overall account of the rubber industry. More generalized background to the socio-economic history of the period is found in Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, volumes IV and V. A more accessible recent history on South America is Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America (The Penguin Press 1992). John Hemming has written the most comprehensive books about the destruction of the Brazilian Indians in his works Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (Macmillan 1978) and Amazon Frontiers – The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians (Macmillan 1987).

Britain published a vast number of books on South America during the Edwardian Age and there is a wide choice of relevant travel writing. H.M. Tomlinson, The Sea and the Jungle (London 1912), is a well-written account of an Amazon river journey undertaken at the end of 1909; Algot Lange, The Lower Amazon (1914) and In the Amazon Jungle (1910), are good topographical accounts. An interesting memoir is John Yungjohann, White Gold: The Diary of a Rubber Cutter in the Amazon 1906–16 (Synergetic Press 1989). Equally informative is Lizzie: A Victorian Lady’s Amazon Adventure, compiled by Tony Morrison, Ann Brown and Anne Rose (British Broadcasting Corporation 1985). The British Ambassador in Washington, James Bryce, made a journey through South America at the end of 1910 and wrote about it in South America – Observations and Impressions (Macmillan 1912). Among the evangelizing missionaries, Geraldine Guinness, Peru – Its Story, People and Religion (Morgan and Scott 1909) is the most balanced.

No people on earth have been anthropologized to the same degree as the tribes of the Amazon rainforest. Among accounts contemporary to Casement’s investigation is Thomas Whiffen, The North-West Amazon – Notes of Some Months Spent among Cannibal Tribes (Constable and Co. 1915). Whiffen edited out his own suspicions of atrocities and despite the book being published in 1915 there is no mention of Casement’s investigation or the death of a single Indian. Indicative, perhaps, that there were forces at play trying to cover up Casement’s Amazon revelations well in advance of his capture. Whiffen borrowed much from the legendary German anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern: Reisen in Nordwest Brasilien, 1903–1905 2 vols (Berlin 1910). After the First World War Rafael Karsten, The Civilization of the South American Indians – with special reference to Magic and Religion (Kegan Paul 1926), gave civilized status to tribal customs and habits; Rafael Girard, Indios selváticos de la Amazonía peruana (Mexico 1958) and the seven volumes of The Handbook of South American Indians (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology), are all of interest. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (Jonathan Cape 1973) is the best place to begin understanding the structural anthropology of the South American tribal world.

More recent anthropological accounts of the region have been led by Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man – A Study in Terror and Healing (The University of Chicago Press 1987). His work contains an exhaustive bibliography relevant to the period and the Putumayo region. Michael Brown and Eduardo Fernandez, War of Shadows – The Struggle for Utopia in the Peruvian Amazon (University of California Press 1992), interprets the millennial issues; Roger Rumrrill, Vidas mágicas de tunchis y curanderos, is one of a number of works by the main Peruvian activist. Also of tremendous value is Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff’s works including Amazonian Cosmos – The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians (The University of Chicago Press 1971); Stephen Hugh-Jones, The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia (Cambridge University Press 1979). Of the increasing number of ethnobotanists currently exploring the Amazon in search of miracle cures and medicinal secrets of the tribal shaman none will ever match the stature of Richard Evans Schultes, Where the Gods Reign – Plants and People of the Colombia Amazon (Synergetic Press 1988) and Richard Evans Schultes and Robert Raffauf, Vine of the Soul – Medicine Men, their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazon (Synergetic Press 1992).

The Putumayo atrocities have been fictionalized in José Eustacio Rivera, La vorágine (1924, translated as The Vortex), considered the most important work of Colombian literature until the publication of Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez. In English, Richard Collier fictionalized the story of Hardenburg’s adventures in The River that God Forgot – The  Story of the Amazon Rubber Boom (Collins 1968). The story of rubber received similar treatment from Vicki Baum, The Weeping Wood (Michael Joseph 1945).

My own awareness of this subject was greatly influenced by a number of investigative journalists whose work led me into the whole rubber controversy and our collective need to fight for the preservation of the forested frontiers and tribal lands of the Amazon. Adrian Cowell, The Decade of Destruction (A Channel Four Book 1990); Mac Margolis, The Last New World, The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier (W.W. Norton 1992); Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season – The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest (Houghton Mifflin 1990); Alex Shoumatoff, Murder in the Rain Forest – The Chico Mendes Story (Fourth Estate 1991); George Monbiot, Amazon Watershed (Michael Joseph 1991); Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest Developer – Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon (Verso 1989).