From Irish Famine to Congo Reform: Nineteenth-Century Roots of International Human Rights Law and Activism

Kiernan, Ben

doi:10.1007/978-90-481-9840-5_2

Ben Kiernan³

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 7))

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Abstract

This article traces the emergence of modern human rights law and activism to the 19th century colonial context, focusing on the impact of the Irish Famine of 1845–1851 and colonial oppression in the Congo Free State. It shows the way in which the British government’s response to the Irish Famine discredited the ideology of inaction in the face of catastrophe and set the stage for international relief and protest movements. Informed by the Irish tragedy, individuals such as George Washington Williams, Roger Casement and Edmund Morel succeeded in attracting global attention on a colonial humanitarian disaster and on the major international culprits, and in setting institutional precedents for targeted human rights campaigns in an era of emerging international humanitarian law. In that respect they were precursors of the jurist Raphael Lemkin and paved the way for the international proscription of genocide.

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Notes

1.
Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), chs. 7–9; Mike Davis , Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001); Peter Carey, The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java , 1785–1855 (Leiden: KITLV, 2007); Ben Kiernan, “Serial Colonialism and Genocide in Nineteenth-Century Cambodia ,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York : Berghahn, 2008), 223.
2.
Adam Hochschild , Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (New York : Verso, 1988).
3.
For different views, see Thomas Bender, ed., The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
4.
Deborah Mayersen, “Intermittent Intervention: Europe and the Precipitation of the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896,” in Terror, War, Tradition: Studies in European History, ed. Bernard Mees and Samuel P. Koehne (Unley, SA: Australian Humanities Press, 2007), 247–270, esp. 265–269.
5.
Douglas Peifer, “Genocide and Air Power,” Strategic Studies Quarterly 2, no. 2 (2008): 97.
6.
M. Chérif Bassiouni, “Crimes Against Humanity,” Crimes of War Project, www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/crimes-against-humanity.html (Accessed May 13, 2008).
7.
The main events of the Armenian Genocide are recounted in Douglas Greenberg, Chapter 5 (below); an explanation of the Turkish government ’s stance towards the genocide is provided in Taner Akçam, Chapter 10 (below).
8.
An analysis of the legal effects of the Genocide Convention on States Parties is provided in Wenqi Zhu and Binxin Zhang, Chapter 12, Sections 12.2 and 12.4.1 to 12.4.6 (below).
9.
Séamas Ó Síocháin , Roger Casement : Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary (Dublin: Lilliput, 2007), 8.
10.
Cormac Ó Gráda , Black ‘47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 4, 7, 41, 87, 232.
11.
Colm Tóibín and Diarmaid Ferriter, The Irish Famine : A Documentary (New York : St. Martins, 2001), 16–17.
12.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 124; Christine Kinealy , “Food Exports from Ireland 1846–1847,” History Ireland 5, no. 1 (1997): 34.
13.
“Political: The Actual Condition of Ireland ,” The Economist , October 14, 1843, 107–108.
14.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 77.
15.
“Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 58.
16.
Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 34–36.
17.
Trevelyan , letter to Under-Secretary Pennefather, June 26, 1846, Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 79.
18.
Trevelyan , letter to Lord Monteagle, October 9, 1846, Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 71.
19.
“Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 58.
20.
Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 13.
21.
“Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 58.
22.
“Political: The Actual Condition of Ireland ,” The Economist , October 14, 1843, 107.
23.
“Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 60.
24.
Russell addressing House of Commons, August 17, 1846, excerpt in “Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 58.
25.
Trevelyan , letter to Chairman of the Board of Works, October 5, 1846, Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 99.
26.
Cf. Robin Haines, Charles Trevelyan and the Great Irish Famine (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004).
27.
“Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 67.
28.
“The Political Economist : Three Measures for the First Day of the Session,” The Economist, January 16, 1847, 1.
29.
“Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 60; “The New Measures of the Government,” The Economist, January 30, 1847, 115.
30.
Lords Russell and Lansdowne, quoted in “The Political Economist : Ireland ,” The Economist, January 30, 1847, 113.
31.
Ibid., and “The New Measures of the Government,” The Economist , January 30, 1847, 113–116.
32.
Times , Friday, March 26, 1847, 4.
33.
John O’Connell , speech in the House of Commons, March 25, 1847, reported in the Times , Friday, March 26, 1847, 4.
34.
Times , March 26, 1847, 4.
35.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 251 n.96, citing Times , March 26, 1847; Val Noone, “Famine and Imperialism: Ireland 1845–1852” (paper presented at Colloquium on “Comparative Famine and Political Killings: causation, scale and state responsibility ,” History Department, Melbourne University, August 13 1999).
36.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 43–44, 83.
37.
Quoted in Claude Rawson, God, Gulliver and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 234.
38.
Timothy Guinnane, “Ireland ’s famine wasn’t genocide,” Washington Post, September 17, 1997; Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 10; Kiernan, Blood and Soil.
39.
Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 34–36.
40.
Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 36.
41.
Christine Kinealy , The Great Irish Famine : Impact, Ideology and Rebellion (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 43.
42.
Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 13; Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 251 n. 96, 77.
43.
Clarendon , letter to Russell , October 30, 1847, in Haines, Charles Trevelyan , 376.
44.
Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 36.
45.
Christine Kinealy , A Death-dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland (London: Pluto, 1997), 98–99; in Ó Gráda ’s words, “the poor were being made to pay for the perceived sins of the rich.” Black ‘47, 83.
46.
Haines, Charles Trevelyan , 4–5, 401; Trevelyan to Monteagle, October 9, 1846, in Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 72.
47.
Jennifer Pitts (ed.), in Alexis de Tocqueville, Writings on Empire and Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 249 n.6, quoting an unidentified Algerian newspaper, dated May 2, 1846.
48.
Quoted in Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 16.
49.
Robert Murray , Provincial Bank of Ireland , to Chancellor of the Exchequer Henry Goulburn, Sept. 25, 1845, quoted in Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger (New York : Harper & Row, 1962), 41; Robert Murray, Ireland, Its Present Condition and Future Prospects (Dublin, 1847), 19, quoted in Christopher Morash, Writing the Irish Famine (Oxford: Clarendon , 1995), 67; Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine, 190.
50.
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, xci, cols. 588–590, quoted in James S. Donnelly , Jr., “Mass Eviction and the Great Famine,” in The Great Irish Famine , ed. Cathal Póirtéir (Dublin: Mercier, 1995), 160, 275.
51.
Trevelyan , The Irish Crisis, 151–154, excerpt in Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 112.
52.
Illustrated London News , December 16, 1848, in Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 125 (see also pp. 16, 193).
53.
Cormac Ó Gráda , The Great Irish Famine (London: Macmillan, 1989), 48; Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine, 16.
54.
Ciarán Ó Murchadha, Sable Wings over the Land: Ennis, County Clare, and its Wider Community During the Great Famine (Ennis, Clasp Press, 1998); Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill, Patient Endurance: The Great Famine in Connemara (Dublin: Connemara Girl Publications, 1997); Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 86–89.
55.
Kinealy , The Great Irish Famine , 73, 83, 80–81; Arkansas Intelligencer, April 3 1847.
56.
In The Destruction of Aboriginal Society (Canberra, 1970), C.D. Rowley terms the policy “ laissez-faire in practice” (54).
57.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 6; Ó Gráda, Great Irish Famine , 52.
58.
“The Political Economist : Ireland ,” The Economist, January 30, 1847, 113–114.
59.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 6, 44, 77, 79, 83.
60.
“Ireland – Past Measures and Their Results,” The Economist , January 16, 1847, 60.
61.
George Villiers, Earl of Clarendon , letter to Prime Minister Russell , April 26, 1849.
62.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 44, 83.
63.
Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 33, 35; Noone, “Famine and Imperialism,” cites Kinealy, A Death-dealing Famine; Tóibín and Ferriter, Irish Famine , 183–184.
64.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 123; Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 33.
65.
Jim Donnelly , History Ireland 1, no 3, cited in Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 33.
66.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 123–124; Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 34.
67.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 124; Clarendon wrote to Russell in late 1847 that “no distress would have occurred if the exportation of Irish grain had been permitted.” Kinealy , “Food Exports,” 36.
68.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47, 125, 6.
69.
The Economist , February 12, 1853, 168–169. See R. L. Rubinstein, “Genocide and Civilization,” in Genocide and the Modern Age, ed. I. Wallimann and M. Dobkowski (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 287.
70.
Ó Gráda , Black ‘47; Cormac Ó Gráda, “The Great Famine and Today’s Famines,” in The Great Irish Famine , ed. Cathal Póirtéir (Dublin, Mercier, 1995), 252.
71.
An explanation of the “sovereignty as responsibility” concept is provided in Francis M. Deng, Chapter 4 (below).
72.
Davis , Late Victorian Holocausts; Sugata Bose, “Starvation Amidst Plenty: The Making of Famine in Bengal , Honan, and Tonkin, 1942–1945,” Modern Asian Studies 24, no. 4 (1990).
73.
Kiernan, Blood and Soil, chs. 13–14.
74.
Mark Cocker, Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe ’s Conflict with Tribal Peoples (London: J. Cape, 1998), 284.
75.
Daniel Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes: Léopold II et son Congo (Bruxelles: Didier Hatier, 1986), 13.
76.
Neal Ascherson, The King Incorporated: Leopold the Second and the Congo (London: Granta, 1999), 46, 164–165; Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 13.
77.
Adam Hochschild , King Leopold ’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Mariner Books, 1998), 80.
78.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 38–40, 117–118.
79.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 15; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 58, 70, 74.
80.
William Roger Louis , “The Stokes Affair and the Origins of the Anti-Congo Campaign, 1895–1896,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 43, no. 2 (1965): 572–584; Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 77.
81.
Martin Ewans, European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State, and its Aftermath (London: Routledge, 2002), 50–52; Hochschild , Leopold’s Ghost, 50.
82.
Ewans, European Atrocity, 57.
83.
Peter Singleton-Gates and Maurice Girodias, The Black Diaries: An Account of Roger Casement ’s Life and Times with a Collection of his Diaries and Public Writings (New York : Grove, 1959), 87.
84.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 227.
85.
Robert Harms , “The End of Red Rubber : A Reassessment,” Journal of African History 16, no.1 (1975): 73.
86.
Nancy Rose Hunt, “An Acoustic Register, Tenacious Images, and Congolese Scenes of Rape and Repetition,” Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 2 (2008): 221, 227–228.
87.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 46, 30–36; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 227–228.
88.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 54, 42, 36, 38–39.
89.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 40, 55, 58–59, 65–66; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 166, 228.
90.
Harms , “End of Red Rubber ,” 78–82, 87. For more on Abir , see Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, chs. V, VI.
91.
King-Sovereign of the Congo Free State to the State agents, Brussels, June 16, 1897, in La Belgique Coloniale, August 14, 1898, text in Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 83–84.
92.
Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 38–39; Ó Síocháin , Roger Casement , 8.
93.
Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 63.
94.
Ó Síocháin , Roger Casement , 8; Séamas Ó Síocháin, “Roger Casement’s Vision of Freedom,” in Roger Casement in Irish and World History, ed. Mary E. Daly (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2005), 1–2.
95.
Roger Casement , “O’Rorke’s Warning” (1882), excerpted in Margaret O’Callaghan, “‘With the Eyes of Another Race, of a People Once Hunted Themselves’: Casement, Colonialism, and a Remembered Past,” in Roger Casement in Irish and World History, ed. Mary E. Daly (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2005), 52.
96.
Casement , letter to E.D. Morel , June 27, 1904, in Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 73; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 195–196.
97.
PRO Foreign Office 10/807 (Roger Casement , memo to F.O., 14 January 1904), quoted in Ó Síocháin , “Roger Casement’s Vision,” 5.
98.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 196.
99.
Casement , letter to Morel , June 27, 1904, in Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 73.
100.
Casement , letter to Stanley , June 28, 1890, excerpted in Marcel Luwel, “Roger Casement à Henry Morton Stanley: un rapport sur la situation au Congo en 1890,” Africa -Tervuren 14, no. 4 (1968): 90–91.
101.
Casement , letter to H.R. Fox Bourne, July 2 1894, quoted in Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 197.
102.
Casement , letter to Cadbury, July 7, 1905, quoted in Hoschchild, Leopold ’s Ghost, 198.
103.
Casement , letter to Parry, October 9, 1906, quoted in Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 267–268.
104.
Casement , letter to Alice Stopford Green, April 30 1907, excerpted in O’Callaghan, “‘With the Eyes of Another Race,” esp. 49–56.
105.
(New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883).
106.
“National Colored Convention ,” Huntsville Gazette, October 6, 1883, 1.
107.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 102–107.
108.
George Washington Williams . letter to US Secretary of State Blaine, September 15, 1890, quoted in Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 111–112. See also Williams, “A Report upon the Congo -State and Country to the President of the Republic of the United States of America,” Luanda, October 14, 1890, Appendix 3 of John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 264–279.
109.
George Washington Williams , “An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II,” Stanley Falls, July 18, 1890, Appendix 1 of Franklin, George Washington Williams, 244.
110.
Williams , “Open Letter ,” 248–252.
111.
Williams , “Report upon the Congo -State,” 277, 279.
112.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 112–114.
113.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 140, 152–154.
114.
William H. Sheppard , Presbyterian Pioneers in Congo (Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1917), 15, 124; William E. Phipps, William Sheppard: Congo’s African American Livingstone (Louisville: Geneva Press, 2002) 76, 79, 83.
115.
Louis , “Stokes Affair,” 574.
116.
Lionel Decle , “The Murder in Africa ,” The New Review 13 (December 1895): 586, 598, 590.
117.
Lionel Decle , Pall Mall Gazette, November 28, 1895, quoted in Louis , “Stokes Affair,” 578.
118.
Louis , “Stokes Affair,” 577, 582; William Roger Louis, “Roger Casement and the Congo ,” Journal of African History 5, no. 1 (1964): 99–120.
119.
“Cruelty in the Congo Free State: Concluding Extracts from the Journals of the Late E.J. Glave ,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 32 (May-October 1897): 699.
120.
Glave , “Cruelty in the Congo ,” 701–709, 714.
121.
Marcelin de Saegher , une lettre à Emile Steyaert, président du tribunal de première instance de Gand, 16 février 1895 (italics original); citing Fiévez to Bruxelles from Equator, dispatch no. GG/212, 8 pp. An extract and facsimile of Saegher’s letter is in Philippe Marechal, “La controverse sur Léopold II et le Congo dans la littérature et les medias: Réflexions critiques,” in La Mémoire du Congo: Le temps colonial, ed. Jean-Luc Vellut (Tervuren: Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale/Gand, Snoeck, 2005) 44–46.
122.
London Times , November 18, 1895, quoted in Ewans, European Atrocity, 177.
123.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 64; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 226.
124.
Louis , “Roger Casement and the Congo ,” 99–100; Ewans, European Atrocity, 177–178, 183.
125.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 65, 68.
126.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 226–227. For further evidence of the continuing atrocities , see Hunt, “Acoustic Register,” 231–237, 239.
127.
Roger Casement , letter to Henry Foley , 24 April 1900, and Sir Martin Gosselin, 30 April 1900, excerpted in Ó Síocháin , Roger Casement, 114, 91–94, 97–99; and Ó Síocháin, “Roger Casement’s Vision of Freedom,” 6; Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 74, 78, 82.
128.
Phipps, William Sheppard , 139–140.
129.
Pagan Kennedy, Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo (New York : Viking, 2002) 132–133, 139–144, 147–148.
130.
Edmund D. Morel , Affairs of West Africa (London: Heinemann, 1902); The Congo Slave State. A Protest Against the New African Slavery; and an Appeal to the Public of Great Britain , of the United States , and of the Continent of Europe (Liverpool: Richardson, 1903); King Leopold ’ s Rule in Africa (London: Heinemann, 1904); The Scandal of the Congo: Britain’s Duty (Liverpool, 1904); Red Rubber : The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Flourishing on the Congo in the Year of Grace 1906 (London: Unwin, 1907).
131.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 186–187.
132.
E.D. Morel ’s History of the Congo Reform Movement, ed. William Roger Louis and Jean Stengers (Oxford: Clarendon , 1968); Hunt Hawkins, “Joseph Conrad , Roger Casement , and the Congo Reform Movement,” Journal of Modern Literature 9, no.1 (1981–1982): 65–80; Hunt Hawkins, “Mark Twain ’s Involvement with the Congo Reform Movement,” New England Quarterly 51, no. 2 (1978): 147–175.
133.
Ewans, European Atrocity, 184; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 192–193, 226–227, 230–231.
134.
Harms , “End of Red Rubber ,” 83, 79, 81, 82, 86–87, 85.
135.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 200.
136.
Louis , “Roger Casement and the Congo ,” 105; Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 159.
137.
Louis , “Roger Casement and the Congo ,” 104, 107; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 201.
138.
Louis , “Roger Casement and the Congo ,” 106–107; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 201.
139.
Louis , “Roger Casement and the Congo ,” 114.
140.
Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 183–185, 189.
141.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 206–207.
142.
Harms , “End of Red Rubber ,” 85.
143.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 123–125; Harms , “End of Red Rubber ,” 85–86.
144.
West African Mail , March 16, 1906, p.1219, quoted in Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 228–229.
145.
Harms , “End of Red Rubber ,” 87–88.
146.
Marechal, “La controverse sur Léopold II et le Congo ,” 47–48, citing Daniel Vangroenweghe and Jan Antonissen, Humo, Novembre 24, 2002 and March 23, 1999, respectively; Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 225–233.
147.
Vangroenweghe , Du sang sur les lianes, 18–19.
148.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 225.
149.
The difficulty in meeting Genocide Convention criteria particularly in relation to intent and protected groups is addressed in Gérard Prunier, Chapter 3, Section 3.1 (below) and Francis M. Deng, Chapter 4, Sections 4.2 and 4.3 (below).
150.
Terrence Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia , 1896–1897 (London: Heineman, 1967) 3, 71, 131, 237.
151.
Casement ’s diary, September 17 and 22, 1910. Singleton-Gates and Girodias, Black Diaries, 241, 245.
152.
Hochschild , Leopold ’s Ghost, 270.

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Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520-8324, USA
Ben Kiernan

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Fac. Law, Centre for Human Rights &, McGill University, Peel Street 3644, Montreal, H3A 1W9, Québec, Canada
René Provost
Fac. Law, Centre for Human Rights &, McGill University, Peel Street 3644, Montreal, H3A 1W9, Québec, Canada
Payam Akhavan

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Kiernan, B. (2011). From Irish Famine to Congo Reform: Nineteenth-Century Roots of International Human Rights Law and Activism. In: Provost, R., Akhavan, P. (eds) Confronting Genocide. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9840-5_2

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