Abstract

Biographers have tended to stress the element of emotional instability in the personality of Roger Casement. Instability, however, is made to appear greater to the extent that some of the significant contexts of his life and the patterns of his thought are neglected. The present essay explores one such patterning of thought: ideas of evolution and degeneration, or progress and decay, in his thinking with regard to a range of societies: Ancient Rome, the peoples of Africa and South America, Britain and Germany, and Ireland. The essay draws on recent work on degeneration in the history of ideas.