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Editor's Notes
[1]
One of the three double paged folios contains:
"Brazil - at Bathsheba 7 September 1907"
[2]
There is further scribbled material on this subject to be
found in NLI MS 13,087 (23/ii) - which contains a more
scholarly essay on possible Irish manuscripts that contain
information on the etymological origins of Brazil and the
legend of Atlantis. Casement questions Alexander von
Humboldt’s belief that Brazil originated in Asiatic culture
before entering the parlance of European trade. He also
attacks as vague the idea of a Norman-Breton discovery of
America by drawing attention to Beregerson Histoire de la
Navigation (Paris, 1630), p.107. Bergerson argued for a
French explanation of the name Brazil, which Casement felt was
“grotesque.”
[3]
See William H. Babcock - Legendary Islands of the Atlantic:
A Study in Medieval Geography (1922); T.J. Westrropp,
Brazil and the Legendary Islands of the West Atlantic
(1912); Donald Johnson,
Phantom Islands
of the Atlantic - Legends of Seven Lands that never were
(1994).
[4]
Santos is the coffee port on the South Atlantic coast below
São Paulo where Casement took up his first consular position
in Brazil in 1906. The following year he moved to Belem do
Pará, at the mouth of the Amazon, and the following year he
was promoted to consul general in the former Brazilian capital
of Rio de Janeiro. In 1910 he was recruited for a “special
mission” by the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, to
investigate rumours of atrocities in the disputed frontier
region bordering Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia. Casement
stayed on the case until his resignation from the Foreign
Office in the summer of 1913.
[5]
Pedro Alvarez Cabral (c.1467-c.1520) - Portuguese navigator,
in 1500 he embarked from Lisbon with a fleet of thirteen ships
bound for the East Indies. His first landfall was in Brazil in
southern Bahia, where he claimed the land for the Portuguese
crown. In April 2000 Brazil marked 500 years of official
history.
[6]
Alice Stopford Green (1847-1929). Historian. Born in County
Meath, she was one of the closest of Casement's friends and
they travelled together through many areas of Ireland and
collaborated in much work. After the death of her husband, the
historian J.R. Green in 1883, she became increasingly radical,
sympathising with much of the intellectual discontent. She was
the force behind the founding of the The Mary Kingsley Society
of West Africa, founded in 1900. The Society tried to give
African culture a fairer status in the public mind. Among its
General Committee members: H.H. Asquith; Rev. Dr Butler,
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; Viscount Cromer, Dr. J.G.
Frazer, John Holt, Sir Alfred Lyall, George Macmillan, Major
Matthew Nathan C.M.G. Mrs. Green subsequently became a force
behind the Congo reform movement and along with Roger Casement
and Arthur Conan Doyle helped organise the Morel Testimonial
Luncheon on 29 May 1911. In 1908 she published The Making
of Ireland and Its Undoing, a work on early Irish history
which Casement did much to promote. They also co-operated on
Irish Nationality (1911) and both shared the platform
with Captain J.R.White and the Rev. Armour on Casement’s entry
onto the political stage at Ballymoney in October 1913. This
event, known as the Protestant Protest, was a meeting held by
Protestants that hoped to explain to the wider Protestant
community of the North how they might better live at peace
inside a United Ireland. The recent release of KV files at Kew
Public Record Office in London shows how Mrs. Green was
branded a “red hot revolutionist” by British Intelligence as a
result of her close connection with some of the rebel leaders.
After the executions she returned to Ireland and to St.
Stephen’s Green to live. Her house continued to be a hive of
discussion on several matter including how the Irish spirit
might be better enlightened. She will remain as one of the
most outstanding Irish scholars of her age. Casement’s
correspondence with Green held in the National Library of
Ireland is evidence of how important their discussion was in
the construction of a new attitude to Irish history and a
counter-history that opposed the Imperial version.
[7]
Washington Irving (1783-1859). Historian and man of letters.
Irving was born in New York and began his literary career
writing satirical history such as A History of New York by
Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809). For health reasons he lived
in Spain from 1826-29 and produced a series of studies
including The History of the Life and Voyages of
Christopher Columbus (1828) and Voyages of the
Companions of Columbus (1831) and Tales of the Alhambra.
He was appointed Ambassador to Spain (1842-1846).
[8]
William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859). American historian.
Prescott was born in Massachusetts into a wealthy legal
family. He studied at Harvard where he was half-blinded by a
piece of bread thrown accidentally in his eye. He devoted most
of his life to the study of Spanish and Spanish-American
history. His most well-known works were translated into
French, German and Spanish, including History of Ferdinand
and Isabella (1838); History of the Conquest of Mexico
(1843); The Conquest of Peru (1847); and an unfinished
three volume History of Philip II (1855-58). More than
any historian Prescott had the most widespread influence on
the shaping of Europe’s understanding of Ibero-American
history until relatively recently.
[9]
William Robertson (1721-1793). Scottish historian. Studied at
Edinburgh University. He volunteered for the defence of
Edinburgh against the Jacobite rebels in 1745 and in 1751 took
up a prominent role in the General Assembly and soon became
leader of the “Moderates”. In 1761 he became a royal chaplain;
in 1762 principle of Edinburgh University and in 1764 the
Royal historiographer. His most far-reaching work was his
History of Charles V (1769) which was widely praised by
figures such as Voltaire and Gibbon. In 1777 he published his
History of America, mainly concerned with early Spanish
conquest in the New World.
[10]
Robert Southey (1774-1843). Historian and Poet Laureate. Born
in Bristol. After expulsion from Westminster school for
writing an article showing sympathy for the Jacobites, Southey
went up to Balliol College Oxford. With the poet Samuel
Coleridge he planned to form a communist society in the West
Country that came to nothing. He became an authority on the
Anglo-Portuguese world following trips there in 1795 and 1800
and wrote an extensive three volume History of
Brazil
and another History of Portugal.
[11]
St. Brendan (483-577). Navigator, mystic, Bishop of Clonfert.
Born Fenit peninsula. The Navigatio Brendani relates
his legendary voyage to a land of saints far to the west and
north, possibly the Hebrides. He founded a number of
monasteries in Ireland and Scotland including a
monastery-museum at Ardfert and the Church of Ireland
cathedral at Clonfert. Brendan, it is said, was buried beside
the Romanesque pyramid-tympanum, archway door. His voyage to
the Americas was re-enacted by Tim Severin, leaving Brandon
Creek on 17 May 1976 showing a proven possibility that by
tracing the north west Atlantic sea-board through the Western
Islands of Scotland beyond the Faroes to Iceland and thence
past Greenland to the north Atlantic shores of America.
[12]
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). Genoese explorer. In 1470 he
was shipwrecked on the coast of Portugal. As early as 1474 he
had conceived the design of reaching India by sailing westward
- a design in which he was encouraged by a Florentine
astronomer, Paolo Toscanelli. In 1477 he sailed 100 leagues
beyond Thule, probably to or beyond Iceland; with other
journeys to the Cape Verde Islands and Sierra Leone. After
seven years of searching for a patron his plans were accepted
by Ferdinand and Isabella. On Friday 3 August 1492 Columbus
set sail in command of the small Santa Maria, with fifty men
and attended by two little caravels the Pinta and
Niña. After landfall in Caribbean he returned to Iberia
and reached Palos on 15 March 1493. He made a further three
voyages before dying in austere poverty in Valladolid.
[13]
Henry Hallam (1777-1859). English historian, born in Windsor
and educated Eton and Christchurch College, Oxford. Helped by
a private income, he was able to leave his study of law to pay
for a life of letters and the writing of Whig history. His
work includes:
Europe during
the Middle Ages
(1818); The Constitutional History of England from Henry
VII to George II (1827)
[14]
Duns Scotus (c.1265-1308) Scottish scholar-philosopher and
rival of Thomas Aquinas as the leading medieval theologian.
His life is something of a mystery compared to his philosophy
which was widely understood. He believed in the primacy of the
individual and the freedom of the individual will and
considered faith to be an act of the will, a practical issue
and not speculative or theoretical. The Franciscan Order
followed Duns Scotus. |
