Casement's Congo Report

Roger Casement first gained fame when, as a British consul in King Leopold's Congo, he demanded that the British government take action against the widespread abuse, enslavement and murder of native workers on the king's rubber plantations.  The European power had given the Congo to King Leopold -- not to Belgium -- to operate as a model colony; instead, it had turned into the living hell that Joseph Conrad describes in "Heart of Darkness."  As a signatory to the Berlin Conference that gave the Congo to Leopold, Britain had an obligation, Casement argued, to enforce the terms of the agreement.

Casement's Congo report shocked a Tory government into action, and helped establish the principle that colonial powers had some small measure of accountability for their subjects' welfare.