The White Man's Burden

The white man's burden- a satirical view from an 1899 edition of Life Magazine

This 1890s advertisement for soap uses the theme of the White Man's Burden, encouraging white people to teach cleanliness to members of other races.

"The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands.^[1] Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States understood the phrase "white man's burden" as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

The poem was originally written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, but exchanged for "Recessional"; Kipling changed the text of "Burden" to reflect the subject of American colonization of the Philippines, recently won from Spain in the Spanish-American War.^[7] The poem consists of seven stanzas, following a regular rhyme scheme. At face value it appears to be a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule other nations for the benefit of those people (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the "burden" of the title). Because of its theme and title, it has become emblematic both of Eurocentric racism and of Western aspirations to dominate the developing world.^[8][9][10] A century after its publication, the poem still rouses strong emotions, and can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives.

Differing interpretations

The white man's burden - The Journal, Detroit, 1898.

This view proposes that white people consequently have an obligation to rule over, and encourage the cultural development of people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds until they can take their place in the world by fully adopting Western ways. The term "the white man's burden" has been interpreted as racist, or taken as a metaphor for a condescending view of non-Western national culture and economic traditions, identified as a sense of European ascendancy which has been called "cultural imperialism". An alternative interpretation is the philanthropic view, common in Kipling's formative years, that the rich have a moral duty and obligation to help "the poor" "better" themselves whether the poor want the help or not.^[11]

The poem makes clear Kipling's view of attitudes that allowed colonialism to proceed. It starts off by describing the colonized Filipinos as "new-caught, sullen peoples, half devil and half child". Although a belief in the virtues of empire was widespread at the time, there were also many dissenters; the publication of the poem caused a flurry of arguments from both sides, most notably from Mark Twain and Henry James.^[12] While Kipling may have intended the piece as a form of satire, much of Kipling's other writing does suggest that he genuinely believed in the "beneficent role" which the introduction of Western ideas could play in lifting non-Western peoples out of poverty and ignorance. Lines 3-5, and other parts of the poem suggest that it is not just the native people who are enslaved, but also the "functionaries of empire", who are caught in colonial service and may die while helping other races less fortunate than themselves. An analysis focused on the social status and background of colonial officers active at the time is lacking; as is one of the Christian missionary movement, also quite active at the time in parts of the world under colonial rule (e.g. the Christian and Missionary Alliance) which also emphasized the theme of aiding those less fortunate. One author asserts that Kipling wrote the poem to help Theodore Roosevelt persuade many doubting Americans to seize the Philippines.^[13] His work with regards to British colonialism in India had become widely popular in the United States. The poem could be viewed as a way for Kipling to share the virtues of British colonialism with Americans.

Some commentators do not believe that this poem's simplistic racist views can be serious and point to Kipling's history of satirical writing, suggesting that "The White Man's Burden" is in fact meant to parody imperialist attitudes. Chris Snodgrass, in A Companion to Victorian Poetry^[14] describes Kipling's poetry as "imperial sensibilities with wry irony and skepticism, viewing all human endeavors as ultimately transitory". Kipling also wrote many poems celebrating the working classes, particularly the common soldier, which these commentators also consider to be satirical. Six months after "The White Man's Burden" was published, he wrote "The Old Issue", a stinging criticism of the Second Boer War, and an attack on the unlimited, despotic power of kings. The Norton Anthology of English Literature argues it is no satire, but in line with Kipling's strong imperialism and a belief of a "Divine Burden to reign God's Empire on Earth", that other, less Christian nations would otherwise take.^[7] Still, some find Kipling's work fascinating because his pro-imperialist stance did not blind him to the less glamorous and more perilous aspects of imperialism. According to Steve Sailer, writer John Derbyshire has described Kipling as "an imperialist utterly without illusions about what being an imperialist actually means. Which, in some ways, means that he was not really an imperialist at all."^[15]

Several parodies and other forms of critical works have used themes or quotes collected from Kipling's poem. Early examples include Henry Labouchère's poem "The Brown Man's Burden" (1899),^[16] British journalist Edmund Morel's 1903 article criticizing imperialist practices in the Congo Free State,^[17] and Ernest Crosby's poem "The Real White Man’s Burden" (1902).^[18]

See also

• The text of the poem at Fordham University
• Colonialism
• 1899 in poetry
• 1899 in literature
• List of the works of Rudyard Kipling

Notes

References

• A Companion to Victorian Poetry, Alison Chapman; Blackwell, Oxford, 2002.
• Chisholm, Michael (1982). Modern World Development: A Geographical Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield, 1982, ISBN 0389203203.
• Cody, David. The growth of the British Empire. The Victorian Web, University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore, November 2000.
• Crosby, Ernest (1902). The Real White Man’s Burden. Funk and Wagnalls Company, 32-35.
• Dixon, Thomas (1902). The Leopard's Spots - A Romance of the White Man's Burden 1865-1900.
• Encyclopedia of India. Ed. Stanley Wolpert. Vol. 3. Detroit: charles Scribner's Sons, 2006, p. 35-36. 4 vols.
• "Eurocentrism". In Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Ed. Thomas M. Leonard, Taylor & Francis, 2006, ISBN 0415976626.
• Greenblatt, Stephen (ed.). Norton Anthology of English Literature, New York 2006 ISBN 0-393-92532-3
• Kipling. Fordham University. Full text of the poem.
• Labouchère, Henry (1899). "The Brown Man's Burden".
• Mama, Amina (1995). Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender, and Subjectivity. Routledge, 1995, ISBN 0415035449.
• Miller, Stuart Creighton (1982). Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03081-9.
• Pimentel, Benjamin (October 26, 2003). "The Philippines; "Liberator" Was Really a Colonizer; Bush's revisionist history". The San Francisco Chronicle: D3.
• Sailer, Steve (2001). "What Will Happen In Afghanistan?". United Press International, 26 September 2001.
• Snodgrass, Chris (2002). A Companion to Victorian Poetry. Blackwell, Oxford.
• "The White Man's Burden." McClure's Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899).