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“The White Man’s Burden”: Kipling’s Hymn to U.S. Imperialism
George Mason University ^ | 02/01/1899 | Rudyard Kipling

Posted on 02/05/2005 5:37:04 PM PST by NMC EXP

In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control.

Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase.

Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go send your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child

Take up the White Man’s burden

In patience to abide

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple

An hundred times made plain

To seek another’s profit

And work another’s gain

Take up the White Man’s burden—

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better

The hate of those ye guard—

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah slowly) to the light:

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

“Our loved Egyptian night?”

Take up the White Man’s burden-

Have done with childish days-

The lightly proffered laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!

Source: Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929).


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: empire; imperialism; iraq; kipling; whitemansburden
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To: John_Wheatley

Of all the colonial Empires, the Brits did the most positive and uplifting things for the natives - schools, hospitals, and etc. What would India be like w/o the British contributions?


161 posted on 02/05/2005 11:02:13 PM PST by 185JHP ( "The thing thou purposest shall come to pass: And over all thy ways the light shall shine.")
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To: 185JHP

On the other hand, what would England have been like if it hadn't conquered India? It would have remained a poor staet on the edge of Europe.


162 posted on 02/06/2005 12:01:55 AM PST by Cronos (Never forget 9/11)
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Comment #163 Removed by Moderator

Comment #164 Removed by Moderator

To: Law is not justice but process
Pretty much sums up the Indonesian Government's reaction to U.S. aid operations and Christian aid groups. They have let religious xenophobia come before the good of their own people. "Heathen Folly" indeed.

I agree, it is much more applicable to the tsunami relief than Iraq. I really can't blame the Iraqis for being hesitant initially to stand up to the terrorists - last time we told them to rise up, we left them to twist in the wind. I think that they decided by election day that we were serious and they could take a stand. Although some of the various couplets of the poem might apply to Iraq, the key phrase "heathen folly" IMO does not.

165 posted on 02/06/2005 4:04:02 AM PST by dirtboy (.)
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To: John_Wheatley
That is the letter of the law, but the Crown has decided otherwise in actual prosecutions. The Crown Prosecution Service issued the statement you quote because the charging of individuals who defend themselves physically against violent attack has become almost routine.

Whether this general statement serves to rein in the local police and prosecutors who prefer to go for the easy conviction rather than pursuing the violent criminals . . . remains to be seen.

Moreover, because of the virtual abolition of firearms in Britain, those who are female, elderly, or handicapped have no practical means of self defense whatsoever . . . . while of course the thugs have automatic weapons and a free rein because they know their victims are largely unarmed.

166 posted on 02/06/2005 6:18:30 AM PST by AnAmericanMother (. . . Ministrix of ye Chace (recess appointment), TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary . . .)
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To: Cronos
He was the 19th c. equivalent of what Tom Wolfe described as the "mid Atlantic man" - neither here nor there.

That, I think, reinforced the artist's imagination which causes him to stand "outside" and observe.

He came to England as a child (read "Baa Baa Black Sheep") and was educated there. But he returned to Bombay as a young newspaperman after his education was complete. His parents IIRC lived most of their lives in India (his father was curator of a museum in Lahore) but eventually retired to England.

In this, of course, he was exactly like several entire generations of children born to those in Colonial service. And in his Indian stories he speaks to their situation quite often.

167 posted on 02/06/2005 6:25:35 AM PST by AnAmericanMother (. . . Ministrix of ye Chace (recess appointment), TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary . . .)
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To: Clemenza

LOl You even made my son laugh and he's tough!


168 posted on 02/06/2005 6:37:33 AM PST by kalee (Kalee's Tinfoil Bonnets, purveyor of stylish tinfoil bonnets since 2000)
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To: John_Wheatley
As for the slavery dig, the Royal Navy went nuts and started fighting any slave traders they could find.

During the time of the greatest fighting by the Royal Navy against the slave trade, their ships were crewed largely by sailors pressed into service against their will. They were bashed on the head, dragged on board ship and threatened with flogging and hanging if they did not do precisely what they were told by their masters... excuse me, officers.

Although I applaud the anti-slavery movement that brought about the actions of the Royal Navy, and that movement largely got it's start in England, I have to point out that the majority of the slave ships were European in origin, so it's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

And as to the "British slaves in Britain or any whites-only places in the 1950's," it's easy to think yourself as above racism and prejudice when there are virtually no "people of color" around. We have had two successive Black Secretaries of State. When will the first non-white, of any background, be Foreign Secretary? After all, it was the English that administered the Apartheid system and subjegated the "kafirs" to the brutalities of Rhodes imperial ambitions. The British drove the "fuzzy wuzzies" into the desert to be slaughtered and rode rough shod over the "poor little Hindus" in the name of the tea trade. And let's talk about the Opium wars and just how good European administration was for the Chinese.

The fact that the English didn't "soil their own nest" with slaves in the last century doesn't mean that they weren't guilty of enslaving others. And slavery effectively existed in England up until the first world war in the structure of the "great houses" and their master/servant relationship. the ability to essentially condemn someone to death by dismissing them from a job as a servent was every bit as powerful a tool as the overseers whip.

169 posted on 02/06/2005 6:40:18 AM PST by Phsstpok ("When you don't know where you are, but you don't care, you're not lost, you're exploring.")
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Comment #170 Removed by Moderator

To: John_Wheatley
Details of Crown policy against self defense here and here

The reason there are so many murders in NYC is because their gun control laws resemble yours. You can't even own a .22 rifle in NYC . . . but somehow the crooks manage to obtain machine guns . . .

On the other hand, Britain, Australia top U.S. in violent crime

States with sensible gun laws have much lower rates of crime in general. Moreover, we do not have the "hot" burglaries that plague Britain - burglars are more circumspect about entering occupied dwellings when the occupants may be armed.

Gun killings double as police claim progress

Doesn't seem to be moving in the right direction. On the other hand, gun deaths in the U.S. have been in a steady decline since 1993.

171 posted on 02/06/2005 7:10:42 AM PST by AnAmericanMother (. . . Ministrix of ye Chace (recess appointment), TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary . . .)
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Comment #172 Removed by Moderator

Comment #173 Removed by Moderator

To: Cronos; John_Wheatley

Many people went in willingly, but it certainly wasn't business opportunities not in the beginning. Coolies,payolls,etc. were dirt poor Indians. In fact, I think it's a slur to say 'coolie' because of what it implied because you were working side by side cutting suger cane with the blacks and the white people (not Irish but Scots in this case). Many people who emigrated to the West Indies were very poor and didn't have much at home to begin with. I'd say what went on with King Leopold was more akin to virtual slavery, or the diamond mines in South Africa for instance.


174 posted on 02/06/2005 7:40:52 AM PST by cyborg (Department of Homelife Security threat level is GREEN.)
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To: John_Wheatley
It's amazing how you criticise those stopping slavery, while those participating in it are let-off?

I let no one off. I merely pointed out that you were wrong for claiming that England's hands were clean, when in fact most of the slaves in North American were brought there by English, not American ships. And the English sailors you so proudly point out "went nuts" fighting slavery were themselves living as slaves, having been stolen from their lives by press gangs, subject to instant death at the whim of their superiors. So who is "letting off" those who participated in slavery? Many English fortunes were founded on the slave trade that they carried out, under license from the crown, in many parts of the world.

You cannot condemn America for slavery since we didn't invent it and it existed throughout the world (including in England) long before the US was born. My own ancestor came to this country as a slave after the English defeated the Scots at Dunbar. In fact the US has paid a far higher price to destroy slavery, both at home and around the world, than any other nation that still exists today. Well after we had destroyed the slave trade in the US the Europeans were still dealing in it as a part of their colonial empires, even though they didn't allow it within their own borders. I find that far more hypocritical a practice.

Read Ghandi on his treatment when he was in England and when living in South Africa or upon returning to his native India. He often used slavery as a description of English rule, stretching up to the 1940s. I have an advantage there since I know his grandson, Arun, who has brought the majority of his grandfathers papers to Memphis and set up the Ghandi Institute here. Most of the stuff is available either on line or as a really great CD, so you can view it yourself.

I will admit that much of my view of Europe, and particularly England, in matters like this stem from those documents and conversations with Arun. However, I have also spent a lot of time with my Belgian mother in law when they still lived in the states. She was a teenager when the Germans marched into her town early in WW2. Her picture of Europe, then and now, has been very instructive.

England should be proud of it's accomplishments in the last century, particularly in how they have tried to do the right thing by their former colonies. That does not dismiss the guilt that all Europeans, including the English, must bear for messing up large parts of the world in the first place. We are still paying the price for the creative mapping skills of folks like Churchill in carving up other peoples countries. The Kurds, for example, have no reason to be fond of the English, since their country was split in the middle and their people made subjects of despots who hated them. The French are still slaughtering Africans wholesale in their former colonies.

I never said Britain was perfect, and I condemn any British influence with slavery, but can you do the same for America? Can you condemn your founding fathers for their disgusting slavery

Our founding fathers were Englishmen living under English laws at the time that they threw off the yoke of colonial power. The laws that they lived under and for which you want me to condemn them were English laws. Half of the colonies did forbid slavery when they became states. The other half chose to continue to live under the system set up by the English colonial authorities.

Those slave states traded their "disgusting" chattel as well as the product that came from their labor with mostly English firms. Though the Spanish and Portugese brought slaves to America, only a tiny percentage of those came to the newly founded nation. What slaves did come to the US were mostly brought by English ships. Only about 5% of all of the slaves brought to the new world were brought to the US. Almost all of the Spanish and Portugese slaves were destined for their colonies in Central and South America while most of the English slaves went to English colonies in the Caribean or were sold to the Spanish or Portugese colonies.

The tradesmen of England sold many goods made from materials produced by slave labor in the US and other locations around the world. That trade sustained the way of life of the slave holders in this country until 90 years after independence when we finally fought a war over it. 500,000 of my countrymen gave up their lives in the struggle to end slavery. In the course of that war the Southern states were virtually destroyed. The hateful "official prejudice as recently as 50 years ago" was an echo of the utter destruction brought about by that conflict. That system (largely instituted by Democrats to maintain their own power) has been torn apart and the people who profited from it are no longer in any positions of power (except Senator Byrd, but we'll get him soon).

Britain has millions of ethnic citizens so it just shows you should not comment on that which you are ignorant. The leader of the House of LORDS is a black woman Baroness Amos and we have black members of the cabinet like Paul Boateng.

In the 50s, the era you referred to, there were almost no ethnic minorities living in England. It was largely a novelty to see anyone "from a sunnier clime." Almost all of the immigration from the former colonies has happened since then, particularly of blacks and only since the early 60s are their significant numbers of minorities. I can point to numerous examples of how poorly Europe, including England, is doing in integrating those communities into society, but the easy one to point to is the Arab community which is sorely taxing all of Europes countries. Your citation of Baroness Amos and Paul Boateng is laughable as it is akin to the old racist slogan "some of my best friends are (fill in the blank)."

The point was that you were condemning America for deplorable incidents in our history while blithely ignoring your own nations very bloody hands.

Turn off the BBC and stop listening to the drum beat of Euro propaganda about those brutish cowboys in America. Europe is the broken remnant of the imperial powers that screwed up the world and we will be paying for the arrogance of that culture for centuries.

175 posted on 02/06/2005 9:04:34 AM PST by Phsstpok ("When you don't know where you are, but you don't care, you're not lost, you're exploring.")
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Comment #176 Removed by Moderator

To: John_Wheatley

I never defended slavery. What I have defended is America from ignorant Euro trash anti-Americanism.

We didn't invent slavery. We fought a war to destroy it. Britain condemned it in others while still profiting from it, officially, more than 60 years after we wiped it out in our country.

We never ruled over colonies where we treated the natives as slaves. Britain and all of the other European powers did do precisely that and only ceased doing so.... wait, in some places they're still doing it. Witness the French in the Ivory Coast.

Gee, I guess Britain isn't so great after all. And your education system obviously leaves out the "painful bits" of history that might make the poor, sensitive, euro-weenies lose self esteem.

Slavery is evil. Where it was practiced, relatively briefly historically, in the US it was wiped out almost 150 years ago. The European powers, including Britain, still live off of fortunes made on the backs of slaves and they continued to officially tolerate participation in the slave trade by their people well into the last century.

Or haven't you read the rest of Kipling?


177 posted on 02/06/2005 9:30:19 AM PST by Phsstpok ("When you don't know where you are, but you don't care, you're not lost, you're exploring.")
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Comment #178 Removed by Moderator

To: John_Wheatley
Boy, you really hate the United States and Americans, don't you?

doesn't deserve respect.

I think that sums you up quite well.

You still seem content to condone American slavery by blaming others as worse, and can't look at the history of your country in the eye.

What an idiot. I don't "condone American slavery." I condemn all slavery, including that practiced oh so briefly in my own country. But I will NOT condemn America or all Americans because a very few of our countrymen participated at the tail end of a practice employed by humans throughout history. In fact, quite the opposite. I am proud of the US for being one of the leaders in eliminating slavery, not only in our own country but worldwide. It took time and hundreds of thousands of lives, but we finally defeated it in our own country after a paltry 80 years. How many thousands of years was slavery practiced in Britain before you finally decided that it was a bad thing? Percentage wise you have been slave free for an eyeblink, while we have been without slavery for more than half our history.

In answer to your question, NO, I will not condemn my country for taking 80 years to defeat slavery when most other nations took thousands of years to confront the same sin.

As to Britain outlawing slavery, tell that to the Irish, the Hindus and Muslims, among others, who suffered under British rule until very recently. I don't think they'll applaud your high minded principles as they count their dead.

And to your other post Is there any countries you do like? Yes, there "is" many countries I like. What I don't like are racist or nationalist idiots who hate my country and try to attack it. You strike me as a likely adherent to National Socialism. Get over it.

Your hatred of America and Americans is truly obsessive. You need help.

179 posted on 02/06/2005 10:50:49 AM PST by Phsstpok ("When you don't know where you are, but you don't care, you're not lost, you're exploring.")
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To: John_Wheatley
If you had bothered to read the articles I posted, they include many examples of prosecutions for self-defense, including an old lady who used a cap pistol to frighten off a mugger and was prosecuted. And the fact that the Crown saw a need to issue the statement they did is suggestive in and of itself - if there wasn't a problem, why issue the statement?

Thank goodness we have NRA anyhow, or we'd be in the same position you are.

I have twice been called on to defend myself or my family with firearms - in neither case was a shot fired. A study by John Lott (who began his research as an anti-gunner, but followed where the facts led) shows that most citizen-criminal encounters involving firearms do not result in any shots fired, let alone anyone being wounded, as the display of the firearm is enough to convince the malefactor that he has urgent business elsewhere. My dad, on the other hand, DID have to fire his shotgun at a burglar once. I'm sure the moke wasn't badly hurt since it was bird shot, but he didn't hang around for us to inquire after his health. (The police took almost an hour to arrive.)

The answer is not more guns - it's guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens instead of just in the hands of the criminals. The real underlying question is whether you trust the average citizen to be upright and trustworthy - most of our states DO, while apparently the British Crown does not trust its subjects.

For the philosophical issues underlying the right to self-defense, you could do worse than read this seminal article: A Nation of Cowards.

180 posted on 02/06/2005 11:03:55 AM PST by AnAmericanMother (. . . Ministrix of ye Chace (recess appointment), TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary . . .)
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