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EspañolTHE_WHITE_MAN'S_BURDEN
(Redirected from White man\'s burden)
"'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] "The White Man's Burden" was written in regard to the U.S. conquest of the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies.[2] Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase "white man's burden" as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise.[3]
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.[4] 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 people of other nations for their own benefit (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the "burden" of the title), and because of this has become symbolic of Eurocentrism. A century after its publication, the poem still rouses strong emotions, and can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind 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--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
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!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred 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!
A straightforward analysis of the poem may conclude that Kipling presents a Eurocentric view of the world, in which non-European cultures are seen as childlike. 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.[5]
Within a historical context, the poem makes clear the prevalent attitudes that allowed colonialism to proceed. Although a belief in the "virtues of empire" was wide-spread 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. 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. This theme may also be echoed in the Christian missionary movement, which was also quite active at the time in parts ofthe world under colonail rule (e.g. the Christian and Missionary Alliance).
Some commentators point to Kipling's history of satirical writing, and suggest that "The White Man's Burden" is in fact meant to undermine imperialism. Chris Snodgrass, in ''A Companion to Victorian Poetry''[6] describes Kipling's poetry as problematizing "imperial sensibilities with wry irony and scepticism, viewing all human endeavour as ultimately transitory". Kipling also wrote many poems celebrating the working classes, particularly the common soldier. 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]
One criticism of the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign, and specifically the live8 concerts, was that people who argue that it is a responsibility of richer countries to help less-developed countries have sympathy for the metaphoric idea of a white man's burden.[8]
It has been pointed out that the demands by some sections of Western society for foreign military intervention by richer countries in civil wars of less-developed countries, are often expressed in terms analogous to those of the poem: that the intervention is morally correct and would restore the conditions of law and order which are vital to the economic and cultural growth of a nation.[9]
As Max Boot writes: "In the early twentieth century, Americans talked of spreading Anglo-Saxon civilization and taking up the 'white man's burden'; today they talk of spreading democracy and defending human rights. Whatever you call it, this represents an idealistic impulse that has always been a big part in America's impetus for going to war."[10] The title of this book, ''The Savage Wars of Peace'', comes from "The White Man's Burden".
On The Eagles 1976 Hotel California album, the epic song "The Last Resort" highlights the religious overtones:
Although the original poem is taught in America, British schools have not elevated it to similar levels of discussion.
In 2006, former World Bank economist William Easterly published ''The White Man's Burden'', an analysis of "why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good". In this book he questioned the 'utopian social engineering' that the development community brings to local communities and plays the idea of the White Man's Burden through current benign intentions (Bill Gates, Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, etc.) ultimately derived from a long history of meddling in others' affairs - that usually goes wrong.
★ Manifest Destiny
★ Noblesse oblige
★ Scientific racism
★ White Guilt
1. "The White Man's Burden." ''McClure's'' Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899).
2. The Philippines; "Liberator" Was Really a Colonizer; Bush's revisionist history, Pimentel, Benjamin, , , The San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 2003
3. Warnings
★ Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935, Zwick, Jim, , , , December 16, 2005
★ Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, Miller, Stuart Creighton, , , Yale University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-300-03081-9 p. 5, "...imperialist editors came out in favor of retaining the entire archipelago (using) higher-sounding justifications related to the "white man's burden."
★ In Our Pages: 100, 75 and 50 Years Ago; 1899: Kipling's Plea, , , , International Herald Tribune, February 4, 1999 "An extraordinary sensation has been created by Mr. Rudyard Kipling's new poem, ''The White Man's Burden,'' just published in a New York magazine. It is regarded as the strongest argument yet published in favor of expansion."
★ Diamonds are forever: Kipling's imperialism; poems of Rudyard Kipling, Judd, Denis, , , History Today, June, 1997 Theodore Roosevelt...thought the verses 'rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansionist stand-point'. Henry Cabot Lodge told Roosevelt in turn: 'I like it. I think it is better poetry than you say'.
4. Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), Norton Anthology of English Literature, New York 2006 ISBN 0-393-92532-3.
5. David Cody, The growth of the British Empire'', Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College, (Paragraph 4)
6. Snodgrass, Chris (2002). ''A Companion to Victorian Poetry''. Blackwell, Oxford.
7. Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), ''Norton Anthology of English Literature'', New York 2006 ISBN 0-393-92532-3
8. Live8
★ Mick Hume ''Does Africa need these crusaders bearing the White Man's burden? in The Times on June 17, 2005
★ The White Man’s Burden: Continent out of focus The Guardian on July 10, 2005 not on The Guardian's own website so needs validation.
★ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Bob Geldof and the white man's burden in The Independent 6 June 2005
9. Military intervention
★ Mark Steyn Sudan is getting away with murder'' Daily Telegraph 20 July 2004
★ John Laughland ''Fill Full The Mouth of Famine'' July 30, 2004 article on the web site of the Embassy of Sudan in Washington D.C.
10. The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, Boot, Max, , , Basic Books, 2003, ISBN 0-465-00721-X p. 340
★ ''A Companion to Victorian Poetry'', Alison Chapman; Blackwell, Oxford, 2002.
★ ''Outline of Sanity'' Alzina Stone Dale; iUniverse, 2005.
★ Full text of the poem
★ The Black Man's Burden by Edward Morel, 1903
★ "The Brown Man's Burden" an anti-imperialist parody of Kipling's poem by Henry Labouchère (1899)
★ "The Real White Man’s Burden" another parody by Ernest Crosby (1902)
★ [1] Full text of "The Leopard's Spots - A Romance of the White Man's Burden 1865-1900" by Thomas Dixon (a novel praising the Ku Klux Klan)
The white man's burden - a satirical view
This 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] "The White Man's Burden" was written in regard to the U.S. conquest of the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies.[2] Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase "white man's burden" as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise.[3]
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.[4] 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 people of other nations for their own benefit (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the "burden" of the title), and because of this has become symbolic of Eurocentrism. A century after its publication, the poem still rouses strong emotions, and can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives.
| Contents |
| White Man's Burden |
| Differing interpretations |
| Contemporary interpretations |
| See also |
| Notes |
| References |
White Man's Burden
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind 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--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
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!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred 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!
Differing interpretations
A straightforward analysis of the poem may conclude that Kipling presents a Eurocentric view of the world, in which non-European cultures are seen as childlike. 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.[5]
Within a historical context, the poem makes clear the prevalent attitudes that allowed colonialism to proceed. Although a belief in the "virtues of empire" was wide-spread 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. 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. This theme may also be echoed in the Christian missionary movement, which was also quite active at the time in parts ofthe world under colonail rule (e.g. the Christian and Missionary Alliance).
Some commentators point to Kipling's history of satirical writing, and suggest that "The White Man's Burden" is in fact meant to undermine imperialism. Chris Snodgrass, in ''A Companion to Victorian Poetry''[6] describes Kipling's poetry as problematizing "imperial sensibilities with wry irony and scepticism, viewing all human endeavour as ultimately transitory". Kipling also wrote many poems celebrating the working classes, particularly the common soldier. 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]
Contemporary interpretations
The white man's burden - ''The Journal'', Detroit
One criticism of the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign, and specifically the live8 concerts, was that people who argue that it is a responsibility of richer countries to help less-developed countries have sympathy for the metaphoric idea of a white man's burden.[8]
It has been pointed out that the demands by some sections of Western society for foreign military intervention by richer countries in civil wars of less-developed countries, are often expressed in terms analogous to those of the poem: that the intervention is morally correct and would restore the conditions of law and order which are vital to the economic and cultural growth of a nation.[9]
As Max Boot writes: "In the early twentieth century, Americans talked of spreading Anglo-Saxon civilization and taking up the 'white man's burden'; today they talk of spreading democracy and defending human rights. Whatever you call it, this represents an idealistic impulse that has always been a big part in America's impetus for going to war."[10] The title of this book, ''The Savage Wars of Peace'', comes from "The White Man's Burden".
On The Eagles 1976 Hotel California album, the epic song "The Last Resort" highlights the religious overtones:
You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did, so many years ago
They even brought a neon sign: "Jesus is coming."
Brought the white man's burden down
Brought the white man's reign.
Although the original poem is taught in America, British schools have not elevated it to similar levels of discussion.
In 2006, former World Bank economist William Easterly published ''The White Man's Burden'', an analysis of "why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good". In this book he questioned the 'utopian social engineering' that the development community brings to local communities and plays the idea of the White Man's Burden through current benign intentions (Bill Gates, Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, etc.) ultimately derived from a long history of meddling in others' affairs - that usually goes wrong.
See also
★ Manifest Destiny
★ Noblesse oblige
★ Scientific racism
★ White Guilt
Notes
1. "The White Man's Burden." ''McClure's'' Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899).
2. The Philippines; "Liberator" Was Really a Colonizer; Bush's revisionist history, Pimentel, Benjamin, , , The San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 2003
3. Warnings
★ Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935, Zwick, Jim, , , , December 16, 2005
★ Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, Miller, Stuart Creighton, , , Yale University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-300-03081-9 p. 5, "...imperialist editors came out in favor of retaining the entire archipelago (using) higher-sounding justifications related to the "white man's burden."
★ In Our Pages: 100, 75 and 50 Years Ago; 1899: Kipling's Plea, , , , International Herald Tribune, February 4, 1999 "An extraordinary sensation has been created by Mr. Rudyard Kipling's new poem, ''The White Man's Burden,'' just published in a New York magazine. It is regarded as the strongest argument yet published in favor of expansion."
★ Diamonds are forever: Kipling's imperialism; poems of Rudyard Kipling, Judd, Denis, , , History Today, June, 1997 Theodore Roosevelt...thought the verses 'rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansionist stand-point'. Henry Cabot Lodge told Roosevelt in turn: 'I like it. I think it is better poetry than you say'.
4. Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), Norton Anthology of English Literature, New York 2006 ISBN 0-393-92532-3.
5. David Cody, The growth of the British Empire'', Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College, (Paragraph 4)
6. Snodgrass, Chris (2002). ''A Companion to Victorian Poetry''. Blackwell, Oxford.
7. Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), ''Norton Anthology of English Literature'', New York 2006 ISBN 0-393-92532-3
8. Live8
★ Mick Hume ''Does Africa need these crusaders bearing the White Man's burden? in The Times on June 17, 2005
★ The White Man’s Burden: Continent out of focus The Guardian on July 10, 2005 not on The Guardian's own website so needs validation.
★ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Bob Geldof and the white man's burden in The Independent 6 June 2005
9. Military intervention
★ Mark Steyn Sudan is getting away with murder'' Daily Telegraph 20 July 2004
★ John Laughland ''Fill Full The Mouth of Famine'' July 30, 2004 article on the web site of the Embassy of Sudan in Washington D.C.
10. The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, Boot, Max, , , Basic Books, 2003, ISBN 0-465-00721-X p. 340
References
★ ''A Companion to Victorian Poetry'', Alison Chapman; Blackwell, Oxford, 2002.
★ ''Outline of Sanity'' Alzina Stone Dale; iUniverse, 2005.
★ Full text of the poem
★ The Black Man's Burden by Edward Morel, 1903
★ "The Brown Man's Burden" an anti-imperialist parody of Kipling's poem by Henry Labouchère (1899)
★ "The Real White Man’s Burden" another parody by Ernest Crosby (1902)
★ [1] Full text of "The Leopard's Spots - A Romance of the White Man's Burden 1865-1900" by Thomas Dixon (a novel praising the Ku Klux Klan)
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