Poem Review: ‘The White Man’s Burden’ by Rudyard Kipling - Imperialism Through The Eyes Of The Oppressor

Source: Wikipedia

“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 a heavy harness

    On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

    Half devil and half child.”

Introduction

Poem’s Name - The White Man’s Burden

Written By - Rudyard Kipling

Genre - Historical, Race

Language - English

The ‘Selfless’ White Man’s Moral Duty

‘The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands' is a highly controversial poem that talks about imperialism and white supremacism. The narrator of the poem is speaking to people who are assumed to be ‘white’ (the Americans) and encouraging them to perform their duty, their moral burden as people of the white race, to civilize the non-whites (the Filipinos) who he refers to as “half-devil”.

The speaker asks the white people to gather up their best men and send them to “serve” and be at the beck-and-call of the people they have captured, ironically implying that these young men are the real slaves. According to the speaker, the white man is morally obliged and destined to improve the other races.

He marks the non-whites and non-Christians as almost savage, lazy, and foolish who will definitely ruin their efforts and hard work to civilize them. This imperialist duty is highly moral as the white man even builds roads and ports which are not for him to use but for the sake of non-whites. The white man helps them even after receiving only spite and blame. 

In the end, he says that even still, the white people must take up this difficult task, and even if they don’t get rewarded, they would still earn the respect of their fellows.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Source: Poetry Foundation

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in British India, in 1865. He spent the first 5 years of his life there and then was sent to the UK. After living in the UK until 1882, having been rejected for admission through scholarship in Oxford, he returned to India with his father and worked for the local newspapers for a few years. Spending much of his time in India influenced a lot of his works, the most famous being The Jungle Book.

Kipling was regarded as one of the most popular writers of the United Kingdom in the 19th and 20th centuries. Besides being an English journalist, he wrote many short stories, novels, and poems. He was the first English-language writer that was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and was also considered for the British Poet Laureateship and knighthood on various occasions, both of which he declined.

Historical Context

Kipling initially wrote ‘The White Man’s Burden’ for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897) but then replaced it with another poem about the empire called ‘Recessional’. Queen Victoria’s reign was one of the pinnacles of English imperialism. The phrase “the empire on which the sun never sets on” was used to represent the British empire’s territorial size, that at least one part of their territory was always in daylight.

The poem was revised after the Spanish-American war (1898) when America found itself in possession of the Philippine Islands. Being a pro-imperialist, Kipling encouraged America to take colonial control of Filipinos, during the Philippine-American war (1899-1902) through this poem. It acted as a piece of pro-war propaganda and was even presented in a senatorial debate about the US’ control over the Philippines.

A Review of the Poem

The phrase ‘The White Man’s Burden’ represents the difficulties of building an empire and justifies imperial conquest as a ‘mission of civilization’. The narrator represents imperialist Britain and is addressing his new imperialist younger brother, America, as an older, wiser brother, emphasizing the problems that lie ahead on this path.

The speaker seems to be a realist as he understands and emphasizes the difficulties in carrying the “burden” or the imperialist project. He knows that for the natives, imperialism and colonization are something they reject and do not desire because, in reality, they are mere slaves of their captors.

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There are two ways to interpret this poem- one can either see it as satirical or as blatantly racist. I personally see it as racist but one can’t really blame Kipling for his thoughts as he was a man living in the era where imperialism and colonization were considered a completely natural manner of guaranteeing the longevity and development of one’s country or empire.

We can’t hold the men of that era to our modern morals. This poem should be appreciated for its great representation of imperialistic thinking rather than hating it for being racist. Well, there’s no denying it’s racist (even though racism isn’t really its theme) and it makes sense for it to be that way. 

Source: John Edwin Mason

At that time, people were indoctrinated that they were helping people of color by ruling them. Kipling’s racism too blinded him to the realities of white imperialists and this poem is a perfect example of that.

Kipling is addressing the effect of imperialism on those who are charged with imposing the imperialists’ wishes, not on the imperialists themselves. The oppressors and downtrodden are both dispossessed. In this poem, Kipling supported the oppressor while criticizing the price.

To Sum Up

Sure the imperialism and how the speaker talks of whites and non-whites are, according to our modern standards, undeniably nauseating but the poem itself isn’t bad. Personally, I loved the poem but hated the concept. Non-imperialist writers would’ve been the actual rarity of that time, so in my opinion, Kipling wasn’t a monster of a person as some people might label him.

A poem called “The Black Man’s Burden” by the African-American clergyman H.T Johnson, written in response to Kipling is also worth checking out after this poem as it explores the mistreatment of the non-white people and criticizes imperialist beliefs based on totalitarianism, linking this ideology to Black people’s continuous enslavement in the US.

Summing up, the poem is undoubtedly brilliantly written and if you don’t take it to heart and see it for its historical significance and as a great way to educate yourself of how it went down in the empire’s colonies, you might just be able to appreciate it.

My ratings for the poem - 3.5 on 5

Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary