The White Man's Burden

'The White Man's Burden', first published in the popular magazine McClure's in the United States, is often used by critics of Rudyard Kipling to highlight his imperialist, if not racist attitudes.

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.

The nub is that the White Man has to bear a burden and responsibility for the non-White Man.

The decent White Man, European White Man that is, is under an obligation to rule them, these lesser races, to encourage them in their development, until they can take their rightful place in the world, always subordinate of course to their betters.

Rather in the way a decent employer treats the servants.

And yet, if we look at the last verse, and more closely at the work of Kipling, we see that this is not the case, or it is certainly not that simple.

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.

And were Kipling to be found guilty as charged, would that not make Make Poverty History equally as guilty?

Kipling often wrote in praise of the ordinary working man, and especially the common soldier. He wrote 'The Last of the Light Brigade' to highlight the plight of the survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade, and to shame the British public. Six months after White Man's Burden was published, he wrote The Old Issue, a stinging criticism of the Boer War, an attack on the unlimited and despotic, power of kings (the monarchies).

After the death of Alfred Lord Tennyson (who Kipling had mocked with 'The Last of the Light Brigade'), Kipling was the obvious choice to succeed Tennyson as Poet Laurette, and yet Kipling turned the post down, as he did a knighthood or a seat in the Lords.

'The White Man's Burden' shows that, to a large extent, colonial powers relied upon the argument that they were "civilizing" the indigenous peoples who they were colonizing.

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 hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
    No iron 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 ye 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 cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
    By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
    Shall weigh your God and you.

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.


Literature ~ Rudyard Kipling
(c) Keith Parkins 2005 -- October 2005 rev 0