The White Man's Burden:

Untitled Slide

Reflection/Analysis

• "Your new-caught sullen peoples, half devil half child"- reiterates the notion of non-white mental and cultural inferiority and upholds the idea that European involvement is necessary, similar to that of a baby-sitter, which coincides with the use of the word "burden".

Reflection/Analysis

• "Watch sloth and heathen folly, bring all your hopes to naught" - another example of debasing the native people, and their ways of life and using them as a scapegoat and painting them as enemies; the use of the word heathen speaks to a lack of respect for these peoples religions and a general sense of their unworthiness.

Reflection/Analysis

• "Come now, to search your manhood, through all the thankless years " - speaks to the desire to integrate imperialism with European idea of manhood and the notion that the native people of these land are ungrateful and undeserving of the "help" they are being given.

When and Where did this occur?

• The poem was originally published in 1899 in the popular magazine McClure's, and was subtitled "The United States and the Philippine Islands"; was originally written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, but was later replaced. The word "burden" was used in order to reflect the subject of American colonization of the Philippines

Who was involved and why?

• "The White Man's Burden" was written by the English poet Rudyard Kipling; who was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, raised and educated in England. His most famous works include"The Jungle Book", "Gunga Din", "If", and the aforementioned "The White Man's Burden"

What caused this?

• Racism: ideologies and practices that justify or cause the unequal distribution of privileges, rights or goods between different racial groups.

What caused this?

• Social Darwinism: various theories of society that emerged in the UK, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, and which are claimed to have applied biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics. Many have used this concept to stress the ideas of eugenics, racism,Nazism, and other supremacist thought

What caused this?

• Pre-imperialism, Europeans had already done their fair share of participating in the dehumanization of other groups for the personal gain, one of the most under discussed examples of this is Europe's history of Human Zoos. So, essentially the superior mentality represented in the poem is simply a literary reflection of the action already taking place

Human Zoos

How did it change the course of history?

• Imperialistic and racist ideas like those represented by The White Man's Burden not only changed the course of world history but the mindsets of European people for years to come and have led to realities of both the imperial and post-imperial world.

What was the impact? (Positive, Negative, both?)

• While knowledge of the influence of this specific poem on historical figures is little, the messages and ideology found in this poem have had a major impact on the period in which they they were formulated as well as the centuries that followed.

What was the impact? (Positive, Negative, both?)

• Positive: this kind of thinking provided cognitive dissonance for European imperialists and their sympathizers and made it possible for all the advancements made to European society then and now
• Improved sanitation and brought hospitals schools , railroads, dams, and telephone and telegraph lines

What was the impact? (Positive, Negative, both?)

• Negative: Contributed to the racist government systems we still see throughout the Western world; The social, political, and economic effects of imperilaism on these countries
• Traditional cultures were destroyed; Creation of artificial boundaries led to problems among the native people, especially on the African continent