Take up the white man´s burden

General interpretations

Kipling represents a Eurocentric view of the world, in which non-European cultures are seen as childlike and demoniac, proposing 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 adopting Western ways, the ways that were only considered uniquely right. The term “white man’s burden” refers to a racist ideal, taken also as a metaphor for a superior and condescending view of native national cultural and economic traditions, identified as a European predominance, which is called cultural imperialism. A parallel can be drawn with the humanitarian or philanthropic view, that the rich and wealthy have a moral duty and obligation to help the poor improve themselves whether the poor want it or not. They thought that they were entrusted by a superior being to do so, seeing this as a burden to all white men and white society.


Now, within a historical context, the poem makes clear allusion and mention to the attitudes that allow colonialism or imperialism to expand. Some of Kipling’s literary opposes (as to refer to the people that thought otherwise, or that the help was benevolent) suggested that western ideas could play a lifting role in confronting poverty and ignorance in non-Western peoples.


At the beginning of the poem, Kipling suggests that it is not just the native people who are enslaved, but also the ‘functionaries of the empire’ (the people that worked in the empire), who were caught in colonial service.


This famous poem, written by Britain's imperial poet, was a response to the American takeover of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.


Crosby on Kipling: A Parody of “The White Man’s Burden”



Poet Ernest Crosby penned a parody of Kipling’s work, “The Real White Man’s Burden,” and published it in his 1902 collection of poems Swords and Plowshares. Crosby also wrote a satirical, anti-imperialist novel, Captain Jinks, Hero that parodied the career of General Frederick Funston, the man who had captured Philippine leader Emilio Aguinaldo in 1901.

With apologies to Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man’s burden.

Send forth your sturdy kin,

And load them down with Bibles

And cannon-balls and gin.

Throw in a few diseases

To spread the tropic climes,

For there the healthy niggers

Are quite behind the times.

And don’t forget the factories.

On those benighted shores

They have no cheerful iron mills,

Nor eke department stores.

They never work twelve hours a day

And live in strange content,

Although they never have to pay

A single soul of rent.

Take up the White Man’s burden,

And teach the Philippines

What interest and taxes are?

And what a mortgage means.

Give them electrocution chairs,

And prisons, too, galore,

And if they seem inclined to kick,

Then spill their heathen gore.

They need our labor question, too,

And politics and fraud—

We’ve made a pretty mess at home,

Let’s make a mess abroad.

And let us ever humbly pray

The Lord of Hosts may deign

To stir our feeble memories

Lest we forget—the Maine.

Take up the White’s Man’s burden.

To you who thus succeed

In civilizing savage hordes,

They owe a debt, indeed;

Concessions, pensions, salaries,

And privilege and right—

With outstretched hands you raised to bless

Grab everything in sight.

Take up the White Man’s burden

And if you write in verse,

Flatter your nation’s vices

And strive to make them worse.

Then learn that if with pious words

You ornament each phrase,

In a world of canting hypocrites

This kind of business pays.

From: Ernest Crosby, “The Real White Man’s Burden,” Swords and Ploughshares (New York: Funk and Wagnall’s Company, 1902), 32–35.


Source: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5475