Colonialism 13

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.

Rudyard Kipling (1899): "The White Man's Burden", first published in McClure’s Magazine on 12.02.1899.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a British novelist and author of The Jungle Book.

"The White Man's Burden" expresses the colonial sense of mission, which first emerged before the end of the 19th century when Kipling wrote the poem. European colonisation and Christian missions had been justified as civilising missions for centuries before that (Teno 2004). Shortly after Kipling published his work, a satire appeared, a poem called The Brown Man's Burden by the British Henry du Pré Labouchère. In it, the poet wrote that colonialism was not a civilising mission and did not have a positive impact on the lives of the colonised, but instead constituted imperialist domination of others: ‘The brown man's loss must ever. Imply the white man's gain. (...) Let all your manifestoes. Reek with philanthropy. And if with heathen folly. He [the brown man] dares your will dispute. Then, in the name of freedom. Don't hesitate to shoot.’

*Henry Labouchère (1899): The Brown Man's Burden. London: Truth.

1899