# "The White Man's Burden": Ignorance or Sarcasm?



## krazyklassykat

Until recently, I had not read anything by Kipling.  I had only heard of him in vague contexts, and assumed he was one of those rare forward-thinking individuals from before the world wars.  I was startled, therefore, when I read his poem "The White Man's Burden".  But after I read it a few more times, I began to wonder if he wasn't being sarcastic.  I then discovered that this is a common discussion still had about the poem, and wondered what other people think.
I'm thinking that if I had read more by Kipling, I might have more context to interpret this poem (the _Jungle Book_ movie doesn't seem anything like how my history text describes the book) but for now I just wondered what everyone thought of the poem.
Here it is:



> 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 hopes to naught.
> 
> Take up the White Man's burden--
> No tawdry 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 he 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 cry or whisper,
> By all ye leave or do,
> The silent, sullen peoples
> Shall weigh your gods and you.
> 
> Take up the White Man's burden--
> Have done with childish days--
> The lightly proferred 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.






I'm starting to lean more toward sarcasm, mostly because he so unnecessarily emphasizes the supposed good Europeans (or actually, Americans) are doing for uncivilized nations, and how little appreciation they gain from it.  Also, though, the lines "to seek another's profit // and work another's gain" stump me.  When I first read it, I actually thought it meant taking profits from others.  This probably isn't what it is _supposed_ to imply, but it occurs to me that he might have done it on purpose.


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## Olly Buckle

I recently read "Gunga Din" to my teenage daughter, she was horrified when it got to the bit about "Beneath your dirty hide you're white, pure white inside". "That is just so racist" and then after a moment's thought she added "But not like nowadays, he likes him", then there is East is East and West is West, remember he grew up in India. He sees people as different, but the white man's rule is by right of conquest, which was still seen as legitimate in those days, rather than as racial superiority. My favourites are the short stories, he wrote lots of them and is a real master, in children's books Puck of Pook's hill and Rewards and Fairies are far superior to the others. In old age he lived in an old ironmasters house in Burwash about eight or ten miles away from here, it's now a National Trust house.


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## The Backward OX

Beyond saying that on a very superficial level I enjoyed the poem – it rhymes – I’m not about to attempt an analysis. I’m not that way inclined. I happened on the post purely by chance – I saw Olly was reading it and thought ‘Aha! What’s this?’ But I just wanted to say I’m going to come back in the future and see what responses you’ve obtained. 

I would be most surprised if you gain much in the way of in-depth and intelligent analysis of the type I think you seek, from the denizens of this site. 

I might be wrong. I’m often wrong. 

But from what I’ve seen elsewhere on this site, intellectualism doesn’t seem to loom large.


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## The Backward OX

Ninety-six hours and counting


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## Mike C

The Backward OX said:


> I would be most surprised if you gain much in the way of in-depth and intelligent analysis of the type I think you seek, from the denizens of this site.



Ho Hum.

You have to view the poem in its historical context. Kipling wrote this encouraging American expansionism (bet he wishes he hadn't!) after the US conquest of the Phillipines, but warning of the responsibility that goes with conquest (a warning we've all forgotten in Iraq).

This was in the post-conquest days of the Empire. British public schools were less about turning out well rounded individuals and more about training administrators. In every far flung provice of the world you'd find a desk with an old Etonian behind it. The Empire was seen (by those who ran it) as a benevolent organisation less involved with world domination and more with making the trains run on time and looking after its citizens. That was the burden - the obligation to care for and protect the people within the Empire. 

Further reading - George Orwell's _Burmese Days_.


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## Linton Robinson

It's neither sarcasm not "ignorance".   It's a description of colonialism from the standpoint of a Englishman who grew up in the Raj and went pretty much completely native.
Without the advantages of our remove in time, he tended to see bringing railroads and hospitals and such into a confused, teeming country with a viscious racially-based caste system and ruled by a handfull of obscenely rich poobahs while people starved as being a bit of a gift to them.   And a gift that could be burdensome.  

It's doubtful that the British took more out of India than they put into it, actually.   Or the United Stares for that matter. 

It's very fashionable to go back and find little non-PC nits to pick off people of different times and cultures (kind of an intolerance in itself, no?)   but it's all fashion.
For instance, Kipling's start has begun to rise again recently as people get tired of the kneejerk liberalism and start to appreciate his work.
This is the author of "Kim" let me remind you.
And if you want a deeper nuance of the feeling of Indian soliders towards their white officers, try reading "The Grave of the Hundred Head".
So somebody can scream out, "One white man's death is worth a hundred Burmese????"
Without realizing that it's the INDIANS saying it.  And Kipling didn't dream it up.
Another interesting essay of colonialism that tends to confound simplistic moralism is "The Man Who Would Be King"...a wonderful movie with Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer, by the way.


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## Mike C

I love that movie.


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## Linton Robinson

It was a real masterpiece in my book.   As cool as Indiana Jones, but without the real homage it deserved.


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## petergrimes

I would urge anyone who is intersted to read Plain Tales from the Hills and I think you will gain a much better understanding of the man. Also it is a fantastic colection of short stories, superb. One of my favourites.


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## Neetu

This response, though from someone who appears to be quite well-educated, is the response of a white man. No colonial power gives gifts for nothing to the nations it enslaves. It is never a favour extended out of magnanimity. The imperialists took away a lot more than they brought in to the lands they controlled. Not just materially, but in dignity and humanity also. 
I understand the controversial views surrounding Rudyard Kipling's works. He was a fabulous story-teller and writer, no doubt, but does that make him racially unbiased? I don't think there is an unequivocal answer. I don't think the above poem resolves that racial issue about him. 



Linton Robinson said:


> It's neither sarcasm not "ignorance".   It's a description of colonialism from the standpoint of a Englishman who grew up in the Raj and went pretty much completely native.
> Without the advantages of our remove in time, he tended to see bringing railroads and hospitals and such into a confused, teeming country with a viscious racially-based caste system and ruled by a handfull of obscenely rich poobahs while people starved as being a bit of a gift to them.   And a gift that could be burdensome.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Without the advantages of our remove in time,
> 
> 
> 
> - that is not necessarily an advantage. It becomes academic analysis often prone to judgement and contradictions of which the individual has no personal experience.
> 
> It's doubtful that the British took more out of India than they put into it, actually.   Or the United Stares for that matter.
> 
> It's very fashionable to go back and find little non-PC nits to pick off people of different times and cultures (kind of an intolerance in itself, no?)   but it's all fashion.
> For instance, Kipling's start has begun to rise again recently as people get tired of the kneejerk liberalism and start to appreciate his work.
> This is the author of "Kim" let me remind you.
> And if you want a deeper nuance of the feeling of Indian soliders towards their white officers, try reading "The Grave of the Hundred Head".
> So somebody can scream out, "One white man's death is worth a hundred Burmese????"
> Without realizing that it's the INDIANS saying it.  And Kipling didn't dream it up.
> Another interesting essay of colonialism that tends to confound simplistic moralism is "The Man Who Would Be King"...a wonderful movie with Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer, by the way.
Click to expand...


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## Olly Buckle

Not just the white man's response, Neetu. People of all races who have been into conquest and exploitation have sought to justify their actions by the 'fact' that they  are bringing some sort of enlightenment to the ignorant and benighted.
The really vicious racism is from those who know nothing of other races, and can objectify the people who make them up; the Aristotelean concept of people who should be slaves because they are incapable that the Spanish tried to use in South America for example (The Valladolid debate of 1550).
Kipling was not unacquainted with Indians and Indian culture, as the son of English parents living in India he would have been brought up by an Indian in place of his mother at an early age, to such people the 'native' is their family who cares for them in sickness and health, not some stranger.

You are right about him, he truly was a great story teller, I would place 'Kim' as one of the best books I have ever read, and 'Plain tales from the Hills' is a superb collection of short stories for a first book, there is a huge amount to learn there about form and structure. He also covered a huge range of subjects and styles, another mark of a truly great writer, and made his stories ageless; I still get a kick from reading 'The cat that walked by itself'. Oh, that's the other thing, there are very few things I read more than once, he's worth it.

I can't remember the name of it, but there is a story about a Burmese mistress who goes looking for her English lover in India which leaves you in no doubt who he thought the superior person, and it wasn't the Englishman.


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## Neetu

True, Olly, but the British were the ones about whom it has been said "The sun never sets on the British Empire". Of course, there was France and Spain and the Dutch, etc, but mostly all were European powers. There were also Islamic conquests of India, Africa and other countries. 

I do intend to read Plain Tales from the Hills as soon as I can find it. He was a terrific storyteller. 




Olly Buckle said:


> Not just the white man's response, Neetu. People of all races who have been into conquest and exploitation have sought to justify their actions by the 'fact' that they  are bringing some sort of enlightenment to the ignorant and benighted.
> The really vicious racism is from those who know nothing of other races, and can objectify the people who make them up; the Aristotelean concept of people who should be slaves because they are incapable that the Spanish tried to use in South America for example (The Valladolid debate of 1550).
> Kipling was not unacquainted with Indians and Indian culture, as the son of English parents living in India he would have been brought up by an Indian in place of his mother at an early age, to such people the 'native' is their family who cares for them in sickness and health, not some stranger.
> 
> You are right about him, he truly was a great story teller, I would place 'Kim' as one of the best books I have ever read, and 'Plain tales from the Hills' is a superb collection of short stories for a first book, there is a huge amount to learn there about form and structure. He also covered a huge range of subjects and styles, another mark of a truly great writer, and made his stories ageless; I still get a kick from reading 'The cat that walked by itself'. Oh, that's the other thing, there are very few things I read more than once, he's worth it.
> 
> I can't remember the name of it, but there is a story about a Burmese mistress who goes looking for her English lover in India which leaves you in no doubt who he thought the superior person, and it wasn't the Englishman.


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## hvysmker

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.
Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows.
If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse!
By Rudyard Kipling

Does that mean he doesn’t value his wife or that he’s not currently Politically correct?

You mean thus, olly?
BY THE old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay! "
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay ?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay! [SIZE=+1]  'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat - jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen, 
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
Bloomin' idol made o' mud 
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay...
   When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing _"Kulla-lo-lo!_
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.
Elephints a-pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay...
  But that's all shove be'ind me - long ago an' fur away 
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay... 
  I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and - 
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay...

[/SIZE]  Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
O the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay !


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## Olly Buckle

Not that, it was a short story. A company man who has what he regards as a casual fling in Burma and is then re posted to India and joined by his wife. He is contrasting the casual indifference of the European to the culture and tradition of the Asian

Neetu, I really think it is a human, social trait, look outside the Eurasian view of history that tends to dominate our thinking. The main cultures of South America, various American Indian tribes in the North. Genghis Kahn in Northern China. The only places I don't see it is where the population is sparse, Inuit, Bushman, Native Australian, hunter gatherers in marginal lands. I don't know, it is only a feeling, but it does seem to be pretty general. Personally I think we need to move on from 'Us and Them' to 'Us' and 'More of Us', a new sort of society. Things like agriculture, the iron age, money, have structured society, the results seem obvious retrospectively, but nobody predicted it. I don't pretend to be able to predict the next big thing, my prediction is that there will be one, and it will be unexpected. So will the change it initiates, but there is Hope.


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## BornForBurning

> No colonial power gives gifts for nothing to the nations it enslaves. It is never a favour extended out of magnanimity. The imperialists took away a lot more than they brought in to the lands they controlled.


Your third sentence does not follow logically from the first two. The motivations of the imperialists could be COMPLETELY self-centered and that still wouldn't necessarily follow that they took more than they gave. The 'real' impact of colonialism probably won't be obvious for at least another half century or so. What is obvious to nearly any historian familiar with the era is while Imperialism caused (generally speaking) great disruption and turmoil to the existing societal structure, it also, through both direct Imperial intervention and pragmatic necessity, FORCED the non-white world to modernize to an extent that it never had before. Whether you think this process was inherently good or not remains one of the great debates of both modern history and philosophy. But the reality is there. That 18th century England, a nation of machines, modern transportation, democracy and (most importantly) _surplus food _might seem superior to 18th century India, a country rife with starvation, disease, poverty and corruption may be distasteful to us, but, in Kipling's context, it really isn't a difficult conclusion to come to. At the very least, I think it is highly reasonable to conclude that England had something unique to offer the Indians. Something that, at the moment, they couldn't provide for themselves. 

The White Man's Burden is one of those antiquities of late 18th - early 19th political thought that we could most likely do without, both as an actual philosophy and as a by-word for describing philosophies we dislike. Remember, this belief was being openly mocked in British Universities as early as the 1940s. It really isn't relevant to modern political discussion. 

'


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## Olly Buckle

BornForBurning said:


> The White Man's Burden is one of those antiquities of late 18th - early 19th political thought that we could most likely do without, both as an actual philosophy and as a by-word for describing philosophies we dislike. Remember, this belief was being openly mocked in British Universities as early as the 1940s. It really isn't relevant to modern political discussion.
> '


I am reminded of L.P. Hartley "The past is a different country; there they do things differently!”.


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## VRanger

It is neither sarcasm nor ignorance.

It is satire -- a form of literature with which we have generally lost contact for form and purpose.


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## Lee Messer

Nothing resolves racism. Everyone is biased in some way. It's not a crime if not acted upon, but only an affliction of ignorance. It is something taught and passed down, or learned by initial or unpleasant experiences. Just like anything else. I am white, and dated many a black woman, but the most interesting was Marketha. She had multiple degrees bachelors and masters both. I can't remember them all but we both learned about racism because she took classes on it, and never realized she was racist. She just didn't like white people. She never knew why I asked her on a date, and told me she didn't know why she said yes. Everyone is at least prejudiced until tested, but still anyone with good judgement when outnumbered by strangers will have some level of caution, especially if the majority is another race. No one simply knows if the other side harbors hatred if they are strangers. For this reason she would never go camping with me. She was actually afraid of the woods because of the stories about white people. Mind you this is not long ago. Smartest woman I ever met.

The real sick part is that there are people whose lifestyles and wealth wholly depend on this particular issue never being resolved. So, those of us who have no wisdom will kill each other while they rob us blind. Hate to be dramatic about it, but this is happening right now in front of everyone. At least this poem is not biased, but I imagine someone will come after Kipling as well. Kill the messenger and all.

I liked O'Connor as well. She was misinterpreted often. I liked the way she would point out that being charitable or overly kind made a spectacle of the disingenuous. Like putting lipstick on a pig.


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