Pro & Anti Imperialism

"The White Man's Burden" Rudyard Kipling

Published in McClure's Magazine in February of 1899, Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The White Man's Burden," appeared at a critical moment in the debate about imperialism within the United States. The Philippine-American War began on February 4 and two days later the U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the Spanish-American War, ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States, and placed Cuba under U.S. control. Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase "white man's burden" as a euphemism for imperialism that seemed to justify the policy as a noble enterprise. Anti-imperialists quickly responded with parodies of the poem. They focused on the new warfare in the Philippines, the hypocrisy of claiming moral sanction for a policy they argued originated from greed for military power and commercial markets, continuing racial and gender inequality at home, and the special "burden" of imperialism to the working people of the United States. The poem was not quickly forgotten. In 1901, after two years of devastating warfare in the Philippines, Mark Twain remarked: "The White Man's Burden has been sung. Who will sing the Brown Man's?" In December of 1903, C. E. D. Phelps used a parody of the poem to criticize the U.S. acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone. The "white man's burden" concept was also revived in later discussions of U.S. interventions in the Americas and during World War I. Kipling's poem, two racial images interpreting its meaning in the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba, an example of its use in contemporary advertising, and more than fifty anti-imperialist responses are included here.

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The White Man's BurdenBy Rudyard Kipling

McClure's Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899).

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.

h Crosby on Kipling: A Parody of “The White Man’s Burden”In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed. 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 peoplesAre 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, Altho they never have to pay A single sou 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.

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5477.html

Source: Ernest Crosby,

“The Real White Man’s Burden,”

Swords and Ploughshares

(New York: Funk and

Wagnalls Company, 1902), 32–35.

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.

The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed. See Jim Zwick's page "Mark Twain on the Philippines" for more of Twain's writings on the subject.

Transcribed by Steven Orso (snorso@facstaff.wisc.edu) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJsZCpp8hR4 part 1 Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsoJ-WJZGXM&NR=1

No break:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVod4PwQHs&feature=related

World War I Key Terms1. mobilization2. Allies3. Central Powers4. stalemate5. propaganda6. U-boats7. The sinking of the Lusitania8. Zimmerman Note9. Convoy10. autocrat11. Russian Revolution12. Great Migration13. armistice14. genocide

15. self–determination16. Wilson’s Fourteen Points17. reparations18. League of Nations19. Isolationism20. Sergeant Alvin C. York21. American Expeditionary Forces (AEF)22. John Pershing23. Treaty of Versailles24. Selective Service Act25. Herbert Hoover26. Liberty Bonds27. Sedition Act

QUIZ TOMORROW!!