The White Man's Burden

Rudyard Kipling

McClure’s Magazine Feb. 12, 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,5

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,10

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,15

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;20

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.

Questions

1. What is the subject of the poem?

2. What is the speaker’s attitude towards thesubject?

3. Who are the “sullen peoples” and how are they characterized?

4. What are some of the “duties” the speaker says must be done?

5. What is the “White Man’s Burden”?

“The Brown Man's Burden”

By Henry Labouchère

Truth (London); reprinted in Literary Digest 18 (Feb. 25, 1899).

Pile on the brown man's burden

To gratify your greed;

Go, clear away the "n*****s"

Who progress would impede;

Be very stern, for truly 5

'Tis useless to be mild

With new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

Pile on the brown man's burden,

And if his cry be sore, 10

That surely need not irk you--

Ye've driven slaves before.

Seize on his ports and pastures,

The fields his people tread;

Go make from them your living, 15

And mark them with his dead.

Pile on the brown man's burden,

And through the world proclaim

That ye are Freedom's agent--

There's no more paying game! 20

And, should your own past history

Straight in your teeth be thrown,

Retort that independence

Is good for whites alone.

And if by chance ye falter, 25

Or lag along the course,

If, as the blood flows freely,

Ye feel some slight remorse,

Hie ye to Rudyard Kipling,

Imperialism's prop, 30

And bid him, for your comfort,

Turn on his jingo stop.

Questions

  1. In what ways does this poem respond to the ideas in “The White Man’s Burden”?
  1. What is the speaker’s tone towards Kipling’s ideas?
  1. What is the “brown man’s burden”?

ACTIVITY TWO (Objective Activities): Examine the following documents. In the space next to or below each document, answer the questions.

DOCUMENT ONE: David Livingstone Reading the Bible. Artist Unknown,

  1. What is the purpose of the cartoon? What message is it trying to convey?
  1. What is the TONE of the cartoon? What do you think the artist wanted his audience to feel?
  1. Make an inference: Is this cartoon supporting the colonizers or those being colonized. How do you know?

DOCUMENT TWO:

  1. What is the purpose of the cartoon? What message is it trying to convey?
  1. What is the TONE of the cartoon? What do you think the artist wanted his audience to feel?
  1. Make an inference: Is this cartoon supporting the colonizers or those being colonized. How do you know?

DOCUMENT THREE:David Livingstone (March 1866)

Now that I am on the point of starting another trip into Africa I feel quite exhilarated: when one travels with the specific object in view of ameliorating [improving] the condition of the natives every act becomes ennobled.Whether exchanging the customary civilities, or arriving at a village, accepting a night’s lodging, purchasing food for the party, asking for information, or answering polite African enquiries as to our objects in travelling, we begin to spread a knowledge of that people by whose agency their land will yet become enlightened and freed from the slave trade. The mere animal pleasure travel- ling in a wild unexplored country is very great. . . . The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: it becomes more confident of its own resources.

  1. According to Livingstone, why does he feel uplifted by the thought of his coming trip to Africa? What long-term goal does he mention?
  1. Do you think Livingstone honestly believed he was helping the Africans?

DOCUMENT FOUR: “In the Rubber Coils”, Punch Magazine, 1906.

  1. What is the purpose of the cartoon? What message is it trying to convey?
  1. What is the TONE of the cartoon? What do you think the artist wanted his audience to feel?
  1. Make an inference: Is this cartoon supporting the colonizers or those being colonized. How do you know?