The White Man's Burden

“The White Man’s Burden” is a lyric poem written by Rudyard Kipling, an English short-story writer, novelist, and poet who achieved enormous success and acclaim during his lifetime. The poem was published simultaneously in The Times newspaper in England and in McClure’s Magazine in the United States in February 1899. Directly under the title appeared the words, “The United States and the Philippine Islands,” a reference to relations between the two countries that would soon lead to the Philippine-American War (February 1899–July 1902). The poem urges the United States to become an imperial power and take control of the Philippines. In a wider sense, the poem is an endorsement of U.S. and British imperialism, which it presents as a moral duty that the white race must assume to bring advancement to nonwhite peoples in Asia and Africa. The speaker of the poem warns, however, that the colonized people will express no gratitude for the benefits that the imperialist power has brought them.

Kipling, who lived many years in India, is often regarded as the poet of British imperialism. While many at the time endorsed the views expressed in “The White Man’s Burden,” there were dissenting voices also, including Mark Twain, who published a satirical anti-imperialist essay in 1901. Since the publication of the poem, there has been a fundamental change in attitudes to imperialism, and the point of view Kipling expressed—openly racist to a modern ear—will find few defenders now. “The White Man’s Burden,” however, is notable for its skillful verse form and historical significance: It expresses an idea, as well as a political, economic, and military policy, that gripped Western civilization from the 18th to the 20th centuries.

Poet Biography

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in what was then Bombay (now Mumbai). Kipling’s parents, John Lockwood Kipling and Alice Macdonald, took him to England at the age of six and left him in a foster home. He later attended a boarding school before returning to India in 1882, where he worked as a journalist and began his career as a fiction writer. He published in England the verse collection Departmental Ditties (1886) and several volumes of short stories. When he returned to England in 1889, he found that he achieved literary fame, and within a few years he became the most popular poet in England. In 1892, he married Caroline "Carrie" Starr Balestier, an American, and they lived for five years in Vermont before returning to England in 1896. Kipling continued to publish poetry and short story collections, including two of his most enduring works, The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), which were set in a forest in India and featured mainly animal characters. Kipling also wrote novels, including Kim (1901), which is also set in India and considered his finest work in that genre.

In 1902 the Kiplings moved to Sussex, in southern England, where Kipling lived until his death. He published The Just-So Stories in the same year, and The Five Nations, a poetry volume that included “The White Man’s Burden,” followed a year later. Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His work in the 20th century was not as popular as his earlier work, except for Puck of Pook’s Hill, a collection of verse published in 1906 and set in England in Roman and Anglo-Saxon times. Kipling also became known for his strong anti-German stance in the years leading up to and including World War I (1914–1918).

Kipling and his wife had three children. One daughter, Josephine, died at the age of six in 1899, and their only son, John, was killed in 1915 during World War I.

Kipling died in London on January 18, 1936, at the age of seventy.

Poem Text

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 nought.

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 mark 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 cloke 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!

Kipling, Rudyard. “The White Man’s Burden.” 1899. Fordham University.

Summary

“The White Man’s Burden” is about imperialism and references “The United States and the Philippine Islands.” It consists of seven eight-line stanzas. Each stanza begins with the line “Take up the White Man’s burden.” In Stanza 1, the speaker addresses the United States, and by implication, other white colonial powers, especially Great Britain, which already had an extensive empire in India and Africa. The speaker advises the United States to send the best people it has into “exile” (Line 3) to a country far away, where they can be of service to the colonial ideal. The captives are the inhabitants of the Philippines (or any indigenous population subject to colonial control), and the speaker states that the colonizers will serve the captives’ interests and needs. The armed colonizers (“in heavy harness,” Line 5) are there to serve the local population, who are described as aimless (“fluttered,” Line 6), “wild” (Line 6), and “sullen” (Line 7), the latter because they have been “new-caught” (Line 7) in the colonizers’ net.

Stanza 2 offers an idealistic view of the “White Man’s burden,” as seen from the white man’s perspective. The colonizer will need to show “patience” (Line 10) in dealing with the subject people, downplaying the use of force and any display of pride. As the colonizers speak openly and simply, they should repeatedly make it clear that their presence is for the good of the local people, who will gain much from the colonial occupation.

The first four lines of Stanza 3 continue in this idealistic vein. Colonization will bring peace, and it will also end famine and sickness (Lines 18-20). However, Line 21 introduces a different thought, which continues until the end of the stanza. When the benevolent work of the colonizers is near to fruition—work that they have undertaken for the benefits of the indigenous people—it will all collapse because of the foolishness and laziness of the people themselves. The people are described as “heathen” (Line 23) because they are not Christian, unlike the colonizers.

In Stanza 4, after the speaker once more implores the United States to “take up the White Man’s burden,” he states that colonization is superior to a monarchy, which imposes only a “tawdry rule” (Line 26)—inferior but full of show. Lines 27 and 28 suggest that the government the speaker envisions is an honest one that focuses on hard work on essential tasks. The next lines focus on what exactly those tasks might be: building infrastructures, such as ports (Line 29) and roads (Line 30). These are large tasks, and those who labor to build them will likely not be the ones, in the future, to use them. Many of the laborers will lose their lives while working at their jobs.

Stanza 5 strikes a note of bitterness. The speaker tells the colonial power that although it will work for the betterment of the subject people, those people will not be grateful for it; instead, they will blame and hate the colonizers (Lines 35-36). As the native populations are nudged toward a more enlightened condition (that is, in the eyes of the colonizers), they will complain that they preferred their former state.

In Stanza 6, the speaker reiterates the call to take up the white man’s burden. The colonizers must not flinch from their calling, which the speaker considers a noble one, even though the largeness of the task will leave them weary. The “sullen” (Line 47) people will be watching and judging everything they say and do.

In the final stanza, the speaker urges the colonizers to enter a new phase of their enterprise. They must put aside the days of old (which are compared to childhood) when they achieved their aims easily and with much praise. The present time, the speaker says, is a call to adulthood as a nation, even though they will receive no thanks for their work. They must be clear in purpose, act wisely, and accept the—presumably favorable—“judgment of your peers!” (Line 56), that is, other citizens of their nation who will support the colonial or imperial mission.