Rudyard Kipling: “The White Man's Burden”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

“The White Man's Burden” is significant in its depiction of both the colonized and the colonizer. The poem is addressed to a colonizing nation. In the first stanza, Kipling calls on his audience to “Take up the White Man's burden— / Send forth the best ye breed— / Go bind your sons to exile.” He thus frames the colonizing nation as one making a great sacrifice and the colonial troops as being the best of the nation, being sent “to serve your captives' need.” He depicts the colonizer as a servant to the colonized people, which he describes as ungrateful “sullen peoples, / Half-devil and half-child.”

Indeed, the image of a half-devil and half-child creates a dual personality for those who are colonized, and it serves to justify different aspects of imperialism. The half-child portrayal establishes a need for a more knowledgeable colonizer to teach the innocent and ignorant colonized about life and civilization. This patronizing view of the colonized consigns all indigenous knowledge to the less advanced and less developed. At the same time, the half-devil depiction reflects a fundamental mistrust of the colonized and relegates all resistance to their inherent savagery and moral inferiority—justifying military tactics and often brutal systems of control and separation between the colonizer and colonized.

The themes of colonialism as a burden and of a self-sacrificing colonial official continue throughout the poem. The tone becomes increasingly bitter, as when Kipling complains in the third stanza that after all the colonizers' hard work to “Fill full the mouth of Famine / And bid the sickness cease,” they must “Watch sloth and heathen Folly / Bring all your hopes to nought.” The resentment Kipling holds toward the ungrateful colonized people is best seen in the fifth stanza of the poem. Here Kipling describes the “reward” as “The blame of those ye better / The hate of those ye guard.” Native resistance to colonialism is deemed ignorant and devoid of political understanding.

In response to any resistance, Kipling points out that the colonizer is obligated to maintain his honor and composure. The sixth stanza of the poem characterizes the duty of the colonizer to be a constant representative of the West. Despite weariness, Kipling forewarns the young colonizer, “By all ye cry or whisper / By all ye leave or do / The silent, sullen peoples / Shall weigh your gods and you.” Thus, Kipling adds another level of burden on the colonizer, who is constantly representing civilization to the natives.

In the final stanza of the poem, Kipling makes a case for imperialism as part of growing into manhood. The individual in this case serves to represent national maturation as well, and in the final line Kipling presents the true reward, in his eyes, of imperialism: “The judgment of your peers.” In this way, Kipling argues that even if the colonized people do not appreciate the sacrifices of the colonizer, the rest of the “civilized” world will.

In the final analysis, “White Man's Burden” treats colonialism as a purely humanitarian effort on the part of the colonizer. Kipling's imperialism is devoid of any taint of economic or political gain for the imperial powers. There is also no mention of suffering of the colonized people under the abuses of colonialism—only the suffering that colonialism seeks to alleviate.