Posted on 02/05/2005 5:37:04 PM PST by NMC EXP
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. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control.
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 as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send 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—
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) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”
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!
Source: Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929).
So, how adult is it to read something that has been retracted and then proceed to slam someone for something that they have already apoligized for?
I will try to rise above my sixth grade comprehension for moment. Curious that you take such offense to my using the word *spit* and then proceed to call me an idiot. It's obvious I never did anything of the sort to you, so I am amused.
Perhaps my dumb self does not know how to apoligize correctly. No, I re-read it. I apoligized. I will not call you dumb but I WILL spit on your last post to me. So to spit on your posts is immature so you will call me a sixth grader.
Seriously, you can see the irony in this, can't you?
Arioch out.
Is that the only couplet left off? Where does it belong in the poem?
I copied the poem because I liked it so much and I would like to have it all, and in the correct order---
I love threads like this on a slow news night because it really makes one think and can garner a good conversation, I hope!!
And you are correct about that couplet.
I need to go back to the GMU site and determine if it was a cut and paste error on my part or a deletion on theirs.
As to my reason for posting this article it was not about imperialism. It was about How it must feel to be a troop over there idealisticaly believing you are doing the right thing and getting blown away as a reward.
As to your comments re: spreading democracy, that ain't why we are there but I would rather not get into that on this thread.
Well true if British colonialism didn't happen there wouldn't be an America, and I wouldn't exist either for that matter. However, the colonists didn't always adhere to their own ideals. I could talk about this for a while as it is a topics I'm fascinated with. All in all it was good, but America is letting the people participate more in their own destiny, not something England was really good at doing, in Africa or Rudyard Kipling's India.
Good on ya, TR! Only a man of your "chutzpah" would declare Rudyard Kipling to be a "marginal" poet.
I love it!
After reading the post #21, maybe my suggestion that there might by "good conversation" is just a little wrong---
I think we have a case of posts posted before other posts got a chance to be seen---kinda like playing phone tag!! hehe
And that is why I brought in the missing couplet. Once again:
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Do you consider the recent elections to be sloth and heathen folly? The Iraqi people came out to vote in greater percentages than in this country, in the face of death threats. They had every reason after the intial invasion to question our resolve, given the fact that we hung them out to dry after the first Gulf War.
So you can question whether it was all worth it. But the Iraqis have hardly let us down for our troubles.
I'll see if I can get the proper version. IMO I mentioned it because it was the thesis of this poem, and no discussion of the relevance of this poem to Iraq would be complete without it.
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 (1) 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, (2)
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!
This version is from:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/
The fault is theirs, not yours.
That's pretty low on their part. Seems like GMU removed the precautionary couplets of Kipling's poem to try and make it into some rabid imperialistic rant.
No I do not know that. You posted a message to yourself which I ignored before making my reply to you which was given in the spirit and tone of your original post to me.
Sounds like a misunderstanding compounded by a mistake.
I suggest we forget the whole matter.
I understand why you brought up the missing couplet--it is important to the poem---
I am not critisizing NMC EXP, it may have been left out of the poem he copied onto FR.
Like I said, I just want to be able to have the full poem--
I may be wrong, but I can really picture the War in Iraq, with the frustrations, and ambivalence by some. But, I feel pride when I read it because I know that while some say that only reason we went or SHOULD have gone, was because of WMDs, ultimately the gift of freedom is what makes "sending the sons to exile" noble, in, and of itself.
You can read about it in Kipling's autobiographical Something of Myself.
Now John Hay, one of the very few American Ambassadors to England with two sides to their heads, had his summer house a few hours north by rail from us. On a visit to him, we discussed the matter. His explanation was convincing. I quote the words which stayed textually in my memory. ‘America’s hatred of England is the hoop round the forty-four (as they were then) staves of the Union.’ He said it was the only standard possible to apply to an enormously variegated population. ‘So—when a man comes up out of the sea, we say to him; “See that big bully over there in the East? He’s England! Hate him, and you’re a good American.”’But how thoroughly the doctrine was exploited I did not realise till we visited Washington in ’95, where I met Theodore Roosevelt, then UnderSecretary (I never caught the name of the Upper) to the U.S. Navy. I liked him from the first and largely believed in him. He would come to our hotel, and thank God in a loud voice that he had not one drop of British blood in him; his ancestry being Dutch, and his creed conforming-Dopper, I think it is called. Naturally I told him nice tales about his Uncles and Aunts in South Africa—only I called them Ooms and Tanties—who esteemed themselves the sole lawful Dutch under the canopy and dismissed Roosevelt’s stock for ‘Verdomder Hollanders.’ Then he became really eloquent, and we would go off to the Zoo together, where he talked about grizzlies that he had met. It was laid on him, at that time, to furnish his land with an adequate Navy; the existing collection of unrelated types and casual purchases being worn out. I asked him how he proposed to get it, for the American people did not love taxation. ‘Out of you,’ was the disarming reply. And so —to some extent — it was. The obedient and instructed Press explained how England — treacherous and jealous as ever —only waited round the corner to descend on the unprotected coasts of Liberty, and to that end was preparing, etc. etc. etc. (This in ’95 when England had more than enough hay on her own trident to keep her busy!) But the trick worked, and all the Orators and Senators gave tongue, like the Hannibal Chollops that they were. I remember the wife of a Senator who, apart from his politics, was very largely civilised, invited me to drop into the Senate and listen to her spouse ’twisting the Lion’s tail.’ It seemed an odd sort of refreshment to offer a visitor. I could not go, but I read his speech. [At the present time (autumn ’35) I have also read with interest the apology offered by an American Secretary of State to Nazi Germany for unfavourable comments on that land by a New York Police Court Judge.] But those were great and spacious and friendly days in Washington which—politics apart—Allah had not altogether deprived of a sense of humour; and the food was a thing to dream of.
Me? Oh, yeah. You assumed I was referring to you personally instead of the typical Freeper reply to the article itself. It must take some intelligence to realize that though.
Learn some manners.
I won't if I follow your example.
Considering that the GMU history department gutted the poem and completely changed its tone in the process, I'd say xJones had a point.
there are many liberal creeps who cite this as proof of our "racist imperialism." They just don't get what Kipling was getting at.
There is a difference between civilized, modern, human beings and brutal, tribal cultures. It is time for humans to move beyond those racist, murderous, animalistic tribal practices. Defending humans from those practices is not, itself, a racist act. It is the burden of civilized people.
The fact that, in this respect, the humans who represented these civilized concepts were primarily "white" is merely coincidence. Concentrating on the racial makeup of the people that "imposed" civilization on the brutal cultures of places like the late 1800s, early 1900s, Phillipines is, itself, a racist idea.
Is human sacrifice an "OK thing" because it is a part of a native culture? Is slavery? Is misogony?
Sorry, but the idea of defending rape, murder and racism as equal to modern culture based on some perverted "prime directive" is ludicrous. Kipling had it right. It just happened to be 'white men' who were saddled with this particular trial.
It doesn't make 'white men' better than other humans, merely the ones who got to a civilized state first. There is a big temptation to merely ignore this "burden" and let the "animals" kill themsleves off, while civilization moves on without them. That notion would be truly racist.
This is curious. I thought George Mason Univ was a conservative (at least by today's standards) outfit.
Did some graduate assistant doctor the original before posting on the GMU website?
I had not read the complete version for a while and thought something was missing.
Where did you find the version you posted?
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