“The White Man's Burden” Introduction

• "The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the British Victorian poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling. While he originally wrote the poem to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Kipling revised it in 1899 to exhort the American people to conquer and rule the Philippines. Conquest in the poem is not portrayed as a way for the white race to gain individual or national wealth or power. Instead, the speaker defines white imperialism and colonialism in moral terms, as a “burden” that the white race must take up in order to help the non-white races develop civilization. Because of the poem's influential moral argument for American imperialism, it played a key role in the congressional debates about whether America should annex the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War. The phrase "white man's burden" remains notorious as a racist justification for Western conquest.

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“The White Man's Burden” Summary

• The speaker exhorts the audience (assumed to be people identifying as "white") to perform a difficult task assigned to them by virtue of their whiteness. This task will require the best people in white society to go forth to another land, with an entire generation of young men essentially being exiled. These young men will be made to serve a foreign people they themselves conquered; paradoxically, the young men will have to serve their own unwilling captives. The young white men will be harnessed like horses awaiting the beck and call of an unreliable, nearly savage people, who have just been captured like prizes in a contest. These same people are not human adults but both childlike and evil.

  The speaker again implores the presumed white audience to perform this difficult task. This duty will require patience, and restraint. Though the speaker seems to think that the white race has reason to feel proud in comparison to the non-white races, the whites must restrain themselves from showing their pride in order to govern well. The whites must also use plain and honest language in order to be understood by those they rule. All this will not be for the benefit of whites but for the benefit of those they rule.

  The speaker again implores the white audience to perform this difficult task. The speaker lays out what will be the goals of the whites who go forth to conquest. They will constantly have to fight wars in order to maintain peace in the lands they rule, and these wars will be especially cruel. The whites will also have to provide food for starving peoples and fight diseases among them. All these specific tasks worked on behalf of the non-whites will be jeopardized even as they near completion by the fact that the non-white, non-Christian races are both lazy and foolish. The speaker insists this will happen despite the whites' best efforts.

  The speaker again implores the white audience to perform this difficult task. The imperialistic duty that the whites will take up is better than the traditional rule of kings and princes, because it is far more common and more moral. The duty is more like a homely household task than a grand dynastic inheritance. The speaker mentions the roads and ports that the whites will build for the non-whites, neither of which the whites will themselves use, before adding that the whites will not just have to build these amenities, they will also have to die in battle to preserve them from ruin.

  The speaker again implores the white audience to perform this difficult task. The speaker lays out the supposed rewards of this imperial project, which are negative and thus only rewards in an ironic sense. The whites will make the non-whites better by ruling them, but the non-whites will only respond with spite and blame, even when the whites protect them from worse enemies. The whites will be indulgent in a parental fashion toward the non-whites, who will cry out against their teachings. While the whites slowly bring them toward the light of civilization, the non-white people will cry out for the "Egyptian" darkness of their previous savagery, which they loved.

  The speaker again implores the white audience to perform this difficult task. To do anything other than take up the burden would mean lowering oneself to an unworthy task. The audience may choose to decline the burden in the name of freedom, either the freedom of the non-white peoples or their own freedom from this responsibility, but to do so would be merely a cheat to hide the exhaustion that is the real reason for refusing the challenge. Moreover, the speaker insists, the non-white peoples will see through the ruse. They will know instantly that the audience declined the challenge from exhaustion and fear, and they will judge them accordingly. If the task is declined, the non-white peoples will judge not just the whites themselves, but the things the whites hold dearest, including their religion and their tradition, as unworthy.

  The speaker again implores the white audience to perform this difficult task. The speaker then encourages the audience to grow up and put childish ways behind them. This will let the audience refuse tasks that will get them easy praise. Instead, the white audience will have to prove themselves to be adults, even if this task offers little reward over the years. And in the process, they will get the respect of their fellow adults, which is both more honest and more valuable.

“The White Man's Burden” Themes

• 

  Colonialism and Imperialism

  “The White Man’s Burden” presents the conquering of non-white races as white people's selfless moral duty. This conquest, according to the poem, is not for personal or national benefit, but rather for the gain of others—specifically, for the gain of the conquered. The white race will “serve [their] captives’ need” rather than their own, and the white conquerors “seek another’s profit, / And work another’s gain.” Even if they do not recognize their benefit, the non-white races will be brought “(Ah, slowly!) toward the light,” escaping the “loved Egyptian night” in which they idled before their conquest. Yet the non-whites’ positive sentiment for their own “darkness” indicates the extreme difficulty whites will face in seeking to educate the conquered peoples.

  By emphasizing the hardships of this "burden," the speaker positions himself as a realist who sees all the difficulties of an imperialist project and the inevitable thanklessness that results. The speaker announces that imperial conquest will “bind your sons to exile” and cause them to “wait in heavy harness” in pursuit of the “savage wars of peace,” indications of the difficulty and tedium of the inevitable war. The “silent, sullen peoples” lifted up from “bondage” will never offer the imperialists any thanks or praise.

  By taking the difficulty and thanklessness of imperialism seriously, the speaker establishes his credibility as someone of clear-sighted judgement. This stance of realism offers the speaker’s argument two key things. First, it staves off the retort that the speaker is some idealist blinded by an impossible dream. The speaker’s focus on the difficulty of the task actually has the effect of making that task seem, eventually, achievable, since all the difficulties have already been foreseen. Second, it sets up the speaker (and the European powers the speaker seems connected to) as a kind of stern, realist father figure to America who will offer Americans true respect—“the judgement of your peers” both “cold” and “edged with dear-bought wisdom”—if they fulfill their imperialist task.

  Indeed, the poem in many ways appeals to the middle-class virtues of ordinary turn of the 20th century Americans by presenting imperialism as a sober, tedious duty rather than a grand adventure of conquest. Imperialism is a “toil of serf and sweeper,” not a “tawdry rule of kings.” The larger part of “the white man’s burden” is thus an exercise in “patience,” accepting the length and difficulty of the task set for the imperialists. Not a calling to a high heroic destiny, but a crude, almost homely task, imperialism suits the desires of those who imagine themselves honest workers on humanity’s behalf, rather than triumphant conquerors of weaker peoples. Put another way, the poem can be seen as cannily playing to the vanity of America precisely by refusing to play to its vanity. The poem is saying to an America that, in 1899, was feeling itself ready to emerge on the world stage: this is how you can stop being a child and grow up.

  While the speaker of “The White Man’s Burden” can be seen as trying to cannily build an argument that will specifically appeal to a certain set of Americans, it also seems possible that the speaker is not being purely cynical. The speaker seems to believe everything he is saying: that imperialism and colonialism is a thankless task, taken up by whites purely out of goodwill for other races (even if those other races lack the ability to see the gift being bestowed upon them), without any ulterior motive of profit, reward, praise, or even gratitude. This enterprise may not even succeed; references to the task’s difficulty far outnumber references to its success. Thus even as the speaker believes it is the white man's duty to engage in conquest, he may also believe that this conquest will fall short of its moral goals. Imperialism, the speaker sincerely believes, is the white man’s gracious sacrifice on behalf of non-whites.

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• 

  Racism

  Racism is not really a theme of “The White Man’s Burden.” The poem doesn’t in any way explore or grapple with racism or its effects in the world. And yet it is impossible to discuss “The White Man’s Burden” without also discussing racism, because the poem is, simply put, blatantly racist. Its premise—that white imperialism is a moral burden that white races must take up in order to conquer and educate, by force and against their will, the non-white races of the world—is based on a racist worldview. The poem does not even defend or explain the basis of this worldview. Instead, the poem takes it as being obvious and objectively true that white races are superior and civilized, while non-white races are inferior and savage.

  The poem’s racism toward non-white peoples is so general, so entrenched, and so over-the-top that it would be pointless to seek to identify or refute all of its appearances. However, it is worth pointing out the way that Kipling’s racism made him blind to the reality of the white imperialists—and, one might say, to the white race—which “The White Man’s Burden” so esteems. There is no honest history of colonialism or imperialism that would describe either the motivations or effects of European or American imperialism as being driven by selfless benevolence or as having purely positive effects. From the devastation and enslavement of native people in the Americas; to the slave trade that developed out of European colonialism in Africa; to the uniquely rapacious corrupt practices of the Belgian Congo; to the profit and power and national pride that Britain derived from its empire on which it gloatingly exulted “the sun never set,” white imperialism was never primarily driven by the selfless motives that Kipling ascribes to it.

  Of course some imperialists and missionaries set forth with the seemingly-noble goal of “helping the savages,” but such efforts were often at best complicated and at worst destructive, as captured in all sorts of books, ranging from Heart of Darkness, to Things Fall Apart, to Wide Sargasso Sea. In Heart of Darkness, before the main character Marlow sets off to Africa, he has a farewell conversation with his aunt. She sees Marlow as being “an emissary of light” off to educate the African natives out of their “horrid ways.” Marlow points out to his aunt that the company he is working with is run for profit, and despairs at his aunt’s inability to see past illusion to the truth. Later, Marlow will see this inability as a veneer that allowed European society to hide its rapaciousness from itself, and therefore as a key part of the heart of darkness that lies at the root of Western Civilization. One can certainly argue that the Kipling of “The White Man’s Burden” has much in common with that nameless, racist aunt.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The White Man's Burden”

• Line 1

  Take up the White Man's burden — 

  The first line is a strict command addressed to the reader—someone the speaker clearly assumes must be white. The capitalization of "the White Man" indicates that the poem addresses white people in general and calls on them to answer some destiny related to their whiteness. The use of the definite article "the White Man's burden" further indicates that readers already know this burden, which is a key piece of the poem's argument. The White Man's burden is familiar; everyone knows about it, and thus denying it means denying a moral duty obvious to the rest of the world.

  The staccato rhythm of iambs (da DUM) drives home the forcefulness of the order, which brooks no discussion or response:

  Take up the White Man's burden —

  This meter will repeat throughout the poem. The first line repeats throughout the poem as well, becoming a sort of refrain or chorus. The command repeats so regularly as to make its words linger in the mind after the poem is completed, with the phrase arguably becoming a synecdoche of the whole poem. "Take up the White Man's Burden" is the poem's entire argument encapsulated into its central, oft-repeated phrase.

• Lines 2-8

  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.

  

  

• Lines 9-16

  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.

  

  

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• Lines 17-24

  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.

  

  

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• Lines 25-32

  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 make them with your living, 
  And mark them with your dead !

  

  

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• Lines 33-40

  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 !) towards the light: — 
  "Why brought ye us from bondage, 
  "Our loved Egyptian night ?"

  

  

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• Lines 41-48

  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 cry or whisper, 
  By all ye leave or do, 
  The silent sullen peoples 
  Shall weigh your Gods and you.

  

  

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• Lines 49-56

  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 judgement of your peers.

  

  

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“The White Man's Burden” Symbols

• 

  Light and Darkness

  Light—and its absence—are used in the poem to represent the contrast between civilization and savagery. Light is defined as the province of whiteness and stands in for freedom and civilization. According to the speaker, this is contrasted against "Egyptian night." This night is characterized as a state of bondage that reflects the ignorance in which non-white peoples live. As such, according to the poem, white people must lead non-white races "towards the light"—that is, towards civilization.

  Because this endeavor is presented as a moral necessity, "light" is further associated with virtue. And because the speaker insists on the unselfishness of white people in their conquest, the speaker implicitly attributes special moral qualities to whiteness itself. Unlike the non-white races, white people undertake deadly enterprises on behalf of others. By calling the non-white people "[h]alf devil and half child," the speaker again contrasts a devilish darkness (devils were often presented as dark-skinned in older European art) with an angelic whiteness.

  This moral quality contrasts with the “Egyptian night” that is "loved" by non-white peoples. The specific allusion to this being an "Egyptian" night is another dig at non-white peoples. Ancient Egypt was a polytheistic society that had gods for many purposes and social realities. But Christianity, the speaker implies, is simple and pure, like light. The Egyptian night of polytheistic superstition keeps the non-white peoples in "bondage."

  This is despite the fact that none of the countries considered for American imperialistic conquest were Egyptian, nor worshipped the gods of Egypt. Instead, "Egyptian night" in the poem, represents non-white civilizations in general, especially insofar as they are non-Christian. The contrast is generalized, and it is based on the older, classical contrast between supposedly superstitious Egypt and the allegedly more enlightened and sophisticated Greece and Rome. This idea is, of course, both racist and untrue. Indeed, as noted in this guide's thematic discussion of racism, the symbolic differentiation between light and darkness being presented in the poem is itself deeply racist.

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“The White Man's Burden” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Anaphora

  In "The White Man's Burden," anaphora creates a sense of formal unity. The repetition of the opening line acts almost like a chorus in a song. This sentence—"Take up the White Man's Burden"—becomes a sort of refrain that gives the poem a structure. Some may not classify this as true anaphora, and instead treat it more as a general form of repetition. Regardless, the phrase, and its repetition, is clearly a very important component of this poem.

  What exactly this burden is is gradually made clear as the poem continues, and each verse adds detail to the nature of this burden. It is a difficult task requiring patience and persistence; it is a thankless endeavor that, nevertheless, must be completed for the betterment of humanity. The repetition of this line reiterates in each successive stanza that, regardless of its demands, it is imperative that white people do what they have to do (according to the speaker, at least). The successive use of the phrase builds up emphasis throughout the poem, driving home the point—that this burden must be undertaken—by its constant repetition.

  This insistent repetition of the phrase not only emphasizes the poem's central message, but also seems clearly designed to transcend the poem and enter the popular vocabulary. "Take up the White Man's burden" lingers in the mind after each reading almost like a complete encapsulation of the poem itself. If the reader remembers one thing from the poem, it will likely be the phrase "White Man's burden" itself.

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• Parataxis

  

  
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• Alliteration

  

  

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• Personification

  

  

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• Parallelism

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

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"The White Man's Burden" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Burden
• Ye
• Captives
• Heavy harness
• Fluttered
• Sullen
• Reap
• Proffered
• Laurel
• Ungrudged

• A "burden" is literally a heavy load carried by a person or an animal, but it also means figuratively a difficult task or responsibility, here the task of imperialistic conquest and rule.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The White Man's Burden”

• Form

  "The White Man's Burden" consists of seven rhyming octaves, or eight-line stanzas. Each stanza begins with the same line—"Take up the White Man's burden"—creating a sort of refrain throughout the poem. The lines are also all quite similar in length. Altogether, this grants the poem a sense of steadiness and predictability that is meant to add weight to the speaker's argument. There are few poetic flourishes, and the form is sturdy and assured. The poem can also be understood as a kind of public speech rather than a private utterance or personal correspondence. Its tone is senatorial, its audience general; it is built to convey an argument rather than to display the speaker's poetic virtuosity.

• Meter

  "The White Man's Burden" is mostly written in iambic trimeter, making for short, punchy lines that drive its points home. An iamb is a poetic food with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern, while trimeter simply means there are three of these feet per line. For example, here is line 2:

  Send forth the best ye breed —

  The non-rhyming lines (odd-numbered) in the poem are slightly different. These include something called feminine endings, which means that they have an extra, unstressed syllable after the proper final stress:

  Take up the White Man's burden —

  The final unstressed syllable helps to propel the poem forward. Because the poem is made up of iambs, readers expect each line to end with a stressed beat. The lines with feminine endings, like the one quoted above, thus leave the reader waiting for the line that will end with a stressed syllable and give a feeling of closure. Indeed, each stanza ends with a clear, firm stressed syllable.

  This pattern is repeated throughout the poem. The regular iambic rhythm is steady and familiar, allowing readers to focus on the speaker's arguments rather than getting tripped up in strange metrical variations.

• Rhyme Scheme

  The poem has a clear, regular rhyme scheme in each stanza:

  ABCBDEFE

  The repetition of the first line of every stanza ("Take up the White Man's burden") becomes a sort of refrain. The first line that follows this phrase is always part of a rhyming pair (the "B" rhymes in the scheme above), and the last line of every stanza has a rhyming pair as well (the "E" rhymes). This gives the beginning of each stanza a sense of formal rhythm and energy, and it also gives the last line a sense of closure.

  The rhyme scheme's regularity and simplicity creates an air of unaffected straightforwardness throughout the poem. This is crucial for the poem's implicit sense that the speaker is a realist who uses simple words and concepts rather than elaborate rhetoric to make a point. The speaker wants to come across as a straight-talker, and the lack of a more complicated rhyme scheme contributes to this characterization.

  This simple rhyme scheme also allows the speaker to address a wide audience, including those who might not consider themselves readers of poetry. By keeping things simple, the speaker can address those who are interested in public affairs, rather than strictly those who want to read poetry.

“The White Man's Burden” Speaker

• The speaker of "The White Man's Burden" is anonymous. That said, there is good reason to identify the speaker with Kipling himself. For one thing, Kipling's contemporaries did so. U.S. Senator Benjamin Tillman presented the poem to Congress and to President McKinley as the direct words of Rudyard Kipling, "the greatest poet of England at this time."

  "This man has lived in the Indies," Tillman added. "In fact he is a citizen of the world, and has been all over it, and knows whereof he speaks." As Tillman's characterization of the poem implies, Kipling was known as an important chronicler and defender of English imperialism. He lived in India for many years and reported on the experience of both colonizers and the colonized in that region. His novels frequently described the experience of British soldiers and administrators in India as well as Indians under colonial rule.

  The speaker's commitment to imperialism is absolute, resulting in occasional slips of what seems like dramatic irony to modern readers. For instance, the speaker ventriloquizes the conquered natives with a sentence almost too absurd to be believed: "Why brought ye us from bondage / Our loved Egyptian night?" The sentence may indicate that the speaker has an absurd opinion of the non-white peoples, as persons who actually love bondage.

  Further, "the savage wars of peace" is an oxymoron, again indicative of dramatic irony. While the speaker means to insist these wars are only waged on behalf of peace, as wars they must necessarily put an end to peace. Moreover, they are "savage," much like the natives the white people mean to conquer. The phrase may imply that the speaker has not realized the extent to which his moral superiority to the non-whites is an utter delusion—though this irony was likely unintentional on Kipling's part. It is very often taken as fact that the poet himself simply was this racist, and that these slips into absurdity are the result of his fervent belief in white supremacy.

“The White Man's Burden” Setting

• The setting of "The White Man's Burden" is essentially the entire globe, at least as it was conceived of by the Western world at the end of the 19th century. While historical context teaches that the poem is addressed to the American public, the poem itself implies an audience of the white race in general. The poem thus addresses Western Europeans, Americans, and the many Europeans who settled or colonized myriad parts of the globe. These Europeans themselves are directed toward an unspecified number of locales in the globe not yet under European control.

  Kipling's specific target was the Philippines, several islands in the South China Sea populated by native Filipinos and previously controlled by the Spanish empire. At the time of the poem, the islands and their inhabitants had been won in conquest from Spain by the U.S. Navy. The poem implicitly includes this geographic area in its setting. It also includes Egypt, which is used to characterize non-white nations in general.

  The time span conceived by the poem is immensely large. As empire builders, the white nations will stay in the areas of their conquest for a long time. Phrases like "(Ah, slowly!) toward the light!" indicate the long duration of white conquest.

Literary and Historical Context of “The White Man's Burden”

• Literary Context

  "The White Man's Burden" is a poem, but it is also a political speech directed toward America, Kipling's relatively new home as of 1899. It entered the public debate around American involvement in the Philippine Islands, and as such, it inspired many responses, in the form of speeches and essays but also in poems. Many of these parodied the distinctive style and commanding tone of "The White Man's Burden."

  One distinguished response came from the American writer and humorist Mark Twain. Twain authored the essay "To the One Sitting in Darkness," a scathing critique of European and American imperialism that was largely seen as a response to Kipling's poem. The essay draws on the recent imperialistic disaster, the Boxer Rebellion, to show that, in fact, the resistance to white imperialism is not "Folly" but a spirited desire for freedom on the part of non-white peoples.

  Historical Context

  "The White Man's Burden" exists in two contexts. In its original version, the poem commemorated Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, the 60th anniversary of her rule. Among Victoria's many titles was "Empress of India," an indication of the widespread colonialist project that proceeded during her reign. Victoria's reign represented one of the high points of English imperialism, the age when the English boasted to have an empire on which the sun never set.

  Kipling wrote this poem to celebrate Victoria's supposed success in imperialistic conquest and what he believed was the powerful moral duty behind this imperialism. Kipling himself was famous as a journalist in British colonial India, and his novels display the conditions of ordinary people in the mixed regime of colonialist India and other territories under British rule. The original poem is thus a defense of British imperialism by a man who would know that imperialism and its effects very well.

  The second, and arguably more important context, came about when the poem achieved its final form in 1899. In this version, Kipling addressed not the British monarchy but the American public. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, the United States found itself in possession of the Philippine Islands and other territories of the Spanish East Indies. The Philippine Islands themselves were seen as the prize, despite the fact that the Philippine nationals had declared their independence as the Philippine Republic in 1898. Neither the United States nor the Spanish had recognized Philippine Independence, demonstrating a coarse disregard for the wishes of the Filipinos, who fought a terrible war against the Spanish to pursue that independence.

  Despite the Filipino spirit of independence, Kipling rewrote "The White Man's Burden" to encourage Americans to keep and hold the Philippine Islands. Kipling's poem was an important piece of pro-war propaganda and was even admitted into the American Congress in an argument for support of the Philippine-American War. In the long run, despite the efforts of Filipino nationals, the Americans defeated the First Philippine Republic in 1902, three years after Kipling's poem. Over 200,000 Filipino non-combatants died during the war from sickness and hunger. The United States took over the Philippine Islands as a territory, a status not ended until the end of World War II, when the Philippines finally became independent.

More “The White Man's Burden” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the entire poem.

  • "Rudyard Kipling, American Imperialist" — A book review from the New Republic focused on Kipling's controversial legacy and years in America.

  • "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" — This 1901 essay by American satirist Mark Twain is a response to "The White Man's Burden" that pokes fun at the supposed selflessness of white imperialism.

  • Imperialism — An overview of imperialism from Britannica.

  • "The Black Man's Burden" — A response to Kipling's poem published in 1920 by Hubert H. Harrison, a writer and racial activist. The poem is powerful in its echoes of Kipling's language, but that language is turned back against the white colonizers, exposing the hypocrisy and greed of imperialistic ideology.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Rudyard Kipling

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  • The Sea and the Hills