Sunday, November 06, 2011

The White Man's Burden

This poem appeared in the New York Times in 1901 in riposte to Rudyard Kipling's The White Man's Burden, which was in turn written in 1899 in response to the American take over of the Phillipines. Both poems were read on last week's Empire edition of Radio 3's Words & Music.

I personally read Kipling's version as a satire & an awful warning:

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.
which seems particularly prescient, post-Iraq & Afghanistan: however well-intentioned & self-sacrificing your motives, you delude yourself if you expect gratitude for your intervention.

Blair … did not see himself as an imperialist & would have denied indignantly that he was anything of the sort, but that only proved that he lived at a time when empire had become a dirty word & imperialist a term of abuse. In truth, his vision of Britain’s identity & place in the world harked back to those quintessential Whig imperialists Macmillan & Churchill, while his approach to international politics was simultaneously reminiscent of the soft, accommodating imperialism of Gladstone & the harder version encapsulated in Rudyard Kipling’s famous plea to the Americans to ‘take up the white man’s burden’
David Marquand: Britain Since 1918

The White Man's Burden

I.

What is the White Man's burden?
Does destiny demand
His back be laden higher
By every dusky hand?
Am I my brother's keeper --
Or keeper of his land?

II.

What is the White Man's burden?
Is it the mounting flood
Of treasure, vain to vanquish
The tides of patriot blood,
While our Supremest jewel
Is trampled in the mud?

III.

What is the White Man's burden
That weighs upon his sleep?
To hear the hundreds dying?
To see the thousands weep?
Oh, wanton war that haunts him!
Oh, seed that he must reap!

IV.

What is the White Man's burden -
The burden of his song
That once was "Peace and Justice;
The Weak beside the Strong"?
He falters in the singing
At memory of the wrong.

V.

What though our vaunt of Freedom
Must evermore be mute,
And the trading of men's vices
Drag both below the brute;
Go bribe new ships to bring it -
The White Man's burden - loot!

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