The White Man’s Burden (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Rudyard Kipling
- First Published: 1899
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Social reform, Racism, Nineteenth century, Class consciousness, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Disasters, Natural disasters, Diseases, Imperialism, Famines
The Poem
The poem’s full title is “The White Man’s Burden: 1899, The United States and the Philippine Islands.” Written at the end of 1898, it contains an exhortation to Americans to pick up the burden of Imperialism and to take over from Spain the rule of the Philippine Islands, which the United States had just captured in the Spanish-American War. Many Americans intensely disliked the idea of an American empire. Imperialism was associated in many American minds with the corrupt politics of European nations such as Great Britain, France, and Spain; to such minds the...
[The entire page is 1633 words long]
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