In order to understand the meaning of Rudyard Kipling’s poem "The White Man’s Burden," it is important to understand the time frame in which this was written. The United States had just won a war with Spain and had gained control over several of Spain’s former colonies. The United States now had an opportunity to become an imperial power. This poem advocated that the United States should assume this responsibility.

The poem suggested that imperialistic countries had an obligation to show people they believed were inferior how to run a government, how to run a country, and how to live. These imperialistic countries, whose population was mainly white, needed to assume the responsibility of showing different groups of supposedly inferior people the right way to live. This was not going to be an easy job and might be met with resistance from the people these imperialistic nations were trying to "civilize." However, Kipling believed the United States needed to assume this responsibility.

In essence, the "White Man's Burden" refers to the act of imperialism. Specifically, this is the act of going to faraway lands and imposing the white man's culture, norms, and values on the native population.

Note the use of the word "burden" here. For Kipling, this is a necessary task but not necessarily an easy one. He makes this clear from the beginning of the poem when he talks about sending the "best ye breed" to do this task. In other words, it is necessary to send the very best people to do this job, no matter how difficult it might be to part with them.

In addition, this task is also made difficult because of the natives themselves. Described as "sullen" and "half-devil, half-child," Kipling portrays the native population as wild and savage, the very opposite of the white men sent to civilize them.

For Kipling, then, the white man's "burden" is almost a charitable act. It is as though they need the civilizing values of the West and Christianity as much as the white man needs land, labor, and resources.

In his poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” Rudyard Kipling never actually defines the white man’s burden.  He says what will happen when people (he was addressing this to the United States) “take up the white man’s burden” and he tells the audience what the white men will feel, but the actual nature of the white man’s burden is only implied.

The white man’s burden was the burden of having to try to “civilize” non-white people.  The British had long held colonies populated by non-whites in places like India and Southeast Asia.  In 1899, when the poem was written, the US was fighting Spain and would take Puerto Rico and the Philippines (and Guam) at the end of that war.  This was to be the US’s first real move towards imperialism and towards ruling over non-white people in other countries.

Kipling says that it is the white man’s burden to have to work hard to try to improve the non-white people.  Those people will hate the white colonizers.  They will ruin everything the colonizers work for because of their “sloth and heathen Folly.”  The white man’s burden is to work hard to help people (“To seek another's profit,/And work another's gain) who do not want to be helped. 

The white man’s burden, then, is the set of problems that comes with imperialism.  It is the problems that a country faces when it tries to colonize other people and to “civilize” them.  In this poem, Kipling is warning that the burden will be heavy and the task will be thankless, but that it will make the United States greater in “The judgment of your (the US’s) peers.”

What, according to Kipling, is the "white man's burden"?

For Kipling, the white man’s burden is the responsibility of Europe’s imperial adventurers to tread forth into the savage, untamed wilderness and bring its peoples and resources to submission (and I use these words (savage, untamed) in the sense that Kipling himself would have intended, not as a reflection of my own attitude). On the one hand, it is true that Kipling was an imperial apologist, and his poem reflected a general cultural superiority. This is evidenced, for example, when he calls upon the reader to take up the white man’s burden and flutter to the wild, where there will be

“Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.”

Many of Kipling’s critics have used his very articulation of a “white man’s” burden, and poetry such as the lines above, as evidence of his racist dispositions and European exceptionalism. This may very well be the case. However, the majority of his poem is not directed at degrading the indigenous inhabitants of Europe’s colonies but rather at highlighting the insalubrious and awful circumstances that the colonists themselves had to face. The majority of The White Man’s Burden are about the horrible conditions of colonial life. For example, Kipling, in the very next stanza, says that the ultimate purpose that a colonist will serve will be

“To seek another's profit,

And work another's gain,”

meaning that all of their hard work will be for the benefit of a privileged European imperialist back home. He continues to describe the ways in which the colonizers of new places will be plagued with incessant wars with the native inhabitants, famine, diseases, and hopelessness. The travels of colonizing peoples are as depressing as the fates of the natives themselves, as he indicates:

“The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go mark them with your living,

And mark them with your dead.”

Therefore, while it is easy to cast Kipling as a heartless imperialist by a surface-level interpretation of his writing, I think the message he is really trying to convey is the dreadfulness of colonial life for most people. The “white man’s burden” is not so much his civilizing responsibility as it is the unimaginable hardships that await him once he finds himself making a home in a foreign and exotic land.

What, according to Kipling, is the "white man's burden"?

The white man's burden, in Kipling's view, is the duty of governing and imposing civilization on the savage "new-caught, sullen peoples" of the world, whether they like it or not. The fact that they generally do not like it, as Kipling acknowledges in the poem, renders the task more burdensome, but no less necessary.

Empire-builders such as Kipling tended to view the British Empire, and the smaller but burgeoning colonial project of America, as natural successors to the Roman Empire, even referring to the "Pax Britannica" as having brought peace to conquered nations in the same way as the Pax Romana of Augustus. Although most historians now see nineteenth-century imperialism as a primarily commercial endeavor, essentially an excuse to plunder the wealth and use the labor of conquered countries, Kipling portrays it as an essentially altruistic project. He goes so far as to compare the Western imperialists to Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, while the slaves are reluctant to be delivered from bondage.

Empire-building, according to Kipling, is a difficult, dangerous task. Only "the best ye breed" are equal to the challenge. In addition to this burden of hard work, they must bear the secondary burden of ingratitude and uncooperativeness from those they are trying to help. Only other empire-builders will appreciate the sacrifices they have made to civilize the world.

What, according to Kipling, is the "white man's burden"?

According to Kipling, the white man's burden is the need for white, "civilized" nations to travel abroad and impart their values and culture to other nations. The poem, therefore, is a defense of imperialism. This is made clear in the first stanza of the poem when Kipling talks about white men sending their sons abroad to serve their "captives' need."

For Kipling, this burden is a necessary one because people living abroad are in urgent need of civilization. He calls them "half devil and half child," for example, and suggests that they are "wild." Moreover, they suffer from "famine" and "sickness" and, therefore, are in need of the white man's help.

Although this task is a necessary one, Kipling argues that it is a "burden" because people will not appreciate it. He talks about "ungrudged praise," for instance, and "thankless years." However, Kipling believes that imperialism is so necessary that it is worth suffering the judgment and criticism of white peers and colonized citizens alike. It is, in his view, the only way to civilize foreign nations and to increase their cultural and economic worth.

What, according to Kipling, is the "white man's burden"?

According to Kipling, the "white man's burden" is a call for predominately white nations to send their best and brightest white males to uncivilized lands to spread Western civilization and culture to the "sullen peoples." Kipling presents the concepts of imperialism as a just and honorable goal to civilize the apparent uncivil natives around the world. Kipling challenges civilized nations with Western ideals to humbly embark on a journey of imperial conquest, which apparently benefits the foreign people living in uncivilized territories. Kipling describes the duties of the "white man's burden" by encouraging imperialist nations to promote peace, educate the natives, and feed the starving. Kipling mentions that the white men should toil as they build infrastructure in the foreign lands and cautions them against becoming lazy. He also informs the imperialists that their work will be difficult and encourages them to persevere even if they do not receive praise from the natives they are civilizing.

What, according to Kipling, is the "white man's burden"?

"The white man's burden," according to Kipling, is the civilization of the supposedly uncivilized peoples of the English colonies. Each stanza highlights a different component of the "burden."

In the first stanza, the "burden" is traveling to a foreign land to serve the native peoples. The second stanza emphasizes the need to educate the foreigners with Western philosophy, which will ultimately "work another's gain." According to the third stanza, the "burden" is to fight "heathen" evils like famine, even in the face of discouragement. The "burden" is of servility in the fourth stanza and of thankless labor in the subsequent stanza. (Apparently, the natives will not realize what exceptional aid it is they are receiving.) The final stanzas conclude with the clarion call to take up the burden, regardless of the hardship.

Since its publication, Kipling's poem has received a great deal of criticism, owing to its assumptions that white (Western) culture supersedes all others and that said cultures are ignorant and subsequently indebted to whites for their intervention. The same year (1899), H. T. Johnson responded with the poem "The Black Man's Burden."

In the poem "The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling, what is the actual "burden" that white men are plagued with?

We can look at this poem and your question in two ways. From Kipling's point of view, the White Man is plagued with the responsibility to "civilize" other peoples and then receive scorn for that. The other races, in this view, are but savage children and those of European races have the responsibility to save them from themselves. Kipling writes that it will be hard work. Many will suffer and die in order to accomplish it and be criticized by others for their effort. However, he sees it as the duty of the white race to share their ways, even if by force, with the people who he saw as ignorant and wanting of civilized influence.

Another way to view this poem and your question is from a more distant perspective. White Men, like Kipling, appear to be burdened with a grandiose sense of self-righteousness. Feelings of racial superiority are very much a condition which the imperialists of Kipling's time were plagued with. These notions compelled many to travel to distant lands and practically and literally enslave other races in the name of civilization. This imperializing view was in many ways a plague. While it did lead to massive economic benefits for the imperialists, it also resulted in a great loss of life and toil for the imperialists themselves. Kipling even acknowledges that by attempting to serve other races, they will "mark them with your dead!"

In the poem "The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling, what is the actual "burden" that white men are plagued with?

Rudyard Kipling originally wrote the poem "The White Man's Burden" for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in June of 1897. However, he eventually wrote another poem for that occasion, and "The White Man's Burden," with the full title of "The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands," was first published in 1899 shortly after the Spanish-American War and at the start of the Philippine-American War.

The poem extols the necessity of imperialism and empire. In Kipling's view, the white man's burden is the moral imperative for the white races of the world to conquer and subdue the non-white races. Kipling makes it clear in the poem that he considers white people to be better than the people whose lands they colonize. The conquered people, as Kipling sees them, are "half-devil and half-child" full of "sloth and human folly." Because of this, he urges the government and military of the United States to take up the burden, which means job or responsibility, of overseeing and controlling the non-white people they conquer for their own good.

President Theodore Roosevelt, who favored American expansionism and approved the annexation of the Philippines, responded enthusiastically to the poem. Not everyone responded so positively, however. Senator Benjamin Tillman used passages from the poem to demonstrate his opposition to the treaty with Spain that would bring about the annexation of the Philippines by the United States. The famous writer Mark Twain wrote an anti-imperialism essay called "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." Many African-Americans saw the subjugation of the non-white people of the Philippines as a parallel to racism at home in the form of Jim Crow laws and other legal and social oppression.

In the poem "The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling, what is the actual "burden" that white men are plagued with?

In this poem, which is extremely racist by modern standards, the "burden" the white man is plagued with is the task of caring for native people in lands that the white men have colonized. This task, it is implied, takes a particular nobility of spirit and an ethic of self-sacrifice because the natives are so "ungrateful."

The narrator, who is addressing the white colonizers, characterizes the colonized populations as inferior, writing of them as:

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child

The burdens the white men then have to carry include the "threat of terror," working without complaint for the colonized people's gain and profit, and experiencing one's hopes dashed by the sloth and foolishness of the people one is trying to help. The colonizers also must bear the burden of being blamed and hated by those to whom they feel they are superior.

The poem shows no awareness that native people might rightfully resent the colonizers for coming into their country. The colonizers impose their culture on the native population while exploiting their resources and then expect them to be grateful when the white men take it upon themselves to "raise" the native people from the position of inferiority they've been subjected to as a result of colonialism.

In the poem "The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling, what is the actual "burden" that white men are plagued with?

According to the poem, the actual burden that white people are plagued with is the non-white people that they have conquered and the need to care for these non-white, inferior peoples.

What Kipling is saying is that when a white country colonizes, it has all these people who are "half devil and half child."  It must, therefore, care for the those people the same way that a parent must care for its children.

Parenting clearly involves sacrifice and so, says Kipling, does colonization.  White people will have to go out to all these primitive places where they have to do without civilized comforts and work hard (in "heavy harness") to take care of all these inferior people who need to be helped because they are not advanced enough to take care of themselves.

According to Kipling's poem of the same name, what was the "White Man's Burden?"

Although Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” never explicitly defines the white man’s burden, we can clearly see what that burden is from the poem.  The burden that the white man must bear is the burden of trying to civilize the non-white people in the countries that make up his empire.  The white man has to leave his home country to go elsewhere and try to pull these people up into the modern world even though they do not want to be helped and even though they are so ignorant and lazy that they will destroy everything he tries to do.

According to Kipling, taking an empire is a selfless act on the part of the white man.  The white man’s burden is the burden of helping all the people in this empire.  Kipling tells us in the first stanza that the white men will have to “wait in heavy harness” on these people.  In the next stanza, he says that the white men will have “to seek another’s profit/and work another’s gain.  This is because all of the work that the white man is doing will help others.  The white man will be making “ports (he) shall not enter” and “roads (he) shall not tread.”  All of this is being done for the colonized people, not for the white man.

As the white man works for “another’s gain,” that other person or group of people will not appreciate his efforts.  They will resent the white man for forcing them to change their ways.  They will hate him for bringing them out of “bondage” and their “loved Egyptian night” as he tries to bring them “(Ah, slowly!) toward the light.”  Moreover, all of the white man’s work is likely to be wasted.  He will work to try to improve the colonized people, but when the “goal is nearest,” he will have to “watch sloth and heathen Folly/Bring all (his) hopes to nought.”

All of this, then, makes up the white man’s burden.  Overall, his burden is that he has to leave his own home and go out to other countries to work hard to help other people who do not want to be helped and who are so lazy and ignorant that they will ruin his efforts.  The white man’s burden is the burden of trying to help the non-white people who populate the empire that he has conquered.

According to Kipling in his poem of the same name, what was the "white man's burden?"

Rudyard Kipling wrote “The White Man’s Burden” as a way to give advice to people in the United States when they took the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.  Kipling felt that this was the first time that the United States had become an imperial power and he wanted to share what he felt was his wisdom on the issue.  In this poem, he tries to warn the Americans about what they are in for.  What they are in for is the white man’s burden.

In general, the white man’s burden is the difficulty of having an empire.  It is the set of problems that is associated with trying to civilize the people of the country that you are taking over.  This is called the white man’s burden because it is white people who have to (in Kipling’s view) go out and try to civilize the non-white people of the world.  It is a burden because civilizing those people is difficult and thankless.

There are many specific things that Kipling refers to that are parts of the white man’s burden.  The people they are trying to civilize are “fluttered” and “wild.”  They are “half-devil and half-child.”  They will resent the white people even as the whites work hard to help them.  They prefer their “loved Egyptian night” to the new (and better) ways that the whites bring.  When the whites have worked hard and have almost reached their goals, the “sloth and heaven folly” of the non-whites will ruin everything. 

These are some of the details of the white man’s burden.  But they are just the details.  The main idea is that the white man’s burden is the set of difficulties that the white people will have to deal with as they try to civilize the non-white people in their empire.