Rudyard Kipling’s poem conveys the rather racist and outdated idea that colonizers carry a heavy responsibility to help and educate the people they colonize. The “burden” that the white men carry is this supposed obligation.

Race is an important component of that burden. The Europeans or Americans, according to Kipling, should be willing to make sacrifices in order to help those they deem inferior; a hierarchy based on race was usually considered natural. Through making such sacrifices, everyone in the ruling countries is also thought to benefit, not just the non-white peoples to whom they bring knowledge. The political and economic aspects are not portrayed as central; instead, it is implied that those are effects of the moral—usually Christian—core values that the white people bring to those they rule over.

There is a strong element of paternalism as well as race and morality in the type of argument advanced in the poem. The speaker characterizes the native peoples they will subjugate as “half devil and half child.” As imperialism spread the Christian gospel around the world, the rulers were likened to parents, with similar responsibility to educate the supposedly childlike people they rule.

The white people who toil in the colonies are also important because of the contributions they make to life back home. Their patriotic service is acknowledged as contributing to the fiscal well-being of the home country overall and even the enrichment of some people there. The poem promotes the idea that the colonists sacrifice themselves for the greater good, not only by enduring challenging living conditions but even making the final sacrifice of death.