What is the Poem The White Mans Burden by Rudyard Kipling About???
“The White Man’s Burden” is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure’s in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands. “The White Man’s Burden” was written in regard to the U.S. conquest of the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies. Although Kipling’s poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase “white man’s burden” as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise. The poem was originally written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, but exchanged for “Recessional”; “Burden” was changed to match the American colonization. At face value it appears to be a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule people of other nations (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the “burden” of the title), and because of this has become symbolic of Eurocen
