THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

This is a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The poem itself is largely forgotten but its spirit is kept alive by its title 'The White Man's Burden' which became a term cemented into the English language. It once denoted a quiet pride in resignedly shouldering an historical responsibility. It lives on though more as a source of embarrassment.

The poem was written in support and encouragement of the American Congressional vote to decide whether the Philippines would be annexed in 1899. A prescient Kipling sensed that British imperialism was in the process of being eclipsed by an American version, that a baton was being passed from one branch of the Anglo Saxon family to another. Whether the poem figured in the decision is an historical unknown but what is known is that the Philippine Islands were annexed after a period of not quite knowing what to do with them. This was the result of the US victory in the Spanish American war, specifically after Admiral Dewey’s shredding of an antiquated Spanish squadron in the battle of Manila Bay.


Probably more persuasive than the poem in the decision to betray the Philippino people who thought the Americans had come to liberate them, was the real prize that glittered further to the West: China, the decaying carcass of which was being dismembered in a European colonial feeding frenzy. The Philippines was merely a huge stepping stone. Almost inadvertently, it was the agent by which the Republic would transform into Empire. The anti-colonialists had become colonialists but would be loathe to admit that this had transpired.

These Christian empire-builders gorging themselves on the prostrate bodies of far less developed nations needed moral justification for what they were doing. What better justification could there be than sharing their Christianity with the unfortunate heathen, thereby give him a hand up into a higher, purer God- fearing order? With God in the passenger’s seat, civilization was sure to follow. The brown, yellow and black brothers would eventually learn the white man’s ways and the entire planet would become, albeit in varying degrees, a reflection of Western civilization.

This ultimate result was of course a long way off, perhaps countless generations. In the meantime, it was the white man’s responsibility to shoulder this immense burden and to carry, drag and hump it toward this distant light. If on the way a little profit should find its way into the pockets of the adventurers and entrepreneurs engaged in this mighty struggle, that was only fair. Capitalism, as Lenin noted, had attained its highest form: imperialism.

A century later, and the zeitgeist flows in the opposite direction. But the white man’s burden is still with us. Whereas, however, its earlier incarnation had been assumed voluntarily and been profit-driven, the later version hangs like a millstone around the neck of the white man and with the slow ebb of his strength drags him ever closer to his death. The colonisers have been colonised – with a vengeance. Whereas though, when the boot was on the other foot, a certain symbiosis prevailed. Backwards nations were lifted out of dark stagnation. The Chinese for example, believing that their middle kingdom – the centre of the world - had attained perfection and that any change would be a retrograde step, had allowed their civilisation to ossify. For hubris such as this they paid a savage price. The payment though was to prove to be a galvanization that would cause a giant to eventually stir from its slumber and cause the Earth to tremble.

A great variation of improvements was endowed on the far flung colonies of the European and American powers, political systems that would allow for efficient self-government especially. It was after all a long way from the village to the nation. The art of managing finance was another valuable skill taught to the nations taking their place in the modern world. Modern social infrastructure was an eventuality that formed a bridge between the old and the new worlds. It has been said, for instance, and with some justification, that the British-built railways of India are what holds that country together.

In other areas of the world though, lessons couldn’t be taught. When the white man departed Africa, the civilization he left behind was reclaimed by blood-lust and creeping jungle.

As has been noted, Christianity played its part in the early carve-up of the world. Without the moralistic dressing, colonization would be simply another dreary chapter in the story of man, the leitmotif of which was conquest of the weak by the strong. Christianity, with its lethal combination of warm-heartedness and soft-headedness, also seems to have played a part in the revenge of the colonized, or reverse colonization, if you will. The reasoning seemed to be, especially amongst the British (particularly those who had never left Britain) who were determined to ignore racial reality and view their Empire – now Commonwealth - as one big pink happy family, was that family members should be made to feel just as welcome in their home as they had imagined themselves to be in the homes of the distant relatives. It is unlikely this sentiment would have existed given a lack of the universal altruism inherent in Christianity.

And home to mother they came by the millions. From Africa, the Caribbean, India and Pakistan they poured. Curiously, it was simultaneously being made more difficult for inhabitants of the white outposts of the Commonwealth to ‘return’ to the centre. Once healthy racial instincts were being methodically and powerfully dulled while at the same time natural altruism was being perverted. Enoch Powell, a man of incandescent intellectual brilliance, tried to warn his countrymen of the dangers of abandoning the proud, unquestioning self-belief that had made Britain master of the greatest empire in the annals of recorded history. He was of course excoriated as a bigoted anachronism, if not merely a dangerous fool.

As if catching the disease, the US in 1965 reversed various legislation that had protected and nurtured its founders’ intention of the country remaining forever, not just the home of the brave and the land of the free, but a white man’s country. Promises and guarantees to the contrary notwithstanding, the US too began to rapidly darken.

Like clicking dominoes, other countries fell: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the nations of Western Europe – huge swathes of the white West. The New World countries of the West which had not been in a position to directly participate in the colonial game, being colonies themselves, were not to be exempt from the colonial chickens coming home to roost – they too were made the share the guilt of the colonial masters, the original sin of the white man. What was to be branded by Mao Tse Tung as the Third World transplanted itself just as easily into these newer outposts of the First World. The original justification of the migrations from East to West – the repayment of old, outstanding debt – seemed to be lost sight of in regard to those who had run up no part of that dept. They were indebted simply by virtue of being part of the ‘master race’ whose erstwhile servants were now decamping from their squalid quarters and taking up residence in the manor-house.

It was not called as such anymore, at least in polite, well trained society, but the white man’s burden now loomed larger than ever and now with one major, deadly difference: there was no cutting and running now as fortunes changed. The dragon had followed us home and was happily ensconced in our living room.

As luck would have it for those who joined the mass migrations to what had been white homelands, the beginning of the trek had coincided with the rise of the welfare state. This is a crucial factor, for without the succour that white taxpayers were now providing it is more than likely that many of the less courageous seekers of an easier life would have thought twice before chancing their arm. If it had been a merely a matter of sink or swim the prospect of sinking may have caused the old home to look like not such a bad place after all.

The planet is dotted with ‘failed states’. It is from these failures that the majority of economic refugees flee. It seems that the question of why these states failed is seldom asked. If it ever is, it is usually accounted for by simple bad luck, or, to drive the dagger of guilt in a little deeper and then give it a twist, the problem is attributed to the evils of rapacious imperialism. It is never suggested (except by ‘right wing fanatics’ who don’t count) that the problem of the failed state may have something to do with the people who inhabit it. This is curious given that, if people arrive in the West from one of these ramshackle principalities in enough strength to stake out their own territory, their piece of turf rapidly starts looking like a microcosm of a failed state. This occurs even with all the benefits attendant on living in a rich country. How ong will it take the microcosms to expand before becoming a macrocosm? It is doubtful that this has ever been calculated.

To add insult to injury, if indeed mere insult or injury can be added to catastrophe, while millions flee to the West taking their failure with them, there is a corresponding tsunami of money roaring in the opposite direction in the form of ‘foreign aid’. A significant boost to this is being planned by the New World Order elite in the form of a carbon tax which, although unlikely to prevent the planet from melting, will result in a massive transfer of wealth from the ‘developed’ (guilty) world to the ‘developing’ (innocent) world.

One almost envies the happiness of the fool because an inordinate amount of optimism is required to believe that the new white man’s burden can be prevented from dragging us down into the cold, dark depths. Oh for the days of the old white man’s burden; it now seems a mere bagatelle.