Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden

Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” is addressed to The American imperial mission in the Philippines. At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States annexed the Philippines, which had been a Spanish colony since the 16th century.“The White Man’s Burden”is Kipling’s Hymn to U.S. Imperialism,in February 1899, he wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase.