Kipling, the 'White Man's Burden,' and U.S. Imperialism

Monthly Review, Nov, 2003

We are living in a period in which the rhetoric of empire knows few bounds. In a special report on "America and Empire" in August, the London-based Economist magazine asked whether the United States would, in the event of "regime changes ... effected peacefully" in Iran and Syria, "really be prepared to shoulder the white man's burden across the Middle East?" The answer it gave was that this was "unlikely"--the U.S. commitment to empire did not go so far. What is significant, however, is that the question was asked at all.

Current U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have led observers to wonder whether there aren't similarities and historical linkages between the "new" imperialism of the twenty-first century and the imperialism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Jonathan Marcus, the BBC's defense correspondent, commented a few months back:

   It should be remembered that more than one hundred years ago, the
   British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote his famous poem about what he
   styled as "the white man's burden"--a warning about the
   responsibilities of empire that was directed not at London but at
   Washington and its new-found imperial responsibilities in the
   Philippines. It is not clear if President George W. Bush is a reader
   of poetry or of Kipling. But Kipling's sentiments are as relevant
   today as they were when the poem was written in the aftermath of the
   Spanish-American War. (July 17, 2003)

A number of other modern-day proponents of imperialism have also drawn connections with Kipling's poem, which begins with the lines:

    Take up the White Man's burden--
    Send forth the best ye breed--

Before discussing the reasons for this sudden renewed interest in Kipling's "White Man's Burden," it is necessary to provide some back ground on the history of U.S. imperialism in order to put the poem in context.

From the Spanish-American War to the Philippine-American War

In the Spanish-American War of 1898 the United States seized the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific, emerging for the first time as a world power. * As in Cuba, Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines had given rise to a national liberation struggle. Immediately after the U.S. naval bombardment of Manila on May 1, 1898, in which the Spanish fleet was destroyed, Admiral Dewey sent a gunboat to fetch the exiled Filipino revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo from Hong Kong. The United States wanted Aguinaldo to lead a renewed revolt against Spain to prosecute the war before U.S. troops could arrive. The Filipinos were so successful that in less than two months they had all hut defeated the Spanish on the main island of Luzon, bottling up the remaining Spanish troops in the capital city of Manila, while almost all of the archipelago fell into Filipino hands. In June, Filipino leaders issued their own Declaration of Independence based on the U.S. model. When U.S. forces finally arrived at the end of June the 15,000 Spanish troops holed up in Manila were surrounded by the Filipino army entrenched around the city--so that U.S. forces had to request permission to cross Filipino lines to engage these remaining Spanish troops. The Spanish army surrendered Manila to U.S. forces after only a few hours of fighting on August 13, 1898. In an agreement between the United States and Spain, Filipino forces were kept out of the city and were allowed no part in the surrender. This was the final battle of the war. John Hay, U.S. ambassador to Britain, captured the imperialist spirit of the time when he wrote of the Spanish-American War as a whole that it was "a splendid little war."

With the fighting with Spain over, however, the United States refused to acknowledge the existence of the new Philippine Republic. In October 1898 the McKinley administration publicly revealed for the first time that it intended to annex the entire Philippines. In arriving at this decision President McKinley is reported to have said that "God Almighty" had ordered him to make the Philippines a U.S. colony. Within days of this announcement the New England Anti-Imperialist League was established in Boston. Its membership was to include such luminaries as Mark Twain, William James, Charles Francis Adams and Andrew Carnegie. Nevertheless, the administration went ahead and concluded the Treaty of Paris in December, in which Spain agreed to cede the Philippines to the new imperial power, along with its other possessions seized by the United States in the war.

This was followed by a fierce debate in the Senate on the ratification of the treaty, centering on the status of the Philippines, which, except for the city of Manila, was under the control of the nascent Philippine Republic. On February 4, 1899, U.S. troops under orders to provoke a conflict with the Filipino forces ringing Manila were moved into disputed ground lying between U.S. and Filipino lines on the outskirts of the city. When they encountered Filipino soldiers the U.S. soldiers called "Halt" and then opened fire, killing three. The U.S. forces immediately began a general offensive with their full firepower in what amounted to a surprise attack (the top Filipino officers were then away attending a lavish celebratory ball), inflicting enormous casualties on the Filipino troops. The San Francisco Call reported on February 5 that the moment the news reached Washington McKinley told "an intimate friend ... that the Manila engagement would, in his opinion, insure the ratification of the treaty tomorrow."