White Man's Burden Revisited

Our good friend Rudyard Kipling published "The White Man's Burden" in 1899. The poem argued for the White nations to conquer the world and uplift their "new caught sullen people; half devil and half child". This turned out to be naive, and eighteen years later (1917) he had changed his tune:

The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy -- willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this one, but it seems to contradict the White Man's Burden. Instead of uplifting his dusky cousins, the white man should be tallying the evidence against and firing up the hate machine?

I'm not partial to hate, but the White Man's Burden always did seem stupid to me. A self-sacrificing responsibility to inferiors not under your care and not engaged in mutual trade seems like the sort of idea that will and perhaps ought to wipe itself out.

Notice how harsh and unfashionable this position is. We do not admit to working for anything but the good of all peoples, especially the downtrodden, in polite company. Kipling seems to have moved beyond the White man's burden, but apparently the rest of us have not.

Two years later (1919) Kipling wrote what I consider his greatest poem, which deals with the proper framing of such harsh positions, and explores the consequences of such "noble" ideas that tend to wipe themselves out:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

That is, the world has Rules, and we can only idealistically ignore those rules at our own eventual expense. They may wipe out only the noble fool, or they may wipe out the entire system that enables and shelters the fool, but all sin and idealism come at a price, and the dark Gods of the copybook headings will always eventually return to balance the books.