Rudyard Kipling's Coinciding With The Philippine-American War

A poem coinciding with the Philippine-American War, written by Rudyard Kipling and published in the The Sun was called “The White Man's Burden”, also known as “The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands” basically stating that the white man's burden is making other races ‘civilized.’ This poem was reinstating that the white men were the superior gender and race in the world and must go around the world, conquering land and teaching the natives how to become civil. By doing this, they were forcing themselves to be the best race and gender of the world and with making others ‘civilized’ they were basically teaching them how to be an American.

Rudyard Kipling’s background is quite significant to give more detail to the story behind the poem. Kipling, a white man, is a pro-imperialist writer and achieved a Nobel

Not only does Kipling want a white man, he wants the best white men there are to go and help with the inhabitants of the land. Helping the current residents of the land they’re imperializing is to be considered the white man’s burden. The burden is that the white men have to go and teach other to be more humanized. Kiplings word choice of ‘captives’ may be him referencing the Filipinos being now under Americas control after being taken from Spain. Finishing the first stanza, he continues to degrade the Philippine locals, referring to them as “fluttered folk and wild - your new-caught sullen peoples, half devil and half child.” It is here where he blatantly states that the natives of that land are wild and hard to tame and train and in default uncivilized animals. Nobody in this poem is safe, he calls out little children to be half of the