Colonies and the Subaltern: The Toxic View of the Colonized in “The White Man’s Burden” Bryan Fok 12th Grade

The clash of cultures is an integral part of the human experience. Since the emergence of civilization, humans have interacted with different cultures through migration, conquest, and trade. The symbiosis of different cultures has led to both conflict and prosperity. With the New Imperialism of European countries in the late nineteenth century, the traditional view of cross-cultural interaction came into question. The drive to conquer as much territory as possible was motivated in part by toxic nationalism, which is a deep loyalty to a specific cultural group. Ruthless subjugation of other cultures was justified by new ideas of “Social Darwinian theories of brutal competition among races and nations” (Wiesner-Hanks et al. 746-747), which led to a mentality of white supremacy. Poets of the Victorian Era had differing views on these new developments, with some vehemently against the New Imperialism and others supporting it. Drawing from his experiences in British India, Rudyard Kipling was one of those who promoted it. His poem “The White Man’s Burden” was sent to Theodore Roosevelt in 1899 to implore the United States to colonize the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. In the aforementioned poem, Kipling...