white man's burden
Imperialist self-serving mythology
A phrase from Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem urging Western powers to colonize and "civilize" non-white peoples, framed as a noble duty rather than exploitation.
Now used critically or ironically to describe the paternalistic assumption that white people have a responsibility to uplift other races: The missionary's attitude reeked of white man's burden.
The phrase encapsulates how imperialism dressed itself in moral clothing.
- civilizing missionClaimed duty to "improve" peoples
- noble savageIdealized primitive innocence
- social DarwinismMisapplied natural selection to society
- manifest destinyObvious, inescapable fate
- ethnocentrismBelief one's culture superior
Rudyard Kipling · racial hierarchy · Eurocentrism · empire-building · paternalism · exploitation · savages · Victorian literature · noblesse oblige · moral justification · missionary work · propaganda · resistance movements · Africa · scramble for Africa · conquest · plantation · Kipling
- colonialismcolony, colonization, colonial rule, colonial powers, colonizer
- imperialismempire building, colonization, imperial expansion, British Empire, colonies
- Colonial LiteratureHeart of Darkness, Kim, The Jungle Book, King Solomon's Mines, Robinson Crusoe
white man's burdenanticolonialism
Opposition to foreign domination
decolonization · anti-imperialism · self-determination · pan-Africanism · postcolonialism
white man's burdencolonial exploitation
Extracting wealth from conquered territories
cultural genocide · Middle Passage · Scramble for Africa · non-intervention
white man's burdenself-determination
Control over one's fate
home rule · self-governance · national independence · freedom movement · sovereignty
white, burden, whiten, whitish, whiter, whiteness, whitened, whitest, whitener