Source: Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929). The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase. In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled The White Mans Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.

Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt. Rudyard Kipling If is featured in an anthology of much-loved poems and other verse forms from the English-speaking world. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

Our orders was to break you, an' of course we went an' did. The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us 'oller. We'll come an' 'ave a romp with you whenever you're inclined. An' 'e played the cat an' banjo with our forces. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) 1936 (London) But the Fuzzy was the finest o' the lot. In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. “The White Man’s Burden”: Kipling’s Hymn to U.S. Rudyard Kipling was an English poet who lived from 1865-1936.

Rudyard kipling poem