western leaders perspective on the white man's burden

For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [emailprotected]. Religion played a major role in the characterization of others as heathens in need of salvation through education, conversion, and civilizing in the ways of Christian culture. 83-108 (2006). The graphics include pillage, rape, and wanton executions. Uncle Sams New Class in the Art of Self-Government. W. A. Rogers,Harpers Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, August 27, 1898. The full sardonic irony of the rendering, however, resides in the dead occupants of the graves. Maineexploded and sank in the harbor at Havana. Under the American flag, patriotic words end with a question mark: Tis the Star-Spangled Banner, Oh! To maintain its position in the international balance of power, Britain needed allies. The following year,Lifecartoonist William H. Walker evoked the horror of the Allied intervention in China in a graphic captioned, Almost thou persuadest me to be a ChristianActs xxvi, 28. A Chinese man falls off his chair, the Bible at his feet, laughing at Uncle Sams duplicity in preaching Christianity while showing a bloody panorama of Allied soldiers executing and marauding on a screen. At the core of the White Mans Burden is a reluctant civilizer who takes up arms for the purpose of relieving grievous wrongs, in the words of President William McKinley. If you dont do it I shall have to., The First Duty. I relegated an escort. At the time, however, Twains family, acquaintances, and publisher feared the piece would be denounced as both unpatriotic and sacrilegious, and urged him not to publish it. 1 (October 7, 2013). Kipling positively represents colonial imperialism as the moral burden of the white race, who are divinely destined to civilise the brutish, non-white Other who inhabits the barbarous parts of the world; to wit, the seventh and eighth lines of the first stanza misrepresent the Filipinos as new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child. Beyond flat-out aggression and repression, the common thread that linked the imperialist powers, in Twains critique, was the hypocrisy of expansionist rhetoric about Civilization and Progress. (He itemized the virtues that supposedly animated this white mans burden as Love, Justice, Gentleness, Christianity, Protection of the Weak, Temperance, Law and Order, Liberty, Equality, Honorable Dealing, Mercy, and Education.) The February 1901 essay opens with the satirical observation that: Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully workedbut not enough, in my judgement, to make any considerable risk advisable. The long text accompanying this grim illustration reads as follows: It appears that the Filipinos have lost confidence in Americans. The message suggests that the indigenous man will be brought out of ignorance through the inescapable march of progress in the form of Western civilization. 1900. Some of the poorest provinces in the north were further stressed by a destructive combination of flooding and prolonged drought. It evoked both the fact that the bulk of the U.S. force was made up of units from the Midwestern states. Britains John Bull leads Uncle Sam uphill as the two imperialists take up the White Mans Burden in this detail from an overtly racist 1899 cartoon referencing Kiplings poem. Matthews, Roy T. Britannia and John Bull: From Birth to Maturity.The Historian,Vol. Source:Wikimedia. Asking only the open door for ourselves, we are ready to accord the open door to others. Americas recent subjugated populations are savage, unruly, and rebelliousliterally visually half devil and half child, as Kipling would have it. Looming just ahead for the two Anglo nations were turbulence and intervention in such widely dispersed places as Samoa, China, and Africa. And the political cartoons of the timesubjective, emotional, ideological, highly politicized and at the same time, politically diversifiedconvey this complexity with unparalleled sophistication and intensity. Murphy, Erin L. Womens Anti-Imperialism, The White Mans Burden, and the Philippine-American War,The AsiaPacific Journal, Vol. In reality, it was just a cover-up to seek profits in these countries such as seen in the Hawaiian native on top of Uncle Sam's . In Vebers rendering of Les Progrs de la Science (The Advancement of Science), Boer prisoners of war are being shocked by an electric fence to the amusement of British troops on the other side. The title of the cartoon calls attention to the barbarous uses of much modern technology and so-called progress., les prisonniers bors ont t runis en de grands enclos o depuis 18 mois ils trouvent le repos et le calme. This military dimension of the multi-ethnic United Kingdom is often forgotten. Japan is introduced in this 1899 cartoon as the lone Asian nation in the imperialist circle of world powers. The caption, titled The First Duty, carries this subtitle: Civilization (to China)That dragon must be killed before our troubles can be adjusted. Given the fact that Twain was famous and widely admired for his outspokenness, it is especially disconcerting to learn that he and his close supporters concluded that challenging the mystique of civilization and progress in such stark terms was not feasible given the political and religious fervor of the times. Reports of the Boxer attacks seeped out of the beleaguered area and misinformation spread, like this headline in theNew York Timeson July 30: Wave of Massacre Spreads over China. Bickers, Robert A. and R. G. Tiedemann. America in the China Relief Expedition(Kansas City: Hudson-Kimberly publishing company, 1903). If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the Take up the White Mans burden Ye dare not stoop to less Nor call The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your Gods and you. Analysis The men selected for the task must do it efficiently. Many peasants vaguely suspected of being Boxers were executed. Several of these graphics fromPuckcommented on Americas problems at home while accusing others of being barbarians. Imperialism in the Asia-Pacific,published originally inPeace Review10:3, pp. Were we to transport an army more than half way around the earth merely to listen to peace propositions? As Britain stepped up financial industries, shipping, and insurance to make up the deficit, global sea power took on additional significance. Twain went along, partly out of concern for his family, and The War Prayer was not published until 1916, six years after his death. Source: Houghton Library, Harvard University. John Bull Good evins! Wasserstrom, Jeffrey. All Missionaries and Converts Being Exterminated. Les Camps de Reconcentration au Transvaal. copyright owner. Kipling was a white supremascist and wrote The White Mans Burden urging the United States to take up the burden of civilizing savage peoples alongside other European powers. Even the language of Lifes caption is subversive, for it picks up a famous pro-imperialist speech by Theodore Roosevelt titled The Strenuous Life. Delivered on April 10, 1899, two years before Roosevelt became president, the most famous lines of the speech were these: I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger . Cohen, Paul A. School Begins. Uncle Sam (to his new class in Civilization): Now, children, youve got to learn these lessons whether you want to or not! (This coincided with the annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory in congressional votes in June and July of the same year.) The two allies had been embroiled in lengthy wars with costly and devastating effects on the populations in Africa and Asia. Bello, Walden. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like White Man's Burden, East India Company, Opium War and more. 2. Wilhelm points ahead, where the inhabitants flee. Appelbaum, Stanley. Includes bibliographical references and index. Presence of a German fleet lent evidence to one of the justifications the U.S. gave for war with Spain, that is, to protect the Philippines from takeover by a rival major power. Smith, Arthur Henderson. In the French cartoon Leur rve (Their dream), the globe is portrayed as a victim carried on a stretcher. The strategy was among several emerging in these small wars of the turn of the century. A mound of scribbled papers from an overflowing wastebasket testifies to the coercion exerted upon him to induce cooperation. Despite public neutrality, the U.S. and Britain covertly supported each other. The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. Two years ago the main street of Manila did not possess a single saloon. Jean Veber,LAssiette au Beurre, September 28, 1901. 19th Century Editorial Cartoons and the Business of Race.International Journal of Comic Art11.1 (2009)pp. Civilization and its Discontents: The Boxers and Luddites as Heroes and Villains.Theory and Society16(5):675 (1987). Source:The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library. Vignette-style graphics placed an array of smaller scenes around the central image. It was written in support of Americas attempt to annex the Philippines. Progress was promoted as an unassailable value that would bring the worlds barbarians into modern times for their own good and the good of global commerce. The Origins of the Boxer War: A Multinational Study(London, New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). The U.S. conquest of the Philippines, coupled with the multi-nation Boxer intervention in China, prompted Twain to become an outspoken critic of America plunging into what he denounced as the European Game of overseas expansion. Mott, Frank Luther. The large Map of the United States and Neighboring Countries is dotted with U.S. flags marking newly-acquired territories. Ugly and shocking scenes of violence in 19th-century American life are ironically captioned as refined and elegant to challenge the self-image of a nation contributing cash to save the heathen of foreign lands while ignoring its own barbarity. The campaign met with fierce resistance and saw the introduction of concentration camps as an extreme maneuver against the Boer defenders. Stark images such as these helped make public a subject that was generally suppressed. The feminine representations of imperial nations pictured here include Russia, Turkey, Italy, Austria, Spain, and France. 730-735 (2008). The French leftwing magazineLAssiette au Beurre(The Butter Plate) had a substantive run from April, 1901 to October, 1912. Their uniforms are oddly reminiscent of the Revolutionary War that had seen them as bitter adversaries a little more than a century earlier. The test of U.S. naval power came with the Spanish-American War. Imperialists Uncle Sam, John Bull, Kaiser Wilhelm, and, in the distance, probably France are borne on the backs of subjugated people in the Philippines, India, and Africa. In May 1900, for example, artist William Bengough scathingly debunked a speech by President McKinleyonce again justifying the U.S. actions in taking of the Philippines by forceby depicting him as a parson standing on the face of a dead Filipino. The Stranger: How long have you been civilized? This unit examines cartoons from the turn-of-the-century visual record that reference civilization and its nemesisbarbarism. China, shown gripping a schoolbook in the doorway, has not yet entered the scene. The War Prayer begins with a preacher praising the nations just and holy war, and leading his congregation in praying for victory. First Lessons in Self Government. The paper on desk reads: The New Class. Pro-imperialist cartoons often depicted the West as literally shining the light of civilization and progress on barbaric peoples. The aggressors brought progress in the form of modern technology, communications, and Western dress and culture. Source: Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts, Yale University. In The Harvest in the Philippines, Uncle Sam stands, armed to the hilt, gazing at the viewer with a field of Filipino corpses lined up in rows behind him and stretching back as far as the eye can see. Twitter. The Native: Ever since my home was burned to the ground and my wife and children shot.. In the United StatesPuck,Judge, and the first version of a pictorial magazine titledLife; in FranceLAssiette au Beurre; and in Germany the acerbicSimplicissimuspublished masterful illustrations that ranged in opinion and style from partisan to thoughtful to gruesome. The imperialist rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism that took root during these years was reinforced in both the United States and England by a small flood of political cartoonscommonly executed in full color and with meticulous attention to detail. Contemporary wars in the Philippines and Transvaal (the Boer War) comprise the foreground of the Think It Over battlefield. TheLifecartoon takes a different view of the barbarism in these events, focussing on Allied brutality against the Chinese. Driven by competition with each other and economic pressures at home, the worlds major powers ventured to ever-distant lands to spread their religion, culture, power, and sources of profits. The Philippines are diminished as Only the Stepping-Stone that enables the U.S. to reach the eagerly anticipated China market. Copy of White Man's Burden Analysis.pdf - Perspectives on the White Mans Burden Directions: In 1899, British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote The White | Course Hero. In the United States, the most famous counter-voice to Kipling and his white mans burden rhetoric was the writer Mark Twain. The Laureate of Empire., Klein, Thoralf. It was feared that the mystical rituals and xenophobic violence of the Yi He Tuan (Boxer) secret society would overwhelm Chinas ineffectual rulers, cast the country into chaos, and hinder the trade and profits anticipated by the great powers. The image exhibits a racist hierarchy that places a dominant white American male in the center, and on the fringes, an African-American washing the windows and Native-American reading a primer upside down. Cartoonists portrayed Wilhelm II with increasing venom as a perpetrator of violence through World War I. Source:Library of Congress, In this 1902 cartoon, Britains Boer War and goals on the African continent are identified with the march of civilization and progress against barbarism. And the third was the anti-foreign Boxer Uprising in China in 18991901, which led to military intervention by no less than eight foreign nations including not only Tsarist Russia and the Western powers, but also Japan. Death to all Schools but Ours. The last marcher holds up Drummers Samples, referring to the traveling salesmen of business and commerce. The anti-imperialistLifemagazine was similarly attuned to the hypocrisy of cloaking military violence in pious rhetoric. SHARE. Mother countries would often build schools, railroads, and improved communication, along with new medicines and treatments. Kipling offered moral justification for the bloody war the U.S. was fighting to suppress the independent Philippine regime following Spanish rule. (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972)(New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1972). The influx of cheap Western goods eroded generations-long trading patterns, while telegraph and railroad lines were constructed in violation of superstitions, eliciting deep resentment among Chinese. Model students Hawaii and Porto Rico appear as docile girls learning their lessons. '. The scene above turns the tables on theHarpers Weeklycover (above) and accuses foreign troops and missionaries of atrocities during the Boxer Uprising in China. Un treillage de fer travers par un courant lectrique est la plus saine et la plus sre des cltures. They laud substandard leaders because it is how people are ruled in Africa. As the cartoon record of these turn-of-the-century years repeatedly demonstrates, moreover, it was taken for granted by the imperialists that the people on whom they were bestowing the light of civilization were literallyand often grotesquelyof various shades of darker complexion. Civilization and its Discontents: The Boxers and Luddites as Heroes and Villains., The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, CGACGA, The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, CGACGA, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, William H. Walker Cartoon Collection, Princeton University Library, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library. Feng, Yongping, The Peaceful Transition of Power from the UK to the US.ChineseJournal of International Politics1 (1) pp. This early outburst of what we refer to today as clash-of-civilizations thinking did not go unchallenged, however. The U.S. must govern its new territories with or without their consent until they can govern themselves. Veneration of Britains treatment of colonies as a positive model attests to the significant shift in the American world view given U.S. origins in relation to the mother country. Many politicians used the phrase and its views as the basis for their imperialist and racist policies. Phillips, Richard and Jones, Rhys. The artist George Benjamin Luts offered an exceptionally scathing rendering of the linkage of conquest, commerce, and censorship in an 1899 cartoon titled The Way We Get the War News: The Manila Correspondent and the McKinley Censorship. Published in a short-lived radical periodical,The Verdict, the cartoon shows a war correspondent in chains, writing his story under the direction of military brass. 4, pp. When a Chinese coolie strikes a French soldier the result is a public cry of Barbarity! But when a French soldier strikes a coolie, its a necessary blow for civilization. Ren Georges Hermann-Paul,Le Cri de Paris, July 10, 1899. In a run of 13 lithographs published in the July 4, 1900 issue of the French periodicalLAssiette au Beurre, the cartoonist Ren Georges Hermann-Paul was especially incisive in calling attention to this grim reality. Cullinane, M. Patrick. Source:Bibliothque nationale de France. Around 1904 or 1905in another impassioned response to the American war in the Philippines (which officially ended in 1902 but in practice dragged on for many years thereafter)Twain penned a short essay titled The War Prayer. The essay is now regarded as an exemplary indictment of blind patriotism coupled with religious fanaticism. Case Study: The Boxer WarThe Boxer Uprising.Online Encyclopediaof Mass Violence(July 23, 2008). A number of critical cartoons of the time addressed the unsavory behavior of the civilizers themselves, and the disparity between doctrine and actions. The addition of an exclamation point in the caption, The White (!) At the same time, Britain was fighting the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. Commercial interests not only drove U.S. policy in Asia, but also shaped public opinion about it. The banners of both side pronounce fidelity to the golden rule., Boxer banner (Chinese forces flags): Do not do unto others what you would not that others should do unto you. Anti-imperialists condemned this view and felt that it was racist and condescending toward people from other countries. Vol. The human and financial cost of these extended conflicts was large. In this French cartoon from a special issue titled, La Guerre (War), a missionary and a Red Cross representative lament the violent and un-Christian behavior of Westerners overseas. The caption reads: The Stranger: How long have you been civilized? Columbia Studies in the Social Sciences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). A rescue expedition made up of troops from eight nations, under the command of the British Vice-Admiral Edward Seymour, left Tianjin for Beijing. "The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the British Victorian poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (2014). Selling Empire: American Propaganda and War in the Philippines.TheAsiaPacific Journal, Vol. Free Books! 730-735 (2008). The poem acknowledged the thanklessness of a task rewarded with The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard and sentimentalized the savage wars of peace as self-sacrificial crusades undertaken for the greater good. Columbia and Uncle Sam pluck gifts from Our Christmas Tree, including law and order, technology, and education, for overseas territories Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, condescendingly drawn as grateful children. The black-and-white drawing by William H. Walker captured the harsh reality behind the ideal of benevolent assimilation, depicting imperialists Uncle Sam, John Bull, Kaiser Wilhelm, and, coming into view, a figure that probably represents France, as burdens carried by vanquished non-white peoples. Expansionism promulgated under the banner of civilization could not escape being carried out in global military campaigns, referred to as the savage wars of peace in the third stanza: Such avowed paternalism towards other cultures recast the invasion of their lands as altruistic service to humankind. The larger objective, to gain control of the Boer territories, was part of Britains colonial scheme for Cape to Cairo hegemony in Africa. 203228. ColumbiaMother! Louis Dalrymple,Puck, June 15, 1898. In often searing graphics, they challenged the complacent propagandists for Western expansion by addressing (and illustrating) a devastating question about the savage wars of peace. This special issue ofLAssiette au Beurredrew particular attention to the brutal tactics adopted by the British in the Boer War, including herding the families of the Boer opponent into concentration camps.

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