White man's burden

"The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands" (1899), by Rudyard Kipling, is a poem about the Philippine–American War (1899–1902), which invites the U.S. to assume colonial control of that country; the poem was published in The New York Sun, on 10 February 1899.

Originally, Kipling wrote the poem for the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria's reign (1837–1901), but it was exchanged for the poem "Recessional", also by Kipling. Later, he rewrote the poem "The White Man's Burden" to address the American colonization of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago conquered from Imperial Spain, in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898); the birth of the American Empire.

The poem exhorts the reader and the listener to embark upon the enterprise of empire, yet gives somber warning about the costs involved; nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase The white man's burden to justify imperialism as a noble enterprise of civilization, conceptually related to the American philosophy of Manifest Destiny.

The title and themes of "The White Man's Burden" ostensibly make the poem about Eurocentric racism and about the belief of the Western world that industrialisation is the way to civilise the Third World.

The poem of "The White Man's Burden" was first published in the 10 February 1899 edition of the New York Sun, a McLure's newspaper.

Three days earlier, on 7 February 1899, to the senate floor, Senator Benjamin Tillman had read aloud three stanzas of "The White Man's Burden" in argument against ratification of the Treaty of Paris , and that the U.S should renounce claim of authority over the Philippine Islands. To that effect, Senator Tillman asked:

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