united states is being addressed in the white man's burden.
who is being addressed in the white man's burden?
united states
the novella's title as well its epigraph ("take up the white man's burden/send forth the best ye breed...") indicate that the story is a play on rudyard kipling's 1899 poem on the civilizing mission of the colonizer, "the white man's burden." written for queen victoria's jubilee in 1897, and revised as a response "to resistance in the philippines to the united states' assumption of colonial power" after the spanish–american war of 1898., the poem's depiction of colonial government as a "burden" suggests that empires exist not for imperialist gain, but for the development of the unruly and uncivilized colonials. in "black man's burden", this tradition of "white imperial benevolence" is initially subverted by having black-only fieldworkers foment economic and technological progress in the underdeveloped regions of north africa, and later, by homer crawford's decision to become el hassan and engage in nation-building rather than continue promoting the imperial interests of the west.
black man's burden
in the historical survey of "" (1920), e. d. morel's critique of imperial-colony power relations identifies an established cultural hegemony that determines the weight of the black man's burden and the weight of the white man's burden in their building a colonial empire. the philosophic perspective of "the black man's burden [a reply to rudyard kipling]" (1920), by the social critic hubert harrison, describes moral degradation as a consequence of being a colonized coloured man and of being a white colonizer. moreover, since the late 20th-century contexts of post-imperial decolonisation and of the developing world, the phrase "the white man's burden" communicates the false good-intentions of western neo-colonialism for the non-white world: civilisation by colonial domination.
the white man's burden