[Read Online], Vaughan, Christopher. It includes a one page reading that details the history and significance of White Man's Burden and Social Darwinism. Good Will to Nobody.” Life, January 4, 1900, Source: Widener Library, Harvard University, Unlike Puck and Judge, Life was often highly critical of U.S. overseas expansion. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German. Accusations of atrocities against civilians on the ten-day march to Beijing were made in first-hand accounts of the mission. Uncle Sam and his English cousin have the world between them.” Victor Gillam, Judge, January 7, 1899. Newly conquered populations, described in the opening stanza as “your new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child” would need sustained commitments “to serve your captives‘ needs.”. The image appeared in the June 27, 1901 issue of L’Assiette au Beurre by Steinlen titled, “A Vision de Hugo, 1802–1902.” The full mural decries the bloodshed of colonial warfare in Turkey, China, and Africa. [p. 199], “The Way We Get the War News. Ships for American commerce a speciality.”, Right: Uncle Sam proudly displays his new steamship and a sign that reads, “Uncle Sam the ship builder re-established with great success in 1893. Jones, Toby Craig. Additional images from the issue depict barbaric behavior by the multinational force that intervened in China during the Boxer Uprising. 8, No. Beyond flat-out aggression and repression, the common thread that linked the imperialist powers, in Twain’s critique, was the hypocrisy of expansionist rhetoric about “Civilization and Progress.” (He itemized the virtues that supposedly animated this white man’s 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 worked—but not enough, in my judgement, to make any considerable risk advisable. Missionaries preaching the Gospel in rural China violated local religious practices. The racism and contempt for non-Western others that undergirds Kipling’s famous poem—and the “civilizing mission” in general—is unmistakable here. Source: CGACGA, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. They considered the work a burden and thought that the Africans were savages. “The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling).” Victor Gillam, Judge, April 1, 1899. The North American Review. The U.S. entered the elite group of world powers with victories in the “Spanish-American War” (written in the clouds over the naval battle on the right). 2 vols. The President’s Speech.” William Bengough, Life, May 24, 1900. The caption applies the motto “united we stand” to the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood spreading Western civilization abroad. The 1901 date indicates that the specific reference is to Allied reprisals against Chinese civilians following the Boxer Uprising. Prisoners will not be taken! The cartoon shows a Caucasian holding a non-white man. Their uniforms are oddly reminiscent of the Revolutionary War that had seen them as bitter adversaries a little more than a century earlier. Close behind them lie corpses from the “Franco-Prussian War,” “Russia and Turkey,” “Napoleon and Austria.” Far off in the distance, with labels reading “Roman Wars” and “Alexandria,” the artists carries his viewers back to ancient times, when the civilization myth first emerged to mask the brutal realities of politically-motivated conflicts. Source: Widener Library, Harvard University. Allied troops departed Tianjin for Beijing on August 4. ' The White Man's Burden ' by Rudyard Kipling demonstrates the imperialist mindset popular in the poet's time. and Distributor, 2004). China’s hapless young Manchu emperor, traditionally and exotically robed, sits passively in the foreground. All are erstwhile British soldiers. Cartoons endorsing imperialist expansion depicted a beneficent West as father, teacher, even Santa Claus—bearing the gifts of progress to benefit poor, backward, and childlike nations destined to become profitable new markets. “It Ought to be a Happy New Year. On China’s side, the Boxers were absorbed into the Qing government forces to fight the invaders. The belief in racial/cultural superiority that fueled the British empire embraced the U.S. in Anglo-Saxonism based on common heritage and language. The noble rhetoric that buttressed overseas expansion, as Twain presented it, was largely for “Home Consumption,” and stood in sharp contrast to “the Actual Thing that the Customer Sitting in Darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty.” Where “the Philippine temptation” in particular was concerned, he cited press reports of atrocities by American troops. In these details, the headlight of a modern vehicle (Judge, 1900) and starlight from a goddess of “civilization” (Puck, 1898) illuminate demeaning caricatures of China. By the 1890s, the U.S. began to revitalize both its commercial and naval fleets. A band of tribal defenders, whose leader rides a white charger and wields the flag of “Barbarism,” fades in the face of Civilization’s advance. An elaborate Puck graphic from early in 1899 called “School Begins” incorporates all the players in a classroom scene to illustrate the legitimacy of governing without consent. She researches visual narrative and digital historiography using the visual historical record.This article was adapted from Visualizing Cultures. Source: Widener Library, Harvard University, U.S. President William McKinley is depicted as a preacher standing on a dead Filipino, grinding his heel into the man’s face. The conduct of foreign troops in China was targeted in a searing cartoon by the French artist Théophile Steinlen. (In the 1900 elections, Bryan ran on an anti-imperialist platform and was again defeated by McKinley.) ), … the Boer prisoners were gathered in large enclosures where, for the last 18 months, they found rest and quiet. And they complain that drunken American soldiers insult the native women. Revell, 1904). Weber, Mark. Even the language of Life’s 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 …. Here, perfectly mythologized, is yet another graphic rendering of the mystique of Western “civilization.”, “Japan Makes her Début Under Columbia’s Auspices.” Udo Keppler, Puck, August 16, 1899. 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. Turning to China, his stinging indictment extended beyond the two Anglo powers to target the Kaiser’s Germany plus Tsarist Russia and France. He was just one of the imperial rulers and national figures to be demonized. The U.S. policy of “benevolent neutrality” supported Britain in the Boer War with large war loans, exports of military supplies, and diplomatic assistance for British POWs. Tan, Chester C. The Boxer Catastrophe. 2. On June 17, while the fate of Seymour and his men remained unknown to the outside world, Allied navies attacked and captured the forts at Taku. Vol. Xiang, Lanxin. In mid 1899, Life published this chilling view of the war in the Philippines that was to drag on for several more years. Skulls dot the landscape ahead in Life’s grim rendering. This unit examines cartoons from the turn-of-the-century visual record that reference civilization and its nemesis—barbarism. The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). The phrase that forms the poem's title and refrain, "White Man's burden," is a metaphor for the tremendous hardship and responsibility of carrying out effective and positive imperialism. The weekly magazine Judge, a rival to Puck that was published from 1881 to 1947, opened 1899 with a barbed rendering of the Anglo nations gorging on the globe. 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. Vol. — President McKinley at the Conference of Foreign Missions.” The fallen man clasps the flag of the Philippine independence movement, inscribed with the words “Give Us Liberty.” His hat quotes the most famous phrase in the U.S. The conspicuously larger size of Britannia’s big guns in Puck’s cartoon reflects England’s leading role in imperial conquest. The cartoon links might with right, as the cannon is pushed and dragged forward by clergy identified by their headgear: skullcap, biretta, clerical hat, top hat, and distinctive English-style shovel hat. It ends with a stranger entering the church and delivering a devastating description of the carnage experienced by invaded countries. Source: Library of Congress, This rueful cartoon places Confucius and Jesus side-by-side and laments the failure of all parties to practice what they preach. The caption quotes one of the president’s speeches: “Teaching them the truth of the common fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and showing that if we are not our brothers’ keepers we can be our brothers’ helpers. The white mans burden stanza analysis Rating: 4,9/10 1609 reviews The White Man's Burden Analysis . Source: Widener Library, Harvard University. Progress was promoted as an unassailable value that would bring the world’s barbarians into modern times for their own good and the good of global commerce. The poem was initially composed . Kipling offered moral justification for the bloody war the U.S. was fighting to suppress the independent Philippine regime following Spanish rule. Missionary zeal extends to a threat unfurled in a banner carried by the choir of women, “Come and be saved; if you don’t …”, “The Advance Agent of Modern Civilization.” Udo Keppler, Puck, January 12, 1898. Girls are part of the obedient older class studying books labeled “California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.” The only non-white student in the older group holds the book titled “Alaska” and is neatly coifed in contrast to the unruly new class made up of the “Philippines, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and Cuba.” All are depicted as dark-skinned and childish. The campaign was stepped up to target the civilian population that provided crucial support for guerrilla fighters in both the Transvaal and Orange Free State republics. America’s recent subjugated populations are savage, unruly, and rebellious—literally visually “half devil and half child,” as Kipling would have it. Harper’s Weekly later echoed the classroom scene with a cover captioned “Uncle Sam’s New Class in the Art of Self-Government.” The class is disrupted by revolutionaries from the new U.S. territories of the Philippines and Cuba, whose vicious fight brands them as barbarously unfit for self-rule. Poetry Analysis—"The White Man's Burden" Debate over U.S. imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century occurred not only in newspapers and political speeches, but in poetry as well. 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. The U.S. follows Britain’s imperial lead carrying people from “Barbarism” at the base of the hill to “Civilization” at its summit. Analysis. “Our ‘Civilized’ Heathen” asks what is civilized and who are the heathen. A History of American Magazines. Man’s Burden” William H. Walker, cover illustration, Life, March 16, 1899. A 1901 Puck cover, “Misery Loves Company...,” depicts John Bull and Uncle Sam mired in colonial wars at a steep price: “Boer War £16,000,000 yearly” and “Philippine War $80,000,000 yearly.” Anti-imperialist movements targeted the human rights violations in both the Philippines and Transvaal in their protests. Long-standing personifications and visual symbols for countries were used by cartoonists to dramatize events to suit their message. By contrast, with the exception of Sudan, the burden Britain bears reflects backward older cultures that look forward to “civilization” or back, condescendingly, at those people, cultures, and societies deemed even closer than they to “barbarism.” Both visually and textually, the “white man’s burden” was steeped in derision of non-white, non-Western, non-Christian others. Esherick, Joseph. 3, pp. In September 1901, the French artist Jean Veber used the pages of L’Assiette au Beurre to call attention to one of the often-forgotten ironies of the mystique of “the white man’s burden.” His cartoon, depicting a vast field of flat stone grave markers, carried the simple caption “United Kingdom” (Le Royaume-Uni). Twain’s most celebrated anti-imperialist essay, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” was published in the February, 1901 issue of the North American Review. “A Rival Who Has Come to Stay”: Naval Power. Original publication of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden.” McClure’s Magazine, February, 1899 (Vol. Wilhelm points ahead, where the inhabitants flee. Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II appears as an anointed leader, his angel wings made of swords, astride a cannon dragged by clerics and missionaries toward foreign lands. 4). At the same time, however, the suppression of “The War Prayer” helps highlight the courage and critical edge that many political cartoonists brought to the very same subject of spreading death and destruction in the name of civilization and progress. It evoked both the fact that the bulk of the U.S. force was made up of units from the Midwestern states. Twain went along, partly out of concern for his family, and “The War Prayer” was not published until 1916, six years after his death. “The Boer War Remembered.” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. The wars undertaken in the name of “Civilization and Progress” were more savage, tortuous, and contradictory than is often recognized. This represents how white men are au fait which non-white people do not have any power. The foothold in the Philippines brought China within reach. But just take a look at the class ahead of you, and remember that, in a little while, you will feel as glad to be here as they are!” Louis Dalrymple, Puck, January 25, 1899. Source: Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts, Yale University. The argument follows England’s example, as spelled out on the blackboard, that “By not waiting for their consent, she has greatly advanced the world’s civilization.” “An African-American washes windows.” The book on the desk reads: “U.S. The turn-of-the-century visual record tells us otherwise. The divine right of kings—here, Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany as a pompous war lord mounted on a colossal cannon—is intermingled with the divine mission of clergy, often the first Westerners allowed into foreign lands. The burgeoning mass media helped promote jingoistic foreign policies by printing disparaging depictions of barbarous-looking natives from countries “benevolently assimilated” by the U.S. A brash Uncle Sam was shown coming under the wing of the older, more experienced empire builder, John Bull. A pair of 1898 graphics offer “before and after” snapshots related to two major events. John Bull, whose portliness stood for prosperity, has joined with Uncle Sam to swallow the globe. "ʻCivilizationʼ and its Discontents: The Boxers and Luddites as Heroes and Villains." “Leur rêve” (Their dream). “Barbarism” lies at the base of the mountain to be climbed by Uncle Sam and John Bull—with “civilization” far off at the hoped-for end of the journey, where a glowing figure proffers “education” and “liberty.” The fifth stanza of Kipling’s poem refers to an ascent toward the light: Barbarism’s companion attributes of backwardness, spelled out on the boulders underfoot, include oppression, brutality, vice, cannibalism, slavery, and cruelty. Colossal goddess figures and other national symbols were overwritten with the message on their clothing and the flags they carried. The caption reads “Think It Over”—a phrase that also appeared later in Mark Twain’s “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” essay. Life’s black-and-white January 4, 1900 cover welcomed the new millennium by illustrating “The Anglo-Saxon Christmas 1899.” John Bull and Uncle Sam are positioned within a holiday wreath, machine guns pointing out in both directions. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Source: Library of Congress. The poem's title suggests the White Man has a moral responsibility to better the lives of native . The U.S. is newly victorious in 1898 naval victories over the Spanish at Manila and Santiago de Cuba. 301-314 (2010). Several of these graphics from Puck commented on America’s problems at home while accusing “others” of being barbarians. Lasting from June 20 to August 14, 1900, the siege was the catalyst for a rescue mission by the Allied forces of eight major world powers. As the disturbance escalated, so did news coverage around the world. He is greeted with open arms by a mandarin and “Wanted…” signs articulating prodigious opportunities for business. As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire yet warns about the personal costs faced, endured, and paid in building an empire; [1] nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase "the white man 's burden" to justify imperial conquest as a civilising mission that is … During the last decade of the 19th century, the antagonistic relationship between Great Britain and the United States—rooted in colonial rebellion and heightened in territorial conflicts like the War of 1812—grew into a sympathetic partnership. 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. “Are our teachings, then, in vain?" And yet Uncle Sam is always giving money to ‘save the Heathen.’” Samuel D. Ehrhart, Puck, September 8, 1897. – wotever 'll become of my ship-building monopoly, if that there Yankee is going to turn out boats like that right along?” Louis Dalrymple, Puck, July 24, 1895. The satirical weekly, Simplicissimus, flourished from 1896 to 1967 with a hiatus from 1944 to 1954. The phrase "the white man's burden" comes from a poem written by Rudyard Kipling in 1899. "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." Kipling wrote "White Man's Burden" as a response to the American takeover of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1898. 203–228. From Tientsin to Peking with the Allied Forces. The cause of the explosion is still undetermined. Théophile Steinlen, L’Assiette au Beurre, June 27, 1901. An Italian cartoonist who drew William II as a modern “Attila” beheading Chinese foes was likely inspired by his “Hun” speech to German soldiers shipping out to fight in the Boxer Uprising in China, delivered on July 27, 1900, in which he called for total war: Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated!
the white man's burden cartoon analysis