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The Brown Man’s Burden

As soon as it was published, Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” drew mockery from anti-imperialist intellectuals and politicians. In 1899 British publisher and Parliament member Henry Labouchère, known for his inflammatory views on any number of contemporary issues, wrote one of the most famous satires of Kipling’s poem.

Pile on the brown man’s burden

To gratify your greed;

Go clear away the “niggers”

Who progress would impede;

Be very stern, for truly

’Tis useless to be mild

With new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

Pile on the brown man’s burden;

And if ye rouse his hate,

Meet his old-fashioned reasons

With Maxims up to date.

With shells and dumdum bullets

A hundred times made plain

The brown man’s loss must ever

Imply the white man’s gain.

Pile on the brown man’s burden,

Compel him to be free;

Let all your manifestoes

Reek with philanthropy.

And if with heathen folly

He dares your will dispute,

Then in the name of freedom

Don’t hesitate to shoot.

Pile on the brown man’s burden,

And if his cry be sore,

That surely need not irk you —

Ye’ve driven slaves before.

Seize on his ports and pastures,

The fields his people tread;

Go make from them your living,

And mark them with his dead.

Pile on the brown man’s burden,

Nor do not deem it hard

If you should earn the rancor

Of these ye yearn to guard,

The screaming of your eagle

Will drown the victim’s sob —

Go on through fire and slaughter,

There’s dollars in the job.

Pile on the brown man’s burden,

And through the world proclaim

That ye are freedom’s agent —

There’s no more paying game!

And should your own past history

Straight in your teeth be thrown,

Retort that independence

Is good for whites alone.

Pile on the brown man’s burden,

With equity have done;

Weak, antiquated scruples

Their squeamish course have run,

And though ’tis freedom’s banner

You’re waving in the van,

Reserve for home consumption

The sacred “rights of man”!

And if by chance ye falter,

Or lag along the course,

If, as the blood flows freely,

Ye feel some slight remorse,

Hie ye to Rudyard Kipling,

Imperialism’s prop,

And bid him, for your comfort,

Turn on his jingo stop.

EVALUATE THE EVIDENCE

Source: Reprinted in “The White Man’s Versus the Brown Man’s Burden,” The Literary Digest, vol. 18, no. 8 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1899), p. 219.