Use the textbook page 33 to answer these questions and analyze the text.
1.
- Context: when did Morel publish this? What was happening in Europe or around the world when he wrote it? [3 pts]
- Audience: who was meant to see this? Why do you think that? [2 pts]
- Reliability: how does this document undermine European ‘civilizing mission’ justifications for imperialism? [2 pts]
- Purpose: why did Morel write this book? [1 pt]
- Environmental history: do you see evidence of how humans affected the environment? how the environment affected humans? how humans’ ideas about nature (such as view of disease, hygiene, pollution, the built environment) affected their treatment of it? Take a quote from the document and describe which pillar it illustrates. [2 pts]
OppOsing VieWpOinTs White Man’s Burden, Black Man’s Sorrow Q According to Kipling, why should Western nations take up the “white man’s burden”? What was the “black man’s burden,” in the eyes of Edmund Morel? interaction & exchange One OF The jusTiFiCaTiOns FOr mOdern imperialism was the notion that the supposedly “more advanced” white peoples had the moral responsibility to raise presumably ignorant indigenous peoples to a higher level of civilization. Few captured this notion better than the British poet Rudyard Kipling (1865– 1936) in his famous poem The White Man’s Burden. His appeal, directed to the United States, became one of the most famous sets of verses in the English-speaking world. That sense of moral responsibility, however, was often misplaced or, even worse, laced with hypocrisy. All too often, the consequences of imperial rule were detrimental to those living under colonial authority. Few observers described the destructive effects of Western imperialism on the African people as well as British journalist Edmund Morel. His book The Black Man’s Burden, as well as a number of articles written during the first decade of the twentieth century, pointed out some of the more horrific aspects of colonialism in the Belgian Congo. Morel’s reports on the brutal treatment of Congolese workers involved in gathering rubber, ivory, and palm oil for export helped to spur the formation of an investigative commission, whose report in 1904 ultimately led to reforms. rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man’s burden— In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another’s profit, And work another’s gain. Take up the White Man’s burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought. edmund morel, The Black Man’s Burden It is [the Africans] who carry the “Black man’s burden.” They have not withered away before the white man’s occupation. Indeed . . . Africa has ultimately absorbed within itself every Caucasian and, for that matter, every Semitic invader, too. In hewing out for himself a fixed abode in Africa, the white man has massacred the African in heaps. The African has survived, and it is well for the white settlers that he has. . . . What the partial occupation of his soil by the white man has failed to do; what the mapping out of European political “spheres of influence” has failed to do; what the Maxim and the rifle, the slave gang, labour in the bowels of the earth and the lash, have failed to do; what imported measles, smallpox and syphilis have failed to do; whatever the overseas slave trade failed to do; the power of modern capitalistic exploitation, assisted by modern engines of destruction, may yet succeed in accomplishing. For from the evils of the latter, scientifically applied and enforced, there is no escape for the African. Its destructive effects are not spasmodic; they are perma- nent. In its permanence resides its fatal consequences. It kills not the body merely, but the soul. It breaks the spirit. It attacks the African at every turn, from every point of vantage. It wrecks his polity, uproots him from the land, invades his family life, destroys his natural pursuits and occupations, claims his whole time, enslaves him in his own home. Sources: Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden. From Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” McClure’s Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899). Edmund Morel, The Black Man’s Burden. From Edmund Morel, The Black Man’s Burden (New York: Metro Books, 1972). 2-3 India Under the British Raj ■ 33 Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203