western leaders perspective on the white man's burden

Cartoonist Victor Gillam turns the tables on American missionary zeal and moral imperative to save the heathen by showing how the Chinese might view the foreign devils in vignettes of ignorance, racism, and extreme violence in the United States. The human and financial cost of these extended conflicts was large. AHistory of American Magazines. 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. In the background, the artist placed a large portrait of a large man, Marcus Hanna, next to a miniature of President William McKinley to show their relative influence on policy. Twains most celebrated anti-imperialist essay, To the Person Sitting in Darkness, was published in the February, 1901 issue of theNorth American Review. Raising money to Save the Foreign Devils recurs in the visual record. In a post-Bismarck era, Germany was a late-comer to the colonial land grab in Africa and the Pacific. (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972)(New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1972). Even the language of Lifes 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 . Most viewers will probably agree that there is nothing really comparable in the contemporary world of political cartooning to the drafting skill and flamboyance of these single-panel graphics, which appeared in such popular periodicals as Puck and Judge. But by the 1890s, emerging industrial powerhouses like the U.S. and Germany reduced Britains industrial dominance. After Many Years. Moral clarity aside, the parallel between America's pursuit of manifest destiny a century ago and its new global sense of mission has a lot to teach us. Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Even the name of the poem is paternalistic in that he views The full sardonic irony of the rendering, however, resides in the dead occupants of the graves. Now clad in armor and carrying a spear, she threatens to intervene to stop the anti-foreign, anti-Christian acts of anarchy, murder, and riot that have spread to Beijing. At the same time, Britain was fighting the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. western leaders perspective on the white man's burden. Source:Wikimedia. Although usually associated with the pro-expansionist proponents of civilization and progress,Puckon occasion turned a discerning eye on the double standards of Americas so-called noble mission in the Philippines and China. Matthews, Roy T. Britannia and John Bull: From Birth to Maturity.The Historian,Vol. The War Prayer begins with a preacher praising the nations just and holy war, and leading his congregation in praying for victory. Civilization and its Discontents: The Boxers and Luddites as Heroes and Villains., The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, CGACGA, The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, CGACGA, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, William H. Walker Cartoon Collection, Princeton University Library, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library. The Laureate of Empire.Raritan: A Quarterly Review. The expedition met with unexpectedly fierce opposition from Boxers and Qing dynasty troops and was forced to retreat. The White Mans Burden was used by both pro- and anti-imperialist factions. May 26, 2022. The phrase White Mans Burden caught on with many imperialists to justify the policy as noble. Families were burned out of their homes and imprisoned in concentration camps. 4). The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. China in Convulsion. Contemporary conflicts are spelled out over dark clouds. In Pucks October 19, 1898 cover, Civilization holds China by his queue, labeled Worn Out Traditions, ready to cut it off with the shears of 19th Century Progress. The helpless mandarin tries to run away. Each sign is topped by the word Wanted and the goods listed include trolley lines, electric lights, water-works, sewers, paving, asphalt roads, watches, clocks, wagons, carriages, trucks, 100,000 bridges, 500,000 engines, 2 million cars, 4 million rails, 100,000 RR stations, cotton goods, telegraph, telephone, stoves, lamps, petroleum, medicines, chemicals, disinfectants, 50 million reaping machines, 100 million plows, and 50 million sewing machines. 202-212 (September 2010). In the United StatesPuck,Judge, and the first version of a pictorial magazine titledLife; in FranceLAssiette au Beurre; and in Germany the acerbicSimplicissimuspublished masterful illustrations that ranged in opinion and style from partisan to thoughtful to gruesome. 19th Century Editorial Cartoons and the Business of Race.International Journal of Comic Art11.1 (2009)pp. Twain went along, partly out of concern for his family, and The War Prayer was not published until 1916, six years after his death. In the U.S., despite spirited resistance from Anglophobic Irish immigrants and anti-imperialist leagues, overseas military campaigns gradually gained public support. Le Silence (Concentration Camps in the Transvaal. Native people in the countries that were being colonized did not agree with imperialist policies. The president of the First Philippine Republic, Emilio Aguinaldo, is portrayed as a barefoot savage, wild hair escaping from a dunce cap. ColumbiaMother! Louis Dalrymple,Puck, June 15, 1898. In September 1901, the French artist Jean Veber used the pages ofLAssiette au Beurreto call attention to one of the often-forgotten ironies of the mystique of the white mans burden. His cartoon, depicting a vast field of flat stone grave markers, carried the simple caption United Kingdom (Le Royaume-Uni). www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Imperialists Uncle Sam, John Bull, Kaiser Wilhelm, and, in the distance, probably France are borne on the backs of subjugated people in the Philippines, India, and Africa. The Real White Mans Burden was published in 1902, after the Spanish-American war and it is a satire of another poem by British author Rudyard Kipling - The White Mans Burden. The famous American writer Mark Twain, for example, wrote a response, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" that was critical of imperialism and mocked those who thought they were more enlightened than the indigenous people of these areas. Vaughan, Christopher. Jesus, In an 1899 cartoon, Ren Georges Hermann-Paul attacked the hypocrisy of spreading civilization by force by juxtaposing the words Barbarie and Civilisation beneath Chinese and French combatants who alternate as victor and victim. And they complain that drunken American soldiers insult the native women. It was to change the darkest spot in darkest Africa back again into a land flowing with milk and honey that Great Britain took over the tremendous burden of administration from the Niger Company, and sent one of its greatest ' Africans ' (Sir F. D. Lugard) with a small body of earnest men into the 'White Man's Grave. This was followed by the invasion and takeover of Puerto Rico. 19th Century Editorial Cartoons and the Business of Race., Thompson, Roger R. Reporting the Taiyuan Massacre from, Tuffnell, Stephen. 1900. Kiplings Keppler rendered this as Japan Makes her Dbut Under Columbias Auspices, with Columbia, Britannia, and a geisha-like Japan at the center of the scene. 2. The argument follows Englands example, as spelled out on the blackboard, that By not waiting for their consent, she has greatly advanced the worlds civilization. An African-American washes windows. The book on the desk reads: U.S. XII, No. The caption, From the Cape to Cairo. The eight-nation military intervention during the Boxer Uprising in China in 1900 amounted to a global case study of how nations with superior technology wreaked violence abroad in the name of bringing about peace and civilization. Case Study: The Boxer WarThe Boxer Uprising., Matthews, Roy T. Britannia and John Bull: From Birth to Maturity., Miller, Bonnie M. The Image-Makers Arsenal in an Age of War and Empire, 1898 1899: A Cartoon Essay, Featuring the Work of Charles Bartholomew (of the, Murphy, Erin L. Womens Anti-Imperialism, The White Mans Burden, and the Philippine-American War,, Phillips, Richard and Jones, Rhys. The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. Pucks cover for June 8, 1898, celebrated this new Anglo-Saxon solidarity and sense of mission with an illustration of two resolute soldiers standing with fixed bayonets on a parapet and overlooking the globe. The White Man's Burden Today: Good Governance and Corruption The presentation of White Man's Burden and the figure of Oystein Tveter along with the presence of such a distinguished As the U.S. moved into the Pacific, Chinas millions represented an enticing new market, but the eruption of the anti-Christian, anti-foreign Boxer movement threatened the civilizing mission there. European countries sought to colonize and plunder the wealth from regions with large populations such as Africa and Asia. The penetration of missionaries into the interior of China, for example, destabilized rural economies and incited anti-foreign sentiments. We had no design of aggrandizement and no ambition of conquest. The satirical weekly,Simplicissimus, flourished from 1896 to 1967 with a hiatus from 1944 to 1954. In a run of 13 lithographs published in the July 4, 1900 issue of the French periodicalLAssiette au Beurre, the cartoonist Ren Georges Hermann-Paul was especially incisive in calling attention to this grim reality. This French cartoon eschews the romantic presentation in the preceding Puckgraphic and casts a far more cynical eye on Anglo-American expansion as fundamentally a matter of conquest. The dignity of the bereaved Filipino in this cartoon is a stark contrast to the usual demeaning stereotypes of half devil and half child that Kipling endorsed and many cartoonists reinforced. Selling Empire: American Propaganda and War in the Philippines., Cullinane, M. Patrick. The imperialist rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism that took root during these years was reinforced in both the United States and England by a small flood of political cartoonscommonly executed in full color and with meticulous attention to detail. French artists, on the other hand, leveled charges of barbarism against Great Britain and other imperial powers, including their own country, in vivid graphics. The sign on the shores of England reads, John Bull The old reliable ship builder since 1861. Cohen, Paul A. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. Maineexploded and sank in the harbor at Havana. Kipling offered moral justification for the bloody war the U.S. was fighting to suppress the independent Philippine regime following Spanish rule. Lifes satire of the white mans burden mystique offers a procession of the supporters of the new imperialism beginning with missionaries and ending with the traveling salesman. On February 15, 1898, the battleshipU.S.S. 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. A Red-Letter Day. Pucks caricature of Germanys Bible-quoting Kaiser Wilhelm II ready to machine gun foreign non-believers captures the role of Christianity in turn-of-the-century Western imperialism. In the decolonisation of the developing world, the phrase the white man's burden is synonymous with colonial domination, to illustrate the falsity of the good intentions of Western neo Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" is a plea to English people to spread their civilization all over the world. The "white man's burden" refers to the duty of Westerners to the rest of the world. 4, pp. The meaning of white man's burden is a duty formerly asserted by white people to manage the affairs of nonwhite people whom they believed to be less developed. Europeans often held racist ideas of their own superiority to those in foreign lands. The French leftwing magazineLAssiette au Beurre(The Butter Plate) had a substantive run from April, 1901 to October, 1912. Vol. Feng, Yongping, The Peaceful Transition of Power from the UK to the US.ChineseJournal of International Politics1 (1) pp. It is difficult to grasp how the world turned upside down for the populations of Asia at the end of 1941 and the first three months of 1942, during Japans conquest of Malaya, Singapore, the Les Camps de Reconcentration au Transvaal. Uncle Sam is to be Sacrificed: Anglophobia in Late Nineteenth-Century Politics and Culture., Twain, Mark. It was feared that the mystical rituals and xenophobic violence of the Yi He Tuan (Boxer) secret society would overwhelm Chinas ineffectual rulers, cast the country into chaos, and hinder the trade and profits anticipated by the great powers. 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. In the civilization narrative, barbarians were commonly identified as the non-Western, non-white, non-Christian natives of the less-developed nations of the world. Source:Bibliothque nationale de France. Violence in the Name of Peace and Civilization. In the West, China was often characterized as befuddled and archaic under the rule of an inscrutable crone, the Empress Dowager. Uncle Sam, armed and dangerous, cocks an eyebrow as he displays his handiwork: countless dead Filipino soldiers laid out in rows. Estimates of civilian fatalities, on the other hand, range from 200,000 to possibly well over a million. Source:Library of Congress. Uncle Sams New Class in the Art of Self-Government. W. A. Rogers,Harpers Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, August 27, 1898. Vol 172 (February 1901). Are our teachings, then, in vain? is the caption of a cartoon by Pucks Udo Keppler in which Confucius and Jesus Christ look down on the warring Boxers and missionaries. Following its victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, Japan had the heady experience of being welcomed into the imperialist circle. After Allied forces were dispatched to relieve the sieges in Tianjin and Beijing, however, it did not take long before news reports and complementary visual commentary began to take note of barbaric conduct on both sides of the conflict. The backdrop to the scene, a large Map of the United States and Neighboring Countries, attests to the new position the U.S. has taken in the world, with its overseas territories marked by U.S. flags. (In the 1900 elections, Bryan ran on an anti-imperialist platform and was again defeated by McKinley.) The Philippines are diminished as Only the Stepping-Stone that enables the U.S. to reach the eagerly anticipated China market. The foothold in the Philippines brought China within reach. United We Stand for Civilization and Peace: the Anglo-Saxon Globe. Auto-Truck of Civilization and Trade: the Asia Market. Source:Bibliothque nationale de France, British soldiers laugh at the spectacle of Boer prisoners of war being shocked by an electric fence. Western missionaries had penetrated the interior, and the missions they established disrupted village traditions. ), In an image titled, Vers le Camp de Reconcentration (To the Concentration Camp), women and children are dragged off by British soldiers. The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons(San Francisco: TBoli Pub. The wars undertaken in the name of Civilization and Progress were more savage, tortuous, and contradictory than is often recognized. 4, pp. The caption refers to a Bible passage in which belief is nearly, but not completely reached. In 1901, occupation forces roamed the countryside to pillage, loot, and hunt for Boxers. Opposing viewpoints usually found expression in simpler but no less powerful black-and-white graphics in other publications. The language obviously resonated with the Kipling-esque imagery of white men bringing enlightenment to new-caught sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child. People of darkness was, moreover, a perception that missionaries (whom Twain excoriated) routinely applied to the heathen natives of non-Christian lands. [Read Online]. The campaign met with fierce resistance and saw the introduction of concentration camps as an extreme maneuver against the Boer defenders. McKinley also mentions profit, free trade, and the open door in Asia: Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent. 8, Issue 4, pp. Source:The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Mott, Frank Luther. Elliott, Jane E. SomeDid It for Civilisation, Some Did It for Their Country: A RevisedView of the Boxer War(Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002). The rays of the sun shine over Uncle Sam and John Bull, who clasp hands in a renewed Anglo-American alliance of Kindred Interests rooted in the English Tongue. Warships on the horizon ground their mission in naval power. Louis Dalrymples exceptionally detailed 1899 Puck graphic includes racist and denigrating depictions within a schoolhouse metaphor to demonstrate the right to govern newly acquired territories without their consent. Spencer, David R. No Laughing Matter. Relatively free from European rivalries and well situated to become a transoceanic partner, the U.S. was courted for the role. Wilhelm points ahead, where the inhabitants flee. Lifes satire of the white mans burden mystique offers a procession of the supporters of the new imperialism beginning with missionaries and ending with the traveling salesman. Blocking its uphill path, the Chinese dragon crawls downhill bearing a Boxer waving a bloody sword and banner reading 400 Million Barbarians. The image puts progress and primitivism on a collision course at the edge of a cliff. White Man's Burden: The social, religious and cultural excuses to justify imperialism and gunship diplomacy Posted on March 31, 2014 by JL Admin European imperialism of the last few centuries were heavily centered on the perceived moral responsibility of its leaders toward other supposedly backward regions of the world. The title of the cartoon calls attention to the barbarous uses of much modern technology and so-called progress., les prisonniers bors ont t runis en de grands enclos o depuis 18 mois ils trouvent le repos et le calme. The caption at their feet exclaims United We Stand for Civilization and Peace!, United We Stand for Civilization and Peace! Louis Dalrymple,Puck, June 8, 1898. Education in the ways of the West completed the political and commercial occupation. Tuffnell, Stephen. Source:Library of Congress. As the caption indicates, this cover illustration dismisses charges of imperialism that critics directed against American expansion at the turn of the century.Harpers Weekly took pride in billing itself as A Journal of Civilization. The barbarians depicted here are Chinese Boxers who committed atrocities against Christian missionaries. ), the Boer prisoners were gathered in large enclosures where, for the last 18 months, they found rest and quiet. An exclamation point was added to the phrase, The White (!) The white mans burden was an example of a justified imperialism argument to liberate the countries that lagged in economic, social, and political development in the 19 th century.
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