USA HISTORY

The “White Mans’ Burden” was the belief that it was the duty of America to:

(A) ** civilize the people they colonized

(B) spread art and music

(C) go to war with European nations

(D) provide humanitarian aid to foreign nations

Concept note-1: -Because those in Asia, Africa, and parts of the Americas lived different lives, Europeans felt that it was their duty to “civilize” them into western culture and society. This belief was strengthened with literary works such as “The White Man’s Burden” written in 1899 by British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling .

Concept note-2: -The White Man’s Burden is a poem by the British Victorian poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling. While he originally wrote the poem to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Kipling revised it in 1899 to exhort the American people to conquer and rule the Philippines.

Concept note-3: -"The White Man’s Burden” (1899), by Rudyard Kipling, is a poem about the Philippine–American War (1899–1902) that exhorts the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country.

Concept note-4: -In fact, Kipling’s poem ‘’The White Man’s Burden, ” written in 1899, was addressed not to the British but to the Americans, who were then, under President McKinley, beginning their own process of colonizing the Philippines.