Burdens of Imperialism in ‘The White Man’s Burden’, An Outpost of Progress, and A Passage to India

Abstract

This essay discusses questions of colonial discourse in Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ by Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad’s short story An Outpost of Progress, and E. M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India. Colonial discourse often justifies its extractive practices through the self-justification of a ‘civilising mission’. The essay examines the ways in which the aforementioned modernist colonial writers seek to rely on this discourse as well as undermine it in their writing. It draws on ideas outlined in Edward Said’s Orientalism, as well as David Spurr’s work on imperialist rhetoric and Homi Bhabha’s notion of ambivalence in colonial discourse. Kipling’s poem is a useful introduction to the notion of a white colonial power with a duty to civilise non-European peoples, criticising the benefit of such a project on European nations at a time of imperial decline. Kipling’s moral vindication of the imperial project is carried forward by Conrad, who draws attention to the supposed degeneration of the European when placed in a colonial context, and by Forster, who stresses the need for international brotherhood and strongly critiques the behaviour of British agents in colonial India.