The White Man's Burden

The idea of nationalism is not something that should be taken lightly. Nationalism is what brought our nation to become existent, among others around the globe. As we are today, nationalism is, by definition, patriotic feeling, principle, or efforts, as well as sense of identity. This was my only known definition of the word going into this class, but I now know that there is much more to the word itself. Nationalism is formed by the idea of independence. Our country is an example of nationalism, and the power of nationalism is what kept us thriving as well as other countries around us.
In the Message to the Congress of Angostura, Simon de Bolivar begins by saying “We are not Europeans; we are not Indians; we are but a mixed species of aborigines and Spaniards,”1 …show more content…
An example of this would be the poem The White Man’s Burden, written by Rudyard Kipling, known for being an extreme imperialist. In the poem, he refers to the people of the Philippines as “half-devil and half-child,” while also referring them as “wild.”6 This is written at a time when the United States is taking over the Philippines, a nation that could’ve been put under the category of “uncivilized.” This is where nationalism and imperialism collide, because imperialism is controlling the smaller countries or unsettled areas. In this case, America switches roles, and is now the country taking the colony. The upside is that the spread of American culture is spread to another country, noted as sign that the colony will improve in terms of “civilization,” but at the same time the Philippines was being taken, and it was being looked at as “the white man’s burden”7 as if it was the requirement of the United States and other powers of the world to go and “liberate” these countries, and Kipling pleads for them to “take up on the White Man’s Burden.”8 Today, this would be deemed as inappropriate and rather cruel, but at the time Kipling was praised and