In 1898, notoriously, Kipling urged the imperialist nations to
'Take up the White Man's Burden' the following year, in Satan
Absolved, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt angrily replied, 'The White Man's
Burden, Lord, is the burden of his cash'. Such ideological
conflicts - and a whole range of intermediate positions - feature
in much of the poetry British writers produced about the British
Empire over the four centuries of its rise and fall. The discourses
of postcolonialism have drawn attention to the major and continuing
significance of the cultural products of the period of Western
imperialism. But, so far, they have concentrated largely upon
fiction and upon the writings and experiences of those parts of the
world that were subject to colonialism and imperialist oppression.
For the first time, The White Man's Burdens offers a cross-section
of British poetry in which the Empire was the burden of the song.
The material, much of it previously uncollected, is drawn from a
broad cultural spectrum that includes narrative poetry, heroic
verse, patriotic ballads, music hall monologues, and poems from
Punch. A substantial Introduction sets the poems in the context of
the economic, political, and ideological development of British
imperial rule, and headnotes historicize the poems themselves,
which are presented chronologically - from George Chapman's 'De
Guiana: Carmen Epicum' of 1596 to Fred D'Aguiar's 'At the Grave of
the Unknown African' of 1993. The result is a poetic summary of the
changing attitudes of an imperialist nation to its own imperialism,
attitudes which range from jingoism and racism, through religious
idealism and liberal anxiety, to outright disgust at the whole
enterprise.
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