Kipling’s Other Burden: Counter-Narrating Empire

Abstract

‘Recessional’ and ‘White Man’s Burden’ have been crucial in establishing Rudyard Kipling’s reputation as the de facto poet laureate of the British Empire. ‘Recessional’ celebrates the sacrosanct nature of the civilising mission and chastises those who cheapen it through ‘tumult’ and ’shouting’ (Kipling, 1996a: 266). Written for Queen Victoria’s jubilee, it serves as a reminder of the fate of empires that forget divine providence and indulge in displays of pride and pomp. Kipling intended it as a nuzzur-wattu, ‘an averter of the Evil Eye’ (1977: 120). ‘White Man’s Burden’ operates as a virtual manifesto of empire’s purpose and the racial theories on which it was constructed. The poem upholds the certitude of race even while it covertly acknowledges the nature of conquest by using the imagery of trapping and hunting. Yet other poems and some short stories reveal a subversive side that surfaced only occasionally and was coded in complex ways. Read against such poems and short stories, the works which afford Kipling his reputation as a jingoist would seem to be rehearsing empire. At the very least, Kipling’s oeuvre reveals what Angus Wilson describes as ‘the poetry of tension, not of “give”’ (1977: 117). Nowhere is this more apparent than in his writings about war.

‘This was how it happened; and the truth is also an allegory of Empire.’

‘Naboth’ (Kipling, 1899: 71)