BRITISH IMPERIALISM THE WORLD OF KIPLING & ORWELL

IMPERIALISM & COLONIALISM 1.Imperialism: the policy in which strong nations exert their economic, political, or military power over weaker nations. 1.What it the main goal of imperialism? To obtain ECONOMIC might. 1.Spread capitalism 1.Industrial revolution created an abundance of goods 2.Obtain raw materials and new markets 3.Labor

JUSTIFICATIONS FOR IMPERIALISM “If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.” –Spencer What does this mean? Social Darwinism: “survival of the fittest” – applies Darwinian principals of natural selection to society. Based on the writings of the Englishman Herbert Spencer. “Might Makes Right”

SOCIAL DARWINISM: COLD HEARTED? “The path of progress is strewn with the wrecks of nations; traces are everywhere to be seen of the [slaughtered remains] of inferior races…Yet these dead people are, in very truth, the stepping stones on which mankind has arisen to the high intellectual and deeper emotional life of today.” –Karl Pearson, 1900 Agree or disagree?

…A MORAL PURPOSE Those who did not want to succumb to the harsh Social Darwinist approach believed that imperialism was justified for moral reasons. 1.Religious  spread Christianity to “uncivilized” nations 2.Build a better world…modernize “primitive” nations

THE BRITISH WAY 1.Treated their colonial subjects as culturally and racially distinct. 1.DID NOT want subjects to assimilate into British culture 1.Sense of British racial superiority 2.Myth: intrepid white explorers subduing ignorant but “grateful natives.”

KIPLING & BRITISH INDIA Born in Bombay, but educated in England. Became the imperial poet of the British Empire. Tales of British Soldiers in India and children’s stories (Jungle Book). Two poems: “The White Man’s Burden” & “Recessional” would be controversial for their lionization of Imperialism. Irony? Orwell called Kipling the “prophet of British Imperialism.”

EXCERPT FROM “…BURDEN” Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Where do you see traces of Social Darwinism & moral superiority? “Burden”  noun, that which is borne with difficulty; obligation. 1.Positive or negative connotation? 2.What words in the excerpt characterize the colonized?

MISS YOUNGAL’S SAIS Sais: noun, A groom, or servant with responsibility for the horses. I will, with a partner, make an inference about what type of person Strickland will be based on what I know about character and British Imperialism. As we read… HIGHLIGHT WORDS OR PHRASES that help characterize Strickland.