“To Veil the Threat of Terror” Lessons Learned about Empire from Kipling, Conrad and Forster Rudyard Kipling “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) Joseph Conrad The Heart of Darkness (1902) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924)

Rudyard Kipling “The White Man’s Burden”(1899) 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

Lessons Learned from Kipling To be an imperialist power and protect the world requires restraint and sacrifice Imperialists are rarely rewarded by affection from those they invade and dominate The moral claims of an imperialist power may not sound persuasive to future generations.

Professor Edward Said Culture and Imperialism (1994) “Empire is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, economic, social or cultural dependence” Michael Doyle “cultural forms like the novel were immensely important in the formation of imperialist attitudes, references, and experiences …”

19 th and 20 th Century British Literature and Empire Jane Austen: Persuasion and Mansfield Park William Blake: Little Black Boy, London Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre William Thackeray: Vanity Fair

Lessons Learned from Conrad Whatever noble ideas about civilization and progress are touted to justify imperialism, the drive to acquire natural resources is a potent lure The violence that occurs in imperialistic endeavours is often caused by the imperialists themselves Under extreme pressures, with an extraordinary sense of rightness and power, people are capable, as Kurtz is in Heart of Darkness of committing morally depraved acts

E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India

Lessons Learned from Forster #1. Foreign imperialistic powers often have little understanding of the extent of social, ethnic and religious differences. Consequently, they may function under damaging and stereotypical assumptions about the people under their power

Lessons Learned from Forster #2: Imperialistic powers should not be too smug in the belief that their cultural and moral background is superior to that of the culture that they dominate politically and militarily

Lessons Learned from Forster #3 No matter what your individual moral code, or your honest desire to connect in friendship, if you are a citizen of an imperialistic power, you will probably be regarded with hatred.

Concluding Thoughts Conrad and Forster both criticize Kipling’s naïve view of the moral purpose of imperialism as a civilizing force Both writers teach us that it is almost impossible to “veil the threat of terror” in our own behavior when we hold such immense power over another civilization. Both writers urge us that it is dangerous to believe that any single group of us is morally or culturally entitled to dominate another.