Henry Labouchère (1831-1912)
“The Brown Man’s Burden” (1899)
Background
Henry Du Pré Labouchère was a British journalist, politician, and editor of the satirical weekly Truth. An outspoken critic of imperial expansion, he published “The Brown Man’s Burden” in February 1899, just as the Philippine–American War erupted and Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” appeared in McClure’s Magazine. Labouchère’s poem parodies Kipling’s form and diction, turning the rhetoric of “civilizing mission” into a blunt indictment of conquest, economic exploitation, and violence carried out under the banner of philanthropy. Widely reprinted in periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic, the poem stands as one of the sharpest immediate literary responses to Kipling’s imperial vision.
Reader’s Note
This poem contains language that is overtly racist. Labouchère uses such language deliberately in order to parody Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” and to expose the violence hidden beneath the rhetoric of empire. The words are degrading and painful, even in satire, and they should be named as such.
When reading, consider the poem as a literary and historical artifact: it was published in 1899, during the Philippine-American War, when imperial conquest was being justified as a noble “duty.” Labouchère borrows Kipling’s stanza structure and diction, twisting them into indictments of exploitation and brutality. Attend to how the parody works on a formal level, where it succeeds in turning imperial rhetoric back on itself, and where its reliance on racist slurs risks reproducing the very harms it seeks to expose.
As you engage with the text, ask yourself: How does satire reveal the cruelty of imperialism? Where do its strategies falter? What can this poem teach us about both the power and the limits of language in confronting empire?
Pile on the brown man’s burden
To gratify your greed;
Go, clear away the “niggers”
Who progress would impede;
Be very stern, for truly
‘Tis useless to be mild
With new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Pile on the brown man’s burden;
And, if ye rouse his hate,
Meet his old-fashioned reasons
With Maxims up to date.
With shells and dumdum bullets
A hundred times made plain
The brown man’s loss must ever
Imply the white man’s gain.
Pile on the brown man’s burden,
compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes
Reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly
He dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom,
Don’t hesitate to shoot.
Pile on the brown man’s burden,
And if his cry be sore,
That surely need not irk you–
Ye’ve driven slaves before.
Seize on his ports and pastures,
The fields his people tread;
Go make from them your living,
And mark them with his dead.
Pile on the brown man’s burden,
And through the world proclaim
That ye are Freedom’s agent–
There’s no more paying game!
And, should your own past history
Straight in your teeth be thrown,
Retort that independence
Is good for whites alone.
