Question

According to Kipling, what role do the native people of Africa and Asia play in their countries improvement

Answer 1

Rudyard Kipling viewed native Africans and Asians as beneficiaries of the civilization brought by Western colonizers, a perspective rooted in social Darwinism. The civilizing mission purported to bring progress and order but was mainly aimed at securing colonial dominance and exploiting resources.

Step-by-step explanation:

According to Rudyard Kipling's views, particularly expressed in his poem 'The White Man's Burden', the native people of Africa and Asia play the role of recipients of the benefits of Western civilization brought to them by the colonizers. Kipling's perspective emerges from the civilizing mission, a concept aligned with social Darwinism, which posited that European societies, being more advanced, had a duty and a right to improve and civilize other parts of the world. This included the introduction of Christianity, Western education, clothing, and sports. However, these endeavors were not altruistic, as the colonizing nations primarily sought to benefit at the expense of indigenous societies, through both material gains and the establishment of control over local populations.

In essence, native peoples were seen as pawns in the larger game of empire-building, with any potential benefits to them being secondary or incidental. This ideology facilitated the acceptance of colonialism by framing it as a benevolent enterprise that was not only the right but also the duty of superior European powers. Despite some improvements made in infrastructure and local governance, the primary aim was the extraction of resources and the economic domination of the colonizers.

Answer 2

Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1899 a poem called "The White Man's Burden" in which he invites the United States to assume colonial control of Philippine during the Philippine–American War that took place between the years 1899 and 1902.

According to the imperialist interpretation of this poem, Kipling argues that the white man has the moral obligation to rule the non-white peoples of the Earth, such as native people of Africa and Asia, encouraging their economic, cultural, and social progress, as well as their civilization and Christianization through colonialism. Since, in his opinion, they were primitive peoples, incapable of self-government and thus, they needed the guidance of the white man.