History 4339

Race and Kipling

Race and Empire

• Irish vs. British

• Theories of race (e.g. phrenology)

• Racial mixing during EIC period

• 1869 opening of Suez Canal

◦ Shorter voyage to India

◦ More British women in India

• “Memsahib theory of imperial decline”

• Gendered racial notions:

“martial” vs. “effeminate” races

• Anglo-Indians

Rudyard Kipling[1] (1865-1936)

• Born in Bombay, first language Urdu

• Sent “home” to England to be educated at age 6

• Not a success at United Services College

• Returned to India in 1882 as journalist

• Came back to England in 1889

• 1907: Nobel Prize for Literature

• WWI: son died, Kipling devastated

• Kipling as imperialist?

            • celebrates many aspects of empire

• also highly critical (e.g. colonial administration)

Kipling Poems

“The Ballad of East and West” (excerpt)

Oh, East is East, and West is West,

and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently

at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West,

Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,

tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

“White Man’s Burden”

“Gunga Din” (excerpt)

. . . An’ for all’is dirty ‘ide

‘E was white, clear white, inside

When ‘e went to tend the wounded under fire!

. . . You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
 

“Fuzzy-Wuzzy”

(Soudan Expeditionary Force)

"Recessional"