Yes, you can read the title – the poem by Rudyard Kipling as it was originally published, and the poem that has probably alone done most to undermine his modern literary reputation (public domain image)

(9) CIVILIZING MISSION – WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

Although associated with – or claimed by – European colonial empires, a belief of civilizing mission is the flipside of the belief in manifest destiny that is inherent to most empires, flipped that is from the “destiny” of the imperial nation to its “responsibility” for the “benefit” of its subjects.

Well, in theory anyway – almost every empire proclaims itself to be spreading civilisation or bringing some benefit to its subjects, and all but the most destructive have at least some merits in those claims.

That’s including those European empires. As destructive as they were, they did bring the development of trade and industry, transport and communication, and technology and science that ultimately was the reason they were able to have empires in the first place, however unevenly and for their own interests first. Not to mention social and political ideas, some of which such as nationalism and liberalism were ultimately to prove self-destructive to their empires.

Still, it can’t help but add insult to the injury of imperial rule for the rulers to claim they are doing so for the civilization of their subjects, particularly when killing, starving or enforcing the servitude of those subjects.

That’s even more so when it is preached as a “burden” for the imperial rulers, as Rudyard Kipling did in his poem “The White Man’s Burden”, its subtitle expressly addressed to the United States for the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, exhorting the United States to assume the same “burden” as the British did for their empire. It was astonishingly tone-deaf even for its time, as demonstrated by contemporary criticism such as that by Mark Twain – and probably is the one poem that has alone done most to undermine Kipling’s modern literary reputation ever since.