[the British Empire's] purpose was to maintain stability, order, and peace amongst the heathen, to relieve famine, provide medical assistance, to abolish slavery, to construct the physical and the psychological groundwork for "civilization," and to protect the mother country.
Put like that, it sounds extremely noble. And likely to garner huge resentment... who wants a stepfather who came in by force, however good his claimed or apparent aims...?
But I find it hard to disagree with that interpretation of Kipling's views: I'd question the now-perjorative terms used, such as 'bringing peace among the heathen', but I think it does encapsulate his feelings well.
What it misses, IMO, is his sense that it wouldn't work, that empire would have to pass, that even if the mission was noble it was neither pre-ordained nor necessarily right. And as for celebrating empire, well: see Recessional, again - no one truly the the interpreter, propagandist, and chief apologist of the Imperialist elite could ever have written such a poem - for the Diamond Jubilee of Victoria, Empress of India, no less...
Imperialism, predicated on deeply-held political, racial, moral, and religious beliefs which sustained a feeling of innate ... superiority, as being primarily a moral responsibility: it might also be profitable (an aspect of things emphasized in Evangelical circles), but it had itself to be maintained, defended, and protected--from rival world powers and from the rebellious governed
So, do you see why I saw fit to post that poem? With all its hinterland of meaning, and the attitudes it both acknowledges and satirises...?
[Remember that this is the BR, too... it wasn't just a feint.] |
