white man's burden

English

Etymology

From the poem The White Man's Burden (published 1899) by Rudyard Kipling.

Noun

white man's burden

1. The supposed responsibility of European people to govern and care for their colonial subjects.
   • 1902 January 2, The Evening Telegraph, Charters Towers, page 3, column 2:

     Uncle Sam has found his box of tricks heavy, and is having a whiff before going on with his white man's burden to the end.

   • 1915 October 6, Lewis Ransome Freeman, “Germany's Exit From Africa”, in The World's Work‎^[1], volume XXX:

     Germany's appearance as a colonizing power in Africa was greeted in no unfriendly spirit by either France or Great Britain. Each of the latter felt that it was already possessed of about all it could comfortably look after, and both realized that another shoulder under "The White Man's Burden" in the Dark Continent might make the load easier for all.

   • 1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 609:

     So into at least one state troops poured, a battalion of decent National Service lads, to continue to carry, posthumously as it must be supposed, the White Man's Burden.

Translations

supposed responsibility of whites

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 白人的负担

• Finnish: valkoisen miehen taakka
• French: fardeau de l’homme blanc (fr) m
• Swedish: den vite mannens börda