The expression “the white man’s burden” came from the 1899 poem by Rudyard Kipling
in which he appealed to the United States to shoulder Britain’s imperial responsibilities:
Take up the White Man’s Burden
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard.
(Quoted in Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2003), 369.)
5.
H. F. Wyatt, “The Ethics of Empire,” April 1897, in Nineteenth Century Opinion: An Anthology of Extracts from the First Fifty Volumes
of The Nineteenth Century 1877–1901, ed. Michael Goodwin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951), 267.
6.
Wyatt, “The Ethics of Empire,” 268.
7.
Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1991), 72.
8.
Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 124.
9.
Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 127.
10.
Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 127. Galbraith, who, in the beginning of the 1960s served as US ambassador to India,
recounted that he often met with the Indian leader Nehru and that “Nehru made no secret
of his British background and its influence on his political thought. He once said,
‘You realize, Galbraith, that I am the last Englishman to rule in India.’” (John Kenneth
Galbraith, Name-Dropping: From F.D.R. On (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), 132.)
11.
In 1923, when this policy was at its apogee, the Dutch historian C. Te Lintum wrote:
“The ethical course or enlightened despotism that had, since 1870 (at least officially),
replaced the old egoistic exploitation policy, had also brought for the native more
transport facilities and more education, especially on Java.” (C. Te Lintum, Nederland en de Indiën in de laatste kwart eeuw (Zutphen: W. J. Thieme & Cie., 1923), 254.) The author added—paternalistically, “They
were a people living traditional lives, submissive and quiet, who held the Dutch rulers
in high regard.”
12.
Cf. J. A. A. van Doorn, Indische lessen: Nederland en de koloniale ervaring (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1995), 43. This Dutch self-satisfaction was still present
in 1941, when—during the German occupation!—a book titled Daar wérd wat groots verricht (Over there something great has indeed been achieved) was published, in which one
could read: “We brought peace and prosperity, under our government the population
on Java has grown tenfold, Indonesia has become one of the first countries of the
world in terms of production. We can point with pride to what we have achieved in
Indonesia” (ibid.). In spite of these fine words the Dutch—unlike the British—were
too obstinate to recognize the new post–World War II realities and, some years later,
would fight two colonial wars—euphemistically called “police actions”—which would
cost the lives of thousands of Dutch soldiers and tens of thousands of Indonesians.
13.
Van Doorn, Indische lessen, 38. Van Doorn added: “That these high sentiments did not fit the existing colonial
interests, was still the least objection one might make. More questionable was the
sense of superiority hidden behind the ethical responsibility: the certainty that
it was the Netherlands especially that had had the calling to ‘elevate’ the indigenous
population and, after a while, the conviction, just as strongly held, that it had
completed this task in an excellent way. The myth of the Netherlands as a gidsland (guiding country) would, in particular, block the ability to assess the emerging nationalism
in a positive way, or even merely to notice it” (Van Doorn, Indische lessen, 38–39).
14.
Hendrik Spruyt, Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 57.
15.
V. G. Kiernan, America: The New Imperialism: From White Settlement to World Hegemony (London: Zed Press, 1978), 269.
16.
Vilfredo Pareto, Trattato di sociologia generale, Volume secondo, “I residui” (Milano: Edizione di Comunità, 1981), 123–124.
17.
