Introduction

   Rudyard Kipling’s idea of imperialism is enshrined in his poem “The White Man’s Burden”. In the poem, he urges the white man to implement the thankless job of developing the colony of his home imperial country in a spirit of patriotism and self sacrifice and to be a guide to the colonized natives by bringing them out of their dark world of ignorance with a view to inculcating them to Christian values and the dominance of the white man’s culture. The result was not always entirely successful. History revealed that the colonized natives had been subjected to violations of fairness and human rights to the extent of slavery and causing death. For example, the British Empire began as an empire of good intentions that was to engage in commerce with its overseas subjects and therefore to enhance the quality of lives for both the colonizer and the colonized. What resulted was an empire that turned dictatorial and resulted in the suppression of the natives that prevented them from fair opportunities in life such as a high position in the civil service. Furthermore, the male dominated dictatorial nature of the colonial rulers over the ruled resulted in countless violations and injustices to women’s rights as well as deaths by famine because of irresponsible colonial governors as in the case of British India. This exhibit aims to display works that identify and discuss imperialism as an immoral force of domination, exploitation, subjugation and segregation of the colonized thus enduring them to a life of traumatic experiences. As such, these works were chosen because the authors wrote them partly to counter argue against the self-declared higher moral responsibility of the colonizer in concordance to Kipling’s Victorian spirit of Imperialism.

    A small portion of the article called "Almayer's Defeat: The Trauma of Colonialism in Conrad's Early Work" by Christopher Lane explores the point of view of the colonizer through the works of a few Victorian writers such as Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. The portion reveals the injustices of the colonizers that are the roots of the traumatic experiences of the colonized. Lane recalls the questions of Joseph Conrad as to why the colonizers set off to colonize in the first place. Most importantly, he recalls Conrad’s question as to what the colonizers desired from their colonies, and “why their unsuccessful search for internal safety and redemption often turns this wanting into a rigid demand” (p.404). The answers to these questions are somewhat explored in the article. The unenviable experiences of the colonized natives are thus depicted. For example, Rudyard Kipling’s “Beyond the Pale” (1888) is cited to provide an example of racial segregation in the colonies between the colonizers and the colonized. A passage quoted from Kipling’s work reveal an attitude of the way the colonies should be structured: “A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed. Let the white go to the white and the black to the black” (406). The title of the work “Beyond the Pale” is also evident of Kipling’s segregational attitude to the colonial natives because the title is also a traditional English phrase that refers to the supposed wild and uncivilized Irish people beyond the boundaries of the early English possession of Greater Dublin in Ireland also known as “The Pale”. The quoted areas in pages 404 and 406 would serve to be directly relevant in supporting the argument that imperialism is questionable and immoral and therefore traumatic to the colonized.

        This article is a review of a book by John McClure called “Kipling and Conrad: The Colonial Fiction”. The review by Thomas Pinney of Pomona College provides essential data that further supports the thesis that Kipling’s spirit of imperialism is an immoral force and therefore the source of trauma for the colonized. Pinney begins by citing a line from the book: “what happens when Europeans step beyond the boundaries of their own culture” (499). McClure states that the book presents Rudyard Kipling’s and Joseph Conrad’s own version of answers to this question. For example, Pinney describes how the story in the book reveals that Kipling’s idea of imperialism is problematic in itself. The “civil servants” of the empire go out to the colonies and once there, they find themselves “isolated in strange cultures” (500). As a result, “they compensate for their weakness, ignorance, and sense of inadequacy by diligently playing the game set by the bigger boys, in this case the imperial government” (500). More importantly, Pinney identifies the definition of the white man in Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” as “the exercise of power founded on radical feelings of insecurity and weakness” (500). The colonizers’ “exercise of power founded on radical feelings of insecurity and weakness” is the defining problem of Kipling’s spirit of imperialism and therefore the source of trauma for the colonized. Furthermore, Pinney concludes that “No one dares – or, perhaps, wishes – to defend Kipling’s defense of empire, and no one thinks of challenging Conrad’s skepticism about the civilizing mission of colonialism” as the immoral magnitude of imperialism and the consequences to the colonized are immense (502). Therefore, the above quotes supplied by the review of the book are relevant to the thesis.

This is a critique of the novel called “The Return of the Native Tess” by Mary Webb written by Carol Siegel. Portions of the critique, called “Male Masochism and the Colonial Impulse” discuss one of the novel’s positions that imperialism is a platform for masochism and therefore of immeasurable consequence to women, especially in the colonies. Women living under male dominated colonial societies are viewed as objects to be possessed and utilized. The emphasis that women are considered more as sexual objects and used as such is found in a few areas of the critique. For example, Siegel identifies that the opposition to the oppression of women is a clear anti-colonial rhetoric in the novel drawing from the fact that “colonialist actions were rarely seen as expressions of masochism in colonial societies” (133). From this quote, this critique provides further data to support the thesis that imperialism can go further in the domination, exploitation and subjugation of the colonized with its gender unequal nature in the colonies thus bringing especial and added trauma to women in particular. A parallel to this anti-imperial rhetoric may be drawn to the slave girl in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” where she is treated and used as commodity and then raped in the context of slavery.

   A small excerpt from a poem entitled “Epistle II” by Lucy Aikin reveals a glimpse into a devastating consequence of imperial domination, subjugation, segregation and above all in this case, exploitation of people to the extreme: slavery. A small excerpt of the poem reveals a fraction of the overwhelming heartbreak suffered by a colonial woman as she watches the white father of her son forcibly taking him away from her permanently: “no swift-returning oar / Shall homeward urge the wretched captive more”. Her heartbreaking fear for her child is that he may be sold and used as commodity, as if the pain for the colonial woman to be used as a sex object was not enough. The emotionally ravished colonial mother pleads the white man not to sell her child, who is also his child: “My son, my son, O spare my son! Sell not thy child!” Her “anguish” pleas are to no avail. The white man departs with the boy leaving the mother with nothing, not even sympathy as she cries “all forever lost” and asks who will look after her as only her own son can from that point on: “Who then with kindly care / Shall tend our age, and leafy beds prepare? / Who climb for us the cocoa’s scaly side?” No one saves the "bleeding, bursting mother's heart" as she is left with nothing and her anguish is irrelevant given the male dominant nature of Kipling’s idea of imperialism. The quotes from the small excerpt of the poem itself support the thesis concretely.