Kipling
In contemporary times, much criticism has been
placed upon Rudyard Kipling for
his support of British Imperialism; George
Orwell went so far as to call him the
"prophet of British Imperialism during
its expansionist phase." To be
sure, a considerable portion of Kipling's
works were written in celebration and
support of Imperial expansion, but it
is short-sighted to simply label him as an
Imperial propagandist or
apologist. Two of his most oft-condemned poems,
Recessional and The White
Man's Burden, actually were used by both sides of the
colonial issue at the
time.1 A reading of Recessional, taken in the context of
the prevailing
attitudes of the time, seems to indicate that it is a piece about
hubris
rather than a promotion of the Empire. And the "burden" that
Kipling
writes on, while patronizing, was indeed a genuine burden.2 The fact
that the
British Empire went far in alleviating famine and disease in the
conquered
territories should not be ignored. It is beyond a doubt, however,
that
Kipling was convinced of Britain's superiority in the world. In For
All We Have
and Are, for instance, the reader is convinced with the last two
lines,
"What stands if Freedom fall?/Who dies if England live?" Kipling
was
not by far the most vociferous of the jingoists; having been somewhat of
an
outsider all for his life, he showed great sympathy for those whose lives
were
wasted in the expansion of the empire, and criticized the Imperial
machinery
that used them. His poetry as told by the common British soldiers
show his
ability maintain his status as poet laureate of the Empire while
telling the
stories of its victims, and at times, condemning it for the way
it treated those
soldiers. Kipling published Barrack-Room Ballads in 1890,
and it immediately
gained him great success in England. A collection of poems
written in the voice
of a London cockney, they display Kipling's remarkable
breadth of understanding
of soldiers and soldiering during the Victorian era.
While reading The Young
British Soldier one can perfectly picture a group
of such men belting out the
words of the song over mugs of beer: When the
arc-made recruit goes out to the
East 'E acts like a babe an' 'e drinks
like a beast, An' 'e wonders because 'e
is frequent deceased Ere 'e fit for
to serve as a soldier, Serve, serve, serve
as a soldier, Serve, serve, serve
as a soldier, Serve, serve, serve as a
soldier, Soldier of the Queen! Here
Kipling echoes the fatalistic humor that
seems to infect every soldier in
every war. More fatalism and the unwillingness
to speak directly of the
horrors of battle surface in The Widow's Party: ...For
half my company's
laying still Where the Widow give the party. ...We broke a
King and we
built a road-- A courthouse stands where the regiment goad. And the
river's
clean where the raw blood flowed When the Widow give the party. Not only
does
Kipling create a brutal contrast between the soldier's description (a
party)
and the battle that actually took place, he injects a small amount of
disgust
that good young men died, all for the purpose of expanding the Empire
into
some godforsaken land that few in England had ever heard of. More of
this
veiled disgust surfaces in The Widow at Windsor, written as a British
soldier
who does not see the Empire as any kind of divine design: Walk wide
of the Widow
at Windsor, For half of Creation she owns: We have bought her
the same with the
sword 'an the flame, An we've salted it down with our
bones. (Poor beggars! --
it's blue with our bones!) Take 'old of the Wings o'
the Mornin', An' flop round
the earth till you're dead; But you won't get
away from the tune that they play
To the blooming' old rag overhead.
(Poor beggars! -- it's not overhead!) The
theme that overrides in much of
Kipling's poetry, however, is his sympathy for
the common soldier and his
treatment by those he is serving. Tommy endures to
this day as the best
commentary on the relationship between the soldier and the
non-combatant
public: I went into a theatre as sober as could be, They gave a
drunk
civilian room, but 'hadn't none for me; They sent me to the gallery or
round
the music-'alls, But when it comes to fighting', Lord! They'll shove me
in
the stalls! ... We aren't no thin red 'heroes, nor we aren't no
blackguards too,
But single men in barracks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduct
isn't all your fancy paints, Why, single men in
barracks don't grow into plaster
saints; ... For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy
that, an' "Chuck him out, the
brute!" But it's "Savior of 'is country" when
the guns begin to
shoot; An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything
you please; An' Tommy isn't
a blooming' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
Kipling moves from this somewhat
lighthearted complaint to outright scorn
with The Last of the Light Brigade:
There were thirty million English who
talked of England's might, There were
twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed
for the night. They had neither food nor
money, they had neither service nor
trade; They were only shiftless soldiers,
the last of the Light Brigade. The
parallel between the plight of Kipling's
troopers and the homeless veterans
in the United States today rings too true to
overlook. In English society,
enlisting in the army had generally been a last
resort before going to the
poor-house, and, as such, soldiers were not held in
high esteem. With
Barrack-Room Ballads, and with later writing, Kipling
established himself as
the "friend of the soldier," and brought new
insight to the public into the
life of the soldier. Kipling also brought a novel
view in regard to the
enemies of the Empire as well. He often portrayed the
indigenous peoples that
fought the British in the same manner as the "noble
savage" as in The Ballad
of East and West, or as unfortunate victims of
circumstance. Referring to the
Sudanese, Kipling writes in Fuzzy-Wuzzy: Then 'ere's
to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an'
the missing an' the kid; Our orders was to break you,
and of course we went
and did. We sloshed you with Martinis, an' it wasn't
hardly fair; But for all
the odds aging you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square. He
also introduces the
concept of respect for the enemies of the Empire, going so
far as to state,
"If we 'hadn't lost some messmates we'd help you to
deplore," implying that,
from the soldier's view, respect for valiant
conduct on the battlefield
transcends any loyalty to the Crown. Another piece,
Piet, also carries
with it the idea that the British soldiers did not carry with
them a great
deal of loyalty to the Empire, rather, they were simply paid to do
a job, and
set about doing it. Along the way, they were impressed by the manner
in which
their adversaries performed their jobs: ...'E does not lose 'is rifle
an' 'e
does not lose 'is seat. I've known a lot o' people ride a dam' sight
worse
than Piet. Kipling moves from admiration to compassion as well, in a
scene
that could have come from our own Civil War: I've heard him crying from
the
ground Like Abel's blood of old, An' skirmished out to look, an' found,
The
beggar nearly cold. I've waited on 'till 'e was dead (Which couldn't help
him
much), But many grateful things Piet said To me for doing such. Not only
does
Kipling write on respect for the Empire's adversaries, but also for
the
"lesser breeds" that he refers to in Recessional. Gunga Din,
arguably
the most famous of all of Kipling's poetry, describes a saintly
water-bearer,
who gives his life tending to the wounded. Kipling even
compares him to Lazarus,
sent down from Heaven to comfort the souls of the
damned.3 Kipling does receive
criticism for his poetry, and much of it is
well-deserved. From a Twenty-first
Century viewpoint, many of his ideas
seem absolutely barbaric. It is true that
much of his poetry does indeed
espouse the ideals of Imperialism, subjugation,
and racism, ideals that, even
in Kipling's time, had manifold opponents. Kipling
would not have received
the honors that he did from the Empire had he not
furthered its ideology, so
the reprobation he has received as Imperial
propagandist is at least somewhat
deserved. To completely condemn him as a relic
of the past, however, is to
deprive ourselves of the truly outstanding work that
he has to offer. Kipling
has given us a unique gift in his stories and poetry of
the Victorian-era
soldier. If the literary world can learn to look beyond the
surface of
Kipling as Imperial apologist, it can gain a great deal of insight
into the
experience of the colonial soldier.
Bibliography
Fitzgerald,
Edward P. "Did France's Colonial Empire Make Economic
Sense?" The Journal
of Economic History. V. 48, n. 2, pp. 373-85. Howe,
Irving (ed.) The
Portable Kipling. New York: Penguin, 1982. Kipling, Rudyard.
Departmental
Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads. New York: Doubleday,
1917.
Newsome, George. "'Recessional' and 'The White Man's Burden,'"
Kipling
Journal. September, 1990, pp. 13-27. Rice, Elizabeth T.
"Fuzzy-Wuz,"
Kipling Journal. December, 1990, pp. 24-6. Whitehead, John.
"The
'Barrack-Room Ballads' as Treasure-Trove," Kipling Journal. March,
1995,
pp. 21-5. 1Newsom, p. 23, states that "The White Man's Burden"
was
included in a pamphlet distributed by the Boston Anti-Imperialist
League.
2Fitzgerald, p. 73, does a complete economic analysis of colonial
empires and
concludes that, at least economically, they were a losing
proposition for the
colonial masters. 3Whitehead, p. 25.