The White Man's Burden (Research Paper Sample)

The White Man's Burden
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Introduction
White man’s burden is a historical ideology exhibited by some Europeans of having hard tasks and duties of organizing themselves to care for other inferior races around the globe. It is also a view that existed in the imperialism era that civilized and more developed Europeans should bring modernity, civilization, wealth, and advancements to the rest of the world through their domination and leadership. The concept also extended to non-whites, although numerous white groups subjected to the notions were mostly Slavic ethnic groups in the eastern world such as Finns, Arabs, Boers, and Turks. The white man’s burden also created moral justifications of imperialism on many long existing cultures and developed nations such as civilized economies including India and China.
However, this paper discusses the ideological responsibilities by the white man’s burden notion of bringing civilization and Christianity to the developing countries. The perceived responsibilities in some European cultures steered them to colonize the Third World people to over three centuries. This essay also describes the reasons behind the needs of Europeans to transform other civilizations and the results experienced during the process of fulfilling their desires.
According to Pimentel (2003), imperialists in USA understood the ideology as a noble enterprise, which became the tool of racism and Western aspirations of dominating the developing world. The white man’s burden resulted to a tool of white people to encourage and rule the cultural advancements of other people’s culture. The obligation of ruling other people was objected to stabilize their own economic and social dynamics, which resulted to the slavery of many people from the developing world. The idea was obligated to help or assist the developing world whether they needed it or not, although they did much ill than it was perceived (Easterly, 2006).
Moreover, most of the whites felt they have the power more power over the developing societies, especially in social and economical strength. In this case, they found it more essential to advance their leadership structure in other civilizations in order to have the capabilities of controlling and monitoring them. They achieved this notion by forceful introduction of their social, economical, and political culture in other civilized regions in the world. This included the establishment of industrial activities, in which they enslave the people from such civilizations to work for them (Wells, 2011). The whites also used barbaric force to ensure they control the resisting cultural groups, especially the developing parts of the world with rich minerals and resources.
The burden, as perceived in the idea of the white man’s burden was their hard, expensive, and challenging tasks in order to achieve their social and economical objectives. This is includes encountering and overcoming various challenges such as civil resistances and huge costs of administering leadership frameworks in the civilized cultural diversities. The whites used Christianity to expand and advance their cultural, social, and economical intentions of benefiting from the third world countries. For example, Christian missionaries introduced the educational system that was aimed at changing and alienating the original cultures of the people in the third world countries. Christian education also aimed at changing the cultural beliefs and practices of individual societal groups, in order to follow the white man’s teachings. The role of advocating and teaching was a difficult task to the whites, as they had to ensure that other people around the globe understood and believe on their theoretical teachings. In order to support their mission of controlling the world, economically and socially, the whites also settled in the third world countries where they introduced plantations, ranches, and mining industries. These economic activities aimed to support the whites’ operational activities in order to expand and advance their missions on the rest of the world.
As a result, to the ideological scope of the white man’s burden, many of the white population moved energetically to control the poor people in the third world, where many became missionaries, settlers, and colonizers. Their desires to transform other civilizations caused various civil wars with the resisting societies in an effort to control their own territories and culture. Moreover, many people lost their lives when trying to defend their cultural diversity. The movement o...