ABSTRACT
Chapter 7, ‘The White Man’s Burden’, concentrates on a particular aspect of the Eurocentric experience. The expression ‘White Man’s Burden’ was popularized at the end of the nineteenth century by the imperial poet and chronicler Rudyard Kipling, to refer to the duty of Europe and the West to pay something back to the colonial world it had dominated for so long, by spreading some of its infinite wisdom and ability around in order to ‘help’ those less fortunate parts of the world. The examples of the Dutch and the Belgian empires – perhaps less familiar to some readers than the French and English versions – are enlisted to provide empirical detail of the carrying of the Burden by the European powers. This central component of Eurocentrism is essentially an overpowering ethnocentric need to declare, define and impose the superiority of the European culture; it is contested here that the White Man’s Burden continues to exist to this day, in the form of overseas development aid, democracy promotion, human rights advocacy and a host of other initiatives.
