The White Woman’s Gaze

Abstract

The nineteenth century was, perhaps, the greatest period of travel writing. Under Queen Victoria, Britain became the greatest power in the world with political and economic control over her colonies spread all over the globe, from Asia to Africa and the Caribbean Islands. Many British travellers and missionaries went to the colonies to take up what Kipling called the “White Man’s Burden” - to “civilize” the “barbaric” races of Asia and Africa. Kipling urged them to take on the responsibility of ruling the Empire in his poems:

Take up the White Man’s Burden -

Send forth the best ye breed -

Go, bind your son’s in exile

To serve your captive’s need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild -

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

-   The White Man’s Burden, 1899