According to Kipling's poem of the same name, what was the "White Man's Burden?"

Although Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” never explicitly defines the white man’s burden, we can clearly see what that burden is from the poem.  The burden that the white man must bear is the burden of trying to civilize the non-white people in the countries that make up his empire.  The white man has to leave his home country to go elsewhere and try to pull these people up into the modern world even though they do not want to be helped and even though they are so ignorant and lazy that they will destroy everything he tries to do.

According to Kipling, taking an empire is a selfless act on the part of the white man.  The white man’s burden is the burden of helping all the people in this empire.  Kipling tells us in the first stanza that the white men will have to “wait in heavy harness” on these people.  In the next stanza, he says that the white men will have “to seek another’s profit/and work another’s gain.  This is because all of the work that the white man is doing will help others.  The white man will be making “ports (he) shall not enter” and “roads (he) shall not tread.”  All of this is being done for the colonized people, not for the white man.

As the white man works for “another’s gain,” that other person or group of people will not appreciate his efforts.  They will resent the white man for forcing them to change their ways.  They will hate him for bringing them out of “bondage” and their “loved Egyptian night” as he tries to bring them “(Ah, slowly!) toward the light.”  Moreover, all of the white man’s work is likely to be wasted.  He will work to try to improve the colonized people, but when the “goal is nearest,” he will have to “watch sloth and heathen Folly/Bring all (his) hopes to nought.”

All of this, then, makes up the white man’s burden.  Overall, his burden is that he has to leave his own home and go out to other countries to work hard to help other people who do not want to be helped and who are so lazy and ignorant that they will ruin his efforts.  The white man’s burden is the burden of trying to help the non-white people who populate the empire that he has conquered.