The cartoon “The white man’s burden (Apologies to Kipling)” published by Judge, Judge
Publishing Company, New York, 1899 drawn by Victor Gillam clearly represents the
imperialism era. Imperialism is a word that stands for the set of practices involving the
extension of authority and control of one state or people over another or a political
doctrine that justifies the domination of one people or state over others. On this cartoon,
we can see two men. The first one is wearing white and red which are the colors of the
cross on Grand Britain flag. The second one is wearing a stripped red and white pants
and a hat also stripped with those colors and stars on a blue background, elements that
reminds us of the United States’ flag. Both men are carrying a basket filled with
uncivilized people. On one hand, the people carried by the British man, as we can see
labelled on the cartoon, are from India, Africa and China which are territories where
Britain had colonies or in the case of India that was as a whole a colony. On the other
hand, the man representing the U.S is carrying people from Africa, Cuba, Hawaii and
the Filipins. Here, it is important to highlight the fact that Puerto Rico, Cuba and the
Filipins are territories that belonged to the Spanish Empire prior to signing the Treaty of
Paris that concluded with the Spanish-American War in 1898.1 The way this two men
are using is defined by rocks labelled with words such as “ignorance”, “vice”,
“ignorance”, “oppression”, “slavery”… representing what those people got through once
colonized. Also, on the first step of this way, located at the bottom on the right, we can
see the word “barbarism” and at the very end a woman sitting on a throne with the word
civilization written above her. Thus, we understand that the U.S and Britain already
know the way until civilization and they are colonizing to transmit their knowledge to
1 Glenda Gilmore and Thomas Sugrue, These United States: A Nation in the Making, 1890 to the present,
(W.W Norton & Company, 2015), 48.
