Reading Kipling and Hobson Against Each Other

The idea

Read the two texts at Fordham. Source read: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/kipling.asp and https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1902hobson.asp. Kipling's poem of eighteen ninety-nine, written for the American conquest of the Philippines, says "Take up the White Man's burden" and describes the conquered as "half-devil and half-child". The burden is the conqueror's: thankless toil for people who will hate him. Hobson's book of nineteen oh-two answers with economics. Production outruns consumption at home, so "more capital exists than can find remunerative investment", and "it is this economic condition of affairs that forms the taproot of Imperialism." Set them against each other on three points. Motive: Kipling says duty, Hobson says surplus capital seeking outlets. Beneficiary: Kipling says the conquered, Hobson says the investors who use their governments to annex. Remedy: Kipling has none, since the burden is permanent; Hobson says raise home consumption and the surplus disappears. The anchor sides with neither wholly: its motive is rivalry and prestige, which Hobson's economics underrates and Kipling's duty conceals.