white man's burden en · NOUN
Etymology
From the poem The White Man's Burden (published 1899) by Rudyard Kipling.
Meanings
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The supposed responsibility of European people to govern and care for their colonial subjects.
Uncle Sam has found his box of tricks heavy, and is having a whiff before going on with his white man's burden to the end.
1902 January 2, The Evening Telegraph, Charters Towers, page 3, column 2:So into at least one state troops poured, a battalion of decent National Service lads, to continue to carry, posthumously as it must be supposed, the White Man's Burden.
1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 609:Germany's appearance as a colonizing power in Africa was greeted in no unfriendly spirit by either France or Great Britain. Each of the latter felt that it was already possessed of about all it could comfortably look after, and both realized that another shoulder under "The White Man's Burden" in the Dark Continent might make the load easier for all.
1915 October 6, Lewis Ransome Freeman, “Germany's Exit From Africa”, in The World's Work, volume XXX:
Translations (4)
sv den vite mannens börda (supposed responsibility of whites) · fr fardeau de l'homme blanc (supposed responsibility of whites) · fi valkoisen miehen taakka (supposed responsibility of whites) · cmn 白人的负担 (supposed responsibility of whites)
wikipedia: Rudyard Kipling · wikipedia: The White Man's Burden