"Recessional" by Rudyard Kipling (poetry)

Recessional was written in 1897. It refers to the decline of the British Empire and is a caution against hubris. "Lesser breeds" refers to other European imperialist nations.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Recessional
• Rudyard
• Kipling
• poem
• poetry
• reading

[donpearson61]

Thank you. I love Kipling. Although he is unfashionable in post-Empire Britain, I think there is great depth to some of his poetry.

[Tomyris]

@UserOfCommonSense Perhaps he's referring to the nineteenth-century spirit that was obsessed with abolishing the slave trade throughout the world? You seem to be stuck in the eighteenth-century there. At any rate, it's frankly offensive to say that the British Empire made Nazism look like a tea party if you knew anything about either.

[chirectomy]

Excellent recitation. This poem, more than any of his others, reflects Kipling's incredible talent with words and his controversial legacy as an apologist for the British empire. Orwell wrote an excellent piece on Kipling where he defends this particular work from "pansy left circles" for its warning against hubris and affirms Kipling's unique talent, while dismissing his personal legacy and political views. The trendy phrase in libertarian circles now is "peace through superior firepower."

[jonchapple]

@UserOfCommonSense The British Empire was the first modern Western nation-state to abolish slavery, and actively—at great individual cost and inconvenience to itself—patrolled the coast of west Africa for some sixty years impounding American, Spanish and French slave-ships. You can't judge a 19th-century empire by 21st-century standards. Compared to the alternatives, the British didn't do too badly at all.

[lodproductions90]

Genius!

[eclectorsdevices]

"Freedom at Midnight" (Collins and Lapierre) documents the British emancipation of India and the genius and perseverance of Lord Montbatten in saving millions from religious slaughter. After all, they could have just pulled out as we did in Viet Nam

[Halo4Lyf]

@eclectorsdevices Ayup. Got it in one. Do people honestly think that India would be the economic powerhouse it is today if it hadn't been for British Colonialism? I mean, seriously, the 21st Century could very well be an Indian Century (at least the second half of it, because I refuse to cede this half of it to those bastards in the CCP)! And they'd deserve it, too.

[eclectorsdevices]

@Halo4Lyf You could not have expressed my sentiments better. The world is a better place for having had the British Empire. One might look at India, a land where 300 maharajahs controlled 99% of the land and wee constantly warring until the British divided it up like a jigsaw puzzle and kept reasonable peace for 300 years.

[Tomyris]

@UserOfCommonSense It's only that you claim I have 'an inadequate knowledge of history' - actually, I'm studying for a postgraduate degree in Imperial History at Oxford University (having undertaken a BA there too), so I'm just interested as to your qualifications on the matter too!

[UserOfCommonSense]

@Tomyris Any particular reason why you would be interested in that?

[Tomyris]

@UserOfCommonSense And where exactly did you study history then?