Civilizing mission

The editorial cartoon "The White Man's Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling)" shows John Bull (U.K.) and Uncle Sam (U.S.) delivering the world's people of colour to civilization (Victor Gillam, Judge magazine, 1 April 1899). The people in the basket carried by Uncle Sam are labelled Cuba, Hawaii, Samoa, "Porto Rico", and the Philippines, while the people in the basket carried by John Bull are labelled Zulu, China, India, "Soudan", and Egypt.

The civilizing mission (French: mission civilisatrice) is a political rationale for military intervention and for colonization purporting to facilitate the cultural assimilation of indigenous peoples, especially in the period from the 15th to the 20th centuries.

The civilizing mission was primarily the cultural justification for the colonization in French colonies. In the Russian Empire, it was also associated with the Russian conquest of Central Asia The civilizing mission was also a common justification for the British and German colonialism. The Western colonial powers claimed that, as Christian nations, they were duty bound to disseminate Western civilization to what they perceived as heathen, primitive cultures. It was also applied by the Empire of Japan, which colonized Korea.