Comment by wisty

Was he really? The White Man's Burden isn't that ambiguous. Not now, and not even when it was written.

It was about the Philippine-American war. 2 days after publication in America, it was read in the Senate to argue for the US to end the war.

One of his more famous stories, The Man Who Would Be King is about two white men who manage to convince an Afghani tribe they're gods. It becomes undone, when one tries to marry one of the women, she attacks him drawing blood, and the tribe's priest declares he is "Neither god nor devil but a man!" (at which point one is brutally killed, and the other manages to flee). It could almost be read as an analogy for colonialism - the white men might have had a technological edge, and used shock and awe to take over, but as the natives catch on to what's happening, the risk of backlash and revolution grows.

Kipling wasn't firmly against colonialism, but he was a savvy (sometimes cynical) realist. Most colonials were pretty cynical about it.