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"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and the British Empire
Late-Victorian author Rudyard Kipling published The Jungle Book, a collection of short stories including "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," in 1894. At the time Kipling was writing, the British Empire was the largest empire in history; it was described as “the empire on which the sun never sets,” because the sun was always shining on at least one of its many colonies from around the world.
European expansion really began in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, also known as the Age of Discovery, during which Portugal and Spain sought new territories to bring under their control. These ventures were generally centered on trade or else focused on the “discovery” of new lands rich in resources that could be expropriated and sent back to the center of the empire. Eager to follow in Portugal and Spain’s footsteps, Britain started to establish its own colonies and trade networks in America and Asia. Britain continued to accumulate colonies until, after a series of wars with France and the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they became the dominant colonial presence in North America. Britain began expanding its control over India after their victory in the Battle of Plassey, and took direct control in 1858 following the liquidation of the East India Company, at which point control passed to the British crown. Britain continued to expand its empire worldwide until, by 1920, it covered 24% of the Earth's total land area.
By the nineteenth century, it became increasingly necessary for Britain to find a way to justify the obvious violence involved in maintaining a global empire. Thus, by the late nineteenth century it became fashionable to conceive of imperialism not as a financial venture but as a “civilizing mission.” Such rhetoric can be found in most of Kipling’s works, including the short stories in The Jungle Book. In "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," a valiant mongoose who is taken out of the wilderness by a British family triumphs over a group of evil cobras who are symbolically linked to the teachings of Hinduism. The story serves as a metaphor for the benefits of colonialism because the benevolent, Western powers triumph over the sinister and archaic East. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"'s racist depiction of the benefits of colonialism anticipates Kipling’s famous 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden,” which argued that it was a white person’s duty to “civilize” non-white people. An understanding of the British Empire is essential to the reader’s understanding of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" because it provides the necessary backdrop for the short story’s racist and colonialist messaging.
