Noun

1. The supposed responsibility of European people to govern and care for their colonial subjects

   • 1915: 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. — Lewis Ransome Freeman, "Germany's Exit From Africa", The World's Work XXX:6 October, 1915