Two Excellent Cinema Classics Which Explore Poet Rudyard Kipling’s Relationship with British Imperialism and Freemasonry. The Films are Based on Famous Works by Kipling and Feature Actors Portraying Him.
The Man Who Would be King
https://m.ok.ru/video/1104943647412
The Man Who Would Be King (1975) Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer
The film’s director John Huston was the son of actor Walter Huston who portrayed arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes in the 1936 epic Rhodes of Africa.
Kipling, known as the “Poet of the Empire,” was a close admirer and friend of Cecil Rhodes, a prominent figure in the British Empire and founder of the Rhodes Trust and the Rhodes Scholarship. Both were noted Freemasons. Kipling served as a Trustee of the Rhodes Trust.
Two British former soldiers decide to set themselves up as kings in Kafiristan, a land where no white man has set foot since Alexander the Great.
Gunga Din
https://tubitv.com/movies/100021232/gunga-din
Starring: Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr,.Sam Jaffe, Eduardo Ciannelli, and Joan Fontaine
Helped by their valiant water carrier, three British soldiers face off against a Thuggee religious cult on a dangerous mission in 1880s India.
Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717-1927, by Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs
They built some of the first communal structures on the empire’s frontiers. The empire’s most powerful proconsuls sought entrance into their lodges. Their public rituals drew dense crowds from Montreal to Madras. The Ancient Free and Accepted Masons were quintessential builders of empire, argues Jessica Harland-Jacobs. In this first study of the relationship between Freemasonry and British imperialism, Harland-Jacobs takes readers on a journey across two centuries and five continents, demonstrating that from the moment it left Britain’s shores, Freemasonry proved central to the building and cohesion of the British Empire.
The organization formally emerged in 1717 as a fraternity identified with the ideals of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, such as universal brotherhood, sociability, tolerance, and benevolence. As Freemasonry spread to Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and Africa, the group’s claims of cosmopolitan brotherhood were put to the test. Harland-Jacobs examines the brotherhood’s role in diverse colonial settings and the impact of the empire on the brotherhood; in the process, she addresses issues of globalization, supranational identities, imperial power, fraternalism, and masculinity. By tracking an important, identifiable institution across the wide chronological and geographical expanse of the British Empire, Builders of Empire makes a significant contribution to transnational history as well as the history of the Freemasons and imperial Britain.
2:03 pm on March 27, 2025
