 The literary critic Sharon Hamilton, writing in 1998, called the 1890 "Mandalay" "an appropriate vehicle for imperial thought".She argued that Kipling "cued the Victorian reader to see it as a 'song of the Empire'" by putting it in the "border ballad" song tradition where fighting men sang of their own deeds, lending it emotional weight.She further suggested that since Kipling assembled his 1892 "Barrack-Room Ballads" (including "Mandalay") in that tradition during a time of "intense scrutiny" of the history of the British ballad, he was probably well aware that "Mandalay" would carry "the message of .. submission of a woman, and by extension her city, to a white conqueror".