White elephant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the idiom of an ignored truth, see Elephant in the room.
For other uses, see White elephant (disambiguation).
The British East Africa Company came to regard Uganda as a white elephant when i
nternal conflict broke out in 1892 and rendered the company ineffective in admin
istration of the territory.
A white elephant is a possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cos
t, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness. The
term derives from the story that the kings of Siam, now Thailand, were accustom
ed to make a present of one of these animals to courtiers who had rendered thems
elves obnoxious in order to ruin the recipient by the cost of its maintenance. I
n modern usage, it is an object, scheme, business venture, facility, etc., consi
dered without use or value.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 Examples of alleged white elephant projects
3 See also
4 References
5 Further reading
Background[edit]
A white elephant at the Amarapura Palace in 1855.
The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by Southeast Asian monarch
s in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.[2] To possess a white elephant was rega
rded (and is still regarded in Thailand and Burma) as a sign that the monarch re
igned with justice and power, and that the kingdom was blessed with peace and pr
osperity. The opulence expected of anyone that owned a beast of such stature was
great. Monarchs often exemplified their possession of white elephants in their
formal titles (e.g., Hsinbyushin, lit. "Lord of the White Elephant" and the thir
d monarch of the Konbaung dynasty).[3]
White elephants are linked to Hindu cosmology as the mount of Indra, king of the
Vedic deities, is Airavata, a white elephant. White elephants are also intricat
ely linked to Buddhist cosmology: the mount of Sakka's (a Buddhist deity and rul
er of the Tavatimsa heaven) is a three-headed white elephant named Airavata.[3]
Albino elephants exist in nature, usually being reddish-brown or pink.[4]
The tradition derives from tales that associate a white elephant with the birth
of the Buddha, as his mother was reputed to have dreamed of a white elephant pre
senting her with a lotus flower, a common symbol of wisdom and purity, on the ev
e of giving birth.[5] Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protec
ted them from labor, receiving a gift of a white elephant from a monarch was sim
ultaneously a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because the animal was sac
red and a sign of the monarch's favour, and a curse because the recipient now ha
d an expensive-to-maintain animal he could not give away and could not put to mu
ch practical use.
The Order of the White Elephant consists of eight grades of medals issued by the
government of Thailand. There are also white elephants in Nepal.
In the West, the term "white elephant" relating to an expensive burden that fail
s to meet expectations, was popularized following P. T. Barnum's experience with
an elephant named Toung Taloung that he billed as the "Sacred White Elephant of
Burma". After much effort and great expense, Barnum finally acquired the animal
from the King of Siam only to discover that his "white elephant" was actually d
irty grey in color with a few pink spots.[6]

The expressions "white elephant" and "gift of a white elephant" came into common
use in the middle of the nineteenth century.[7] The phrase was attached to "whi
te elephant swaps" and "white elephant sales" in the early twentieth century.[8]
Many church bazaars held white elephant sales where donors could unload unwanted
bric-a-brac, generating profit from the phenomenon that one man s trash is another
man s treasure. Many organizational and church fairs still use the term today. In
general use a white elephant usually refers to an item that s not useful (decorativ
e) but may be expensive and odd.
Examples of alleged white elephant projects[edit]
De Witte Olifant, (The White Elephant), one of the ships of Cornelis Tromp. Pain
ting in the Trompenburg
Numerous airport projects including
Ciudad Real Airport, just south of Madrid[9]
Castelln-Costa Azahar Airport north of Valencia and the Huesca-Pirineos Airport,
both currently have no scheduled commercial flights.[10]
Montral-Mirabel International Airport, North America's largest airport[11]
Lambert-St. Louis International Airport runway 11/29 [12] [13][14]
The New South China Mall was the largest mall in the world, conceived to accommo
date 100,000 visitors a day, but because of poor planning it has been 99% empty
since opening. [15]
The U.S. Navy's Alaska-class cruisers were described as "white elephants" becaus
e by the time they were commissioned the Japanese heavy cruisers that they were
designed to hunt down had already been destroyed.[16]
Hughes H-4 Hercules (or "Spruce Goose"), often called Howard Hughes' white eleph
ant before and during the Senate War Investigating Committee. Hughes' associate
Noah Dietrich called it a "plywood white elephant".[17]
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is being increasingly viewed as a "white elephant"
by the U.S. military, due to its price of $380 billion for nearly 2,500 aircraf
t in three differing versions, to equip nine nations' air forces, along with low
er performance than originally anticipated. [18] The lifetime cost of the F-35 p
rogram has since been estimated by the Pentagon at $1.45 trillion.[19]
Several stadium projects, including
The Stadio delle Alpi .[20][21][22]
Olympic Stadium in Montreal [23] The French-language term "gros bol de toilette"
has also been applied as a pejorative.
The stadiums built in South Africa for the 2010 FIFA World Cup [24][25][26][27]
Christ's Hospital railway station was constructed at great expense in 1902 to ac
commodate Christ's Hospital school, a large independent school that had relocate
d from London to the West Sussex countryside. It was envisaged that the station
would be busy due to the 850 pupils regularly using it, and also the foreseen we
stward expansion of the nearby town of Horsham. However, the railway company did
not realise that the school is a boarding school,[citation needed], and the dev
elopment of Horsham did not materialise.
The Temple of Olympian Zeus in ancient Greece was intended to be the biggest tem
ple of its time, but due to its high construction costs and human power demands,
the temple remain unfinished for many centuries. Its construction was finally c
ompleted during the Roman times 638 years after the project had begun.[28][addit
ional citation needed]
The Sagrada Famlia church in Barcelona has been viewed for many years as a monume
ntal white elephant.[29] Construction started in 1882 and the church still remai
ns under construction. The lack of funds, the death of the architect Antoni Gaud,
the Spanish Civil War and the complexity of the project led to delays and inter
ruptions over the years. Completion is not expected until at least 2026, althoug
h it functions as a church and tourist attraction in the meantime.
The City of Culture of Galicia in Spain is a complex of buildings designed by a
group of architects led by the American architect Peter Eisenman, exceed its ori
ginal planned budget by four times, and in 2013 fourteen years after the project
set up, construction was halted.The final two planned buildings out of six rema

in unfinished.[30]
Several incomplete or poorly functioning dams, such as the Bujagali dam (Uganda)
[31] and Epupa dam (Angola).[32] Most were constructed by foreign companies in t
he interest of foreign aid.[33] Although the buildings do not meet expectations,
if construction is completed or restarted, they could still provide a contribut
ion to the local population.[34]
Brisbane, Australia's Clem Jones Tunnel. The operating company Rivercity motorwa
ys posted a A$1.67 billion loss in 2010, largely due to overly optimistic traffi
c projections. Despite cutting tolls by up to 50% traffic volumes are less than
half of the projected 60,000 vehicles a day.[35] However it is expected that mot
orists will become accustomed to this project much like other infrastructure pro
jects, such as the Gateway Bridge, that were once considered white elephants.
The Russky Bridge was built across the Eastern Bosphorus strait, to serve the As
ia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting that took place in 2012.[36] The bridge
connects the mainland part of Vladivostok with the meeting venue on Russky Islan
d. The world's then-longest cable-stayed bridge terminates in a dead end on the
island
whose population of 5,000 lack access to telephones, public lighting and
mains water
and was completed at a cost believed to have exceeded $1 billion USD
: the total bill has not been published.[37]
The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway (CGB), a public transit project in East Anglia,
whose high construction costs far exceed even the most optimistic projections o
f revenue. Because the 50,000 tons of concrete used to build the busway is itsel
f white, the project is often referred to as a white elephant.[38][39]
See also[edit]
Bridge to nowhere
Pork barrel
References[edit]
Jump up ^ "Home : Oxford English Dictionary". oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved
25 April 2013.
Jump up ^ "Royal Elephant Stable". Thai Elephant Conservation Center.
^ Jump up to: a b Leider, Jacques P. (December 2011). "A Kingship by Merit and C
osmic Investiture". Journal of Burma Studies 15 (2).
Jump up ^ Morelle, Rebecca (20 March 2009). "Science & Environment | Pink elepha
nt is caught on camera". BBC News. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
Jump up ^ "The Birth of Buddha | The New Kadampa Tradition (la)". Kadampa.org. Re
trieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ Harding, Les (1999). Elephant Story: Jumbo and P.T. Barnum Under the B
ig Top. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 110. ISBN 0786406321.
Jump up ^ Brown, Peter Jensen. "Two-and-a-half Idioms - the History and Etymolog
y of "White Elephants"". Early Sports 'n' Pop-Culture History Blog. Retrieved 25
June 2014.
Jump up ^ Brown, Peter Jensen. "Two-and-a-Half More Idioms - "White Elephants" a
nd Yankee Swaps". Early Sports 'n' Pop-Culture History Blog. Retrieved 3 July 20
14.
Jump up ^ "The white elephants that dragged Spain into the red". BBC. 27 July 20
12.
Jump up ^ Govan, Fiona (5 October 2011). "Spain's white elephants
how country's
airports lie empty". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 7 January 2013.
Jump up ^ Krauss, Clifford (3 October 2004). "End of Era Near in Montreal for Wh
ite-Elephant Airport". New York Times. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ "The Expansion Story". Archived from the original on 5 June 2007. Retr
ieved 25 July 2007.
Jump up ^ "Historical Operation Statistics by Class for the Years: 1985 2006". Arc
hived from the original on 11 July 2007. Retrieved 25 July 2007.
Jump up ^ "New $1 billion runway opens this week, but it's not needed anymore".
USA Today. 11 April 2006. Retrieved 25 July 2007.
Jump up ^ Taylor, Adam (5 March 2013). "New South China Mall: Tour A Ghost Mall"
. Business Insider. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
Jump up ^ Morison, Samuel Loring; Morison, Samuel Eliot; Polmar, Norman (2005).
Illustrated Directory of Warships of the World: From 1860 to the Present. ABC-CL

IO. p. 85. ISBN 1-85109-857-7.

Jump up ^ Howard Hughes: Hell's Angel By Darwin Porter. Blood Moon Productions,
Ltd., 2005 ISBN 0-9748118-1-5 p. 715
Jump up ^ "F-35 looking more like white elephant". Agence France-Presse. 14 Janu
ary 2011. Retrieved 17 April 2011.
Jump up ^ Shalal-Esa, Andrea (29 March 2012). "Exclusive: U.S. sees lifetime cos
t of F-35 fighter at $1.45 trillion". Reuters. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
Jump up ^ Frawley, Stephen; Adair, Daryl (2014). Managing the Football World Cup
. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 2013. ISBN 978-1-137-37366-3.
Jump up ^ Neilson, Owen (10 October 2011). "The White Elephants of Italy".
Jump up ^ Guardian Online - Guardian Article regarding Stadio delle Alpi March 2
006
Jump up ^ CBC News (19 December 2006). "Quebec's Big Owe stadium debt is over".
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 25 June 2008.
Jump up ^ "Who Really Wins?
Leviathan Films". Whoreallywins.com. Retrieved 7 Jan
uary 2013.
Jump up ^ "Mandela Stadium: 'White elephant' after World Cup?". Thegrio.com. 28
June 2010. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ "World Cup: Are South Africa's stadiums white elephants? The Sentinel"
. Tucsonsentinel.com. 7 July 2010. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ David Smith in Johannesburg (11 July 2010). "World Cup 2010: Sceptics
drowned out by another rainbow nation miracle". The Guardian (London). Retrieved
14 April 2011.
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ors". Faculty.nipissingu.ca. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
Jump up ^ "Review of La Sagrada Famlia and other religious site reviews in Barcel
ona". Frommers.com. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
Jump up ^ "Spain's extravagant City of Culture opens amid criticism". The Guardi
an. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
Jump up ^ Peter Bosshard (23 June 2002). "Bujagali dam as white elephant". Londo
n: Guardian. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ "Dams as white elephants" (PDF). Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ "Dams as white elephants 2". Internationalrivers.org. Retrieved 14 Apr
il 2011.
Jump up ^ "Continuation of white elephants could still provide some relief". Sud
antribune.com. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ Lee, Tracy (1 September 2010). "Rivercity's $1.56bn write-off takes it
s toll". Theaustralian.com.au. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ "Russian bridge of trouble opens to world". The New Zealand Herald.
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Further reading[edit]
Jeffrey A. McNeely; Paul Spencer Sochaczewski (1995). Soul of the Tiger: Searchi
ng for Nature s Answers in Southeast Asia. Contains a chapter on the white elephan
t in Southeast Asia.
Paul Spencer Sochaczewski (2009). The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen. Contains a l
ong chapter on how Burmese generals tried to use the white elephant to consolida
te power, also looks at the cosmological origins of the animal.
Categories: English-language idiomsPublic choice theoryMetaphors referring to el
ephants