[adx]

He's absolutely right. If you look at the places Britain colonized for any substantial amount of time, virtually all of them turned out pretty good.

True. I'm presuming "substantial" means more than a couple of centuries (witness Africa).

[garbanzo]

Actually the British didn't colonize all that much of Africa - the French and Dutch held more of it. The places in Africa the British held for a while (Rhodesia, South Africa, Keyna, and a few other places) generally are much better than places that were held by the French or Dutch or Germans, Belgians, etc.