>bubu, i should have expected you to make a statement like

what? (heh) was it too harsh?

>if you and your occupier are both rational actors, and their goal is to harvest a renewable resource (tea, labor, food, salt), it is in their best interest to develop your nation in the same way you oughta to; both of you would want to make your nation as economically effective as possible and so either of you would.

I'm sorry, but to me colonization isn't a mere economic issue - and neither is it to the colonized people.
Popular british (and every other nation's) tactics did not involve the peaceful, symbiotic, utopically splendid coexistence of conqueror and conquered.
You could argue by a long stretch, I suppose, that the Brits did some good when they forcefully abolished Sati - but then I'm not so sure whether it isn't the unbearable presumptuousness of the conqueror to do away with everything "uncivilized" he encounters. It also brings technology and infrastructure- at least where it matters for the colonial power. But at what prize?
The rest, however, I can't bring myself to see in the same warm colours as you apparently do - colonialism is always violent no matter where, no matter who has a go at it (Herero hello?), involves the exploitation of the colonized people (tea, anyone?), the imposition of the colonizer's values and the plundering of resources from the colony.
Events from as early as ancient Egyptian and Greece times through the course of human history cast quite the gloomy light on colonialism in my book.

>tens of millions of indians make more than 40k usd each year.

and Africa is a continent so in turmoil that it mostly serves as an unlimited supply for donation-evoking pictures of "biafra kids" and is best forgotten otherwise.

>niall ferguson

uh. I've read Empire (among other publications of his) and I find it quite...uuuh. His euphoric praise for British hegemony ("no negative comments please!") was flabbergasting. To be honest ("you should have expected me to make a statement like this"), his being a friend of lofty, highly speculative and overly strong theses doesn't really appeal to me. Wilhelminic Germany as the holy innocence of history? England to blame for World War One (both: "The Pity of War")? Oh please.
I'm personally more a friend of Philip C. C. Huang (wrote intelligently on Britain/China), Dipesh Chakrabarty (has an excellent short writ on European colonialism leading to a constant eulogizing of griha and grihalakshmi by the Hindu Bengali nationalists; "Provincializing Europe" is great) and Jurgen Osterhammel ("Historiology beyond The Nation-State") when it comes to an analysis of colonialism.