There's a loose consensus in the foreign policy community that, relatively speaking, British colonialism was better. And it's backed by various studies. For example,
This could suggest that the British colonial system, which
had what Lee calls "greater levels of indirect rule and the
granting of local-level autonomy to chiefs," was more
beneficial — or at least less damaging — than the more
hands-on French model, which involved a "greater level of
forced labor."
That, I can sort of see if I squint at it. Obviously, the less the colonizers were involved, the better for everybody.
This, however:
>The British typically left behind a better developed local administrative apparatus, legal system, and business network.
is massively overselling it, I think, and is somewhat contradictory to the point that article is making. If the british left it behind, was it local? Or was it simply that the british did not utterly destroy local organizations in some areas they colonized?
It varied. Often times the British established a parallel administrative regime. Because the parallel regime was more functional in terms of the modern world (i.e. more conducive to the demands of commerce) it usually became the predominate facet of a post independence syncretic governance regime. Other times it was setup this way from the start.
How is saying it was better overselling it? I never said it was extraordinary. I never said the countries were better off having been colonized. I simply made that point that 1) the British-style regimes were better relative to those of other colonial powers, and thus 2) what distinguished Britain's approach is instructive (independent of colonialism or imperialism) in terms of which policies are more conducive to political and economic development.
What distinguished British colonialism wasn't that they were simply hands off. In many ways they were much more involved.[1] My original point was that being completely hands off can potentially result in the worst of all possible outcomes in terms of economic development if you're just handing a blank check to whoever holds power at the moment in a country suffering from endemic corruption. You may get what you want, but not all approaches result in the same outcomes for the local population.
The British were at least as racist as the Dutch, French, or Germans; and they all believed the locals to be incapable of achieving and maintaining modern economic and political systems on their own. But for whatever reason the British nonetheless still developed the rule of law in their colonies, and built strong technocracies to a much greater extent than other powers, who were more prone to believe it was a useless and futile endeavor.
[1] The British were more devious. They operated by a more complex playbook, which included installing a local minority group into power on the theory that minority groups would be beholden to Britain while also being more culturally competent and more capable of dealing with prosaic issues. They made a science of it. Other powers were more haphazard or simplistic in their approach.
I still think saying that British left behind a better developed infrastructure is sort of like saying that a burglar left behind a well-stocked fridge. It might be technically true in some cases - but it's mostly just radically misleading.
The British practice of installing a minority as puppet ruler is the root problem of a large number of dysfunctional states, when it comes to sectarian and racial violence.
I also think what you call the 'rule of law' (although this isn't a problem specific to British colonies) was really the rule of decrees, over which the colonized people had no power. I've read that this led to a lot of state dysfunction in post-colonies - the state was set up to rule over a populace that it essentially considered subhuman, so even post-empire, there weren't established structures and traditions for relating and mediating between rulers and ruled (civil society, essentially).
