The most "humane" colonial empire?

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Originally posted by Justinian

Man, I need to get contacts or something.  Sorry about that Omar, misread your question completely.

Looking at the options available, one has to base one's decision
on which of these empires did the most for their subject peoples. 
In that sense its easy, the romans did more for their subjects than any
of the other empires in my opinion.  More for western europe than
what was to become the eastern empire though.  A simple example;
How many indian kings/queens of England were there?  Same
applies to France, Spain etc.  That was the reason the roman
empire lasted so long, the subject peoples became romans and fought for
the empire like any native of italy, eventually more than italian
natives.  Eventually the former subject peoples were at times the
rulers of the entire empire; Trajan and Hadrian from spain, many
emperors of the third century weren't native romans.

In fairness though, I don't think we can compare the Romans to the
colonial powers in that way. The Romans were often conquering
civilisations whose culture outshined their own (e.g. Greek) in certain
ways. By contrast, the Europeans enjoyed a technological advancement
over their foreign subjects. Plus, the Roman Empire lasted (excluding
Byzantium) nearly 1,000 years. British rule over all of India didn't
quite make it to the 100 year mark. Plus Europe was geographically much
further from its colonial Empire than Rome was from its foreign
provinces.