The French colonial had come out to Indo-China at a time when white men still deserved to be masters of the world by virtue of their courage, their stamina, their energy, their pride in their own race, their sense of their own strength, their superiority, their lack of scruples.
No...they never did, no more than the settlers of the US "deserved" to take land from the indigenous peoples and put it to a "better" use, no more than you yourself "deserve" to have your own resources taken from you and "put to better use" by someone else. There is an anti colonialist argument cast for you in capitalist terms.
