Sorry Muskrat - but in the context of our discussions of why Reddit mods think you spread misinformation - this is a good example. your comment is known as presentism, whereby the present interpretation of the long history of Mali, and the approaches of French Sudan, can somehow be summarized as a French improvement on a savage culture. This is a common misconception about colonialism, albeit corrected during the 20th century. It's ahistorical and certainly false: that the cultures pre-dating French Sudan were improved by colonization. This portion of West Africa was among the wealthiest and prosperous cultures in the world, responsible for substantial contributions to international trade in the early modern era. Sorry to argue with you, but this is a good example, if I were to pick one. Mods of a worldnews or Mali subreddit would note that the colonial assumption is false. You could counter with the so-called 'rise of the West' argument, noting that the French brought stability and technology to West Africa in 1892. But - as with other colonies - the removal of their wealth and resources was not repaid with anything remotely comparable.