Which of the European powers were the kindest to the indigenous peoples of conquered lands?

From the point of view of colonies in Africa, I'd have to say Britain in Egypt in first place, British in West Africa in second, French in West Africa in third, Germany's brief stay in fourth, Britain in Kenya in fifth, Portugal in seventh, The Boer rule in SA eight, Belgium in the Congo in ninth and Italy in the Maghreb in tenth and dead last France in the Maghreb . The colonial Masters in Africa ran the following systems:

Assimilation/Association-French
Paternalism-German/Portugese
Indirect Rule-British

The indirect rule system was the most humane in that it assumed that Africans had a culture worth keeping and respected. The British co-opted the existing indigenous systems save for practices like Human sacrifice, killing twins e.t.c. On the flip side the educated elite were kept away from government and the higher posts in the civil service, their was discrimination and the education systems were primarily left to the hands of the missionaries. Also the British weren't above using forced labour(forced mining of tin during WW2 in Nigeria) and crushing dissent e,g murder of protesting miners in Enugu, arrest of top nationalist rulers.

However, the British rule was relatively civil and they were the first to get the independence ball rolling with Egypt in 1922 and Ghana in 1957. However in settler colonies(colonies with climates suitable to Europeans and with fertile soil) where colonials moved in massive numbers their regime was more brutal as the colonials were often reluctant to part with power and accept African rule, e.g Kenya and Rhodesia. Note the higher brutality by the colonial masters is general to all settler colonies regardless of the power in charge.

The French initially ran the assimilation system which assumed the African was a savage who needed "Gentrification" to be made a Black Evolue. The Four communes of West Africa, Dakar, St Louis, Goree and....(can't remember the last) had the best education in all of colonial Africa and most importantly did not have a limited franchise, its citizens were seen as French and in 1914 Blaise Diagne would be elected to the French chamber of deputies. For comparison Britain would only allow voting in Lagos and Calabar in ***1922. Outside of the communes the rest of the indigenous population were treated as second class citizens, however the indigenous elite in French West Africa had the highest professional ceiling in all of Africa, this contributed to their slow agitation for independence. France however loses major points for their brutal suppression of Abdel Kadir's movement and their general brutality in the Maghreb and to Algeria in particular(they invaded because the Dey of Algiers struck the French Consul with a flywhisk).

Paternalism was the system run by the Germans and the Portugese who assumed that the African was inferior and needed to be guided like a child to civilisation. The Germans to be fair built more schools than the other powers but their stay was too short to judge its impact.

The Portugese saw the colonies as parts of Portugal and were very reluctant to surrender their colonies with I believe most if not all of their colonies having to wage wars of independence.

Belgium's colony in the Congo was viewed as just an extremely large slave plantation. However I'm not as well versed in their colonial practice except for their treatment of its indigenous population which was horrible!