I keep hearing this assertion that as a colonial power the US was allegedly the most benevolent of the bunch, launching free public education, paving roads & building modern infrastructure, and even teaching muh democracy to the locals. (And in the Filipinos' case the Americans were oh-so-kind that they even willingly planned Philippine independence & granted it in 1946! Something they didn't even do for Puerto Rico and the others.)
Were there any other colonial empires (British, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, etc.) who were this "kind" to any of their colonies, in theory or in practice?
PS. By "any of their colonies" I mean the ones where they came in primarily as occupiers of some kind, not as permanent settlers—in other words, not settler colonies, like colonial America, Australia, or Canada … and just on the record, I do think this perception of the US being a benevolent coloniser is at the very least rather overrated, as it still is not above underhanded, colonial-in-all-but-name practices, like total educational indoctrination, invasions & commercial domination in Latin America, etc.
Every positive thing you attribute to the Americans could be said of the English. That said, the reality for the American and English empires was of empire, which in the end is by its nature about domination.
I'd be happy to answer your questions about the American project in the Philippines, but I raise these points to address first your premise that it was that benevolent. The balancing of human suffering versus benefit is often a futile thing to calculate, but the hundreds of thousands dead from the American pacification of the archipelago must give us pause.
The speech of Joseph Chamberlain, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, at the annual dinner of the Royal Colonial Institute on March 31, 1897 lays out the colonial mission of the British Empire in the hight of the Neo-colonial era. The British saw themselves as the protectors of the "uncivilized people" of the world. It was their responsibility to bring education, infrastructure, and Christianity to the people of the world. Generally this was a moral justification for the economic aspects of imperialism, but it did reflect in policy making. The South Africa act of 1909 shows that the British took great effort to avoid creating laws based on racial lines. It stipulated that the laws applied equally to all people of the colony. However in practice, legal representation only fully applied to people who met property requirements which could only reasonably be met by British settlers and well off Boers. British administration of colonies also depended greatly on the administration. In many cases, they relied on local rule which allowed for much of the same administration as the area had experienced before colonization. The British often took efforts to educate the colonial leaders in ways of making more effective colonies. Two of the Kings of Iraq studied at prestigious London public schools as teenagers and many of the elites of British India were educated at schools like Oxford or Cambridge. While the British were far from constantly benevolent, there was at least theoretically a pretence of improvement and equality.