Why haven't the former French colonies been as successful, overall, as the former British colonies?

In general the former British colonies do better than former colonies of other nations. This is because the British would come in and improve the colony. The British would bring Western medicin, the railroad, the English language, books and literacy, the telegraph, and western style governments. The other nations would just enter, enslave the population, drain the country of resources, and leave or be forced out. The British set up their colonies to survive after they left. Other nations just exploited them.

As if the British didn’t exploit? And force their ways on people? Not everyone is thankful to the British, and I have an issue with the OP’s use of the word successful.

The USA has been a disappointment.

You take over a quarter of the Earth, some of those areas are going to end up all right by any definition I guess.

Handy map shows many I wasn’t aware of as well. It appears to be a mixed bag if you compare it with French colonies (which doesn’t want to link correctly, so see it below) the only difference appears to be the French had a lot of African colonies. Maybe you were thinking of specific island colonies near the US?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anachronous_map_of_the_All_French_Empire_(1534_-1970).png

The British were pretty good about killing off and outbreeding natives in their most “successful” (major) ex-colonies: Canada, USA, Australia. Don’t forget Bangladesh was a British colony, and it’s right near the bottom on human development. Belize ain’t in the best shape either, and I haven’t even mentioned Africa yet.

Catholicism.