While that is true, it is not something specific to Verne but it is how everybody was educated at that time. Verne was far more sympathetic towards non-Europea

While that is true, it is not something specific to Verne but it is how everybody was educated at that time. Verne was far more sympathetic towards non-European people that the vast majority of the Europeans of his time and many non-Europeans had very positive roles in his writings, even if their roles were less important than of the main European heroes. There were even a few strong female characters in some of his novels, even if most had male protagonists. Therefore I think that it is stupid to insist on this. Only in the context of describing racism of the entire society of the 19th century it makes sense to give examples from Verne, among many others, to illustrate the way of thinking of that time. Discussing this only in Verne can give the impression that he was worse than others, when in fact he was much better from this point of view. He certainly was not an "apostle of colonization" and even the article recognizes that many of his works are very critical of colonization. The main thing that can be reproached to Verne is that he tended to be much more indulgent about French colonization than about British colonization, under the mistaken assumption that in the French colonies abuses happen much less frequently than in the British colonies (though the British appear to have indeed been the worst, judging after the very small percentages of surviving natives in the British colonies in comparison with the colonies of all other countries). As a child I have read a very large number of the novels of Jules Verne. While there were a few passages where he expressed a naive optimism about the possible benefits of bringing "civilization" to some remote parts of the Earth, those have made very little impression on me. What I have retained because I was impressed by them have been exactly the parts where the European colonization was criticized and where various natives had very positive images. So any article author that describes Jules Verne as an "apostle of colonization" cannot have done due diligence in really reading his works.