Were there any positives to European Colonialism?

Settler colonialism destroys Native populations

Question: Were there any positives to European Colonialism?
Position‹2 of 2: No, imperialism is at its core exploitative
Argument1 of 2›: Settler colonialism destroys Native populations

Settler colonies all over the world resulted in the deaths of huge amounts of indigenous people.

The argument

Not all colonies were built merely to exploit territory economically. Settler colonies, notably in North America and Australia, were built so that large populations of Europeans could have easy access to land, or simply be jettisoned. Australia and Georgia in the United States began their existence as prison colonies, places to send unwanted convicts from which they would hopefully never return to Britain. However, by the mid nineteenth century the United States, Australia, and Canada had become places were Europeans could easily gain access to land unavailable back home. This access to land though came at a deadly price for the indigenous inhabitants of these territories. The settlement of Tasmania is a perfect example of this process. Initially a convict island, in the early nineteenth century former convicts and new British settlers were rapidly spreading across the island. These colonists took over land used by Aboriginal Tasmanians for hunting and inevitably European settlement led to conflict. Colonial offices instituted martial law, essentially allowing settlers to kill Aboriginal Tasmanians without consequence. In an attempt to capture and concentrate all the Aboriginal Tasmanians on the Island colonial officials organised the ‘Black Line,’ a series of planned marches across the island. The local colonial government tried to cleanse almost the entire island of any Aboriginal Tasmanian presence in order to assure European settlement. While Tasmania is a particularly well documented example of settler colonialism, Indigenous people from California to Queensland were removed or killed to make way for European empires.

Premises

[P1]Settler colonies in North America and Australia were built to give Europeans easy access to land, and that access came at a deadly price for indigenous inhabitants who were removed or killed. [P2] Tasmania exemplifies this: settlers took Aboriginal hunting grounds, colonial officials declared martial law allowing killings without consequence, and the 'Black Line' attempted to cleanse the island of Aboriginal Tasmanians—a pattern repeated from California to Queensland. [C] Because settler colonialism systematically destroyed native populations, imperialism is at its core exploitative.

Counter-arguments

Not all settler empires were created like Tasmania. Sites of Imperial settlement are distinct and the story was very different in a place like New Zealand.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise is well supported for the cases it names, but the conclusion generalises from settler colonies to imperialism as such, and the two are different projects: colonies of extraction, trade posts and protectorates involved coercion of other kinds, so the evidence establishes something narrower and more specific than the position states. [Rejecting P2] The two charges also come apart — dispossession and killing are destruction, which is worse than exploitation rather than an instance of it — so the argument proves more than its position claims while leaving the position's own term unargued; and Tasmania is the most extreme documented case, which makes it a poor basis for a claim about the pattern.