This book is a comprehensive survey of the investigations into soil and land resources undertaken by members of Colonial Departments of Agriculture and later by members of the organisations that were created to provide help to the newly independent colonies. The early work of Colin Trapnell in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) is sympathetically reviewed. Hugh Bunting (lately Professor of Agricultural Botany at Reading University) described Trapnell as ‘One of the giants who strode over Africa in yesteryear’ and the author describes him (with Milne) as the ‘greatest tropical field scientists of all time’. The Colonial Office got Trapnell to train 12 ecologists/soil scientists who later continued with similar work in East and West Africa. Trapnell also established a fund at Oxford University to train African ecologists and soil scientists: this fund is still active to this day.

Professor Young does not only detail the surveys undertaken and the organizations involved (the Land Resources Development Centre made ‘the greatest contribution to geographical knowledge produced by the United Kingdom’) – he also considers what use was made of the investigations and what were the benefits.

The scientific advances made in the field of resource surveys and development planning after the Second World War are also scrupulously reviewed. Over 80 scientists were consulted and the results ordered under the following headings: Setting the Task; Preparing the Ground; East Africa; West Africa; Biographical Interlude; Central and Southern Africa; Nyasaland-Malawi; The West Indies and Central America; South Asia; South-East Asia and the Pacific; Maps, Rocks, Climate, Plants and Land Use; Soil Erosion and Conservation; Retrospect: the Surveyors; and Retrospect: the Surveys.

This remarkable and valuable book is a key source of references (over 370 citations) for anyone concerned with third world development.