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Thin on the Ground: A review and reflections T. Francis Shaxson Review of Thin on the Ground: Land Resource Survey in British Overseas Territories by Anthony Young (Memoir Club, Stanhope, UK, 2007). ISBN 978-1-84104-175-9. 230 pages.
REVIEW
Anthony Young's Thin on the Ground is a good read even if at the outset you have only a passing interest in the subject of surveying and mapping landscapes and soils in the tropics. By the end, you may wish that you too had been able to take part and to have found ''that the nature of the work itself was the main incentive and reward.... The first reward was the experience of field survey, the excitement of being able to study landscapes about which no-one had written before.... The second aspect, common to all Colonial servants, was the opportunity to be of service to the peoples of Third World countries" (p. 179).
Young elegantly interweaves information on the early history, the practitioners, personal experiences, purposes, designs, practicalities, and results of land resource surveying into a multitaceted record of what was achieved, most prolifically between 1950 and 1990, by the staff of the United Kingdom Government's Land Resources Division. His 40 years' experience-of fieldwork, research, consultancy, and teaching-overlaps with and extends beyond much of this period.
Not only is the book valuable as a record of what was done and how, but it is also a recognition of and homage to those who, though "thin on the ground," greatly increased and systematized our knowledge of landtbrms and their clothing of soils in the British overseas territories. They were the forerunners of and collaborators with the national staff who now continue the work in their own countries. Together with comparable...