A national atlas

Published in two installments in 1969 and 1971, the Atlas de Madagascar was the first national atlas of a Francophone tropical African country. It contains sixty color plates and detailed notes equivalent to about 300 pages. Funding came from the University of Madagascar, France’s CNRS, and ORSTOM, while a multidisciplinary team prepared the content. The reviewer praises its extensive, critically presented information but notes uneven cartographic quality and an emphasis on export crops that obscures food production, internal trade, and regional development disparities. The first edition of 1,500 copies sold out quickly. The reviewer recommends a low-cost school atlas, regional atlases, and the gradual transfer of future compilation work to Malagasy geographers.