Papers of Sir Geoffrey Evans

Diaries covering Evans' agricultural service in India, Australia, Trinidad, Fiji and New Guinea, 1906, 1909-1963 (56 volumes). Letters to Lady Evans, 1918-1919, 1939, 1947, and reports, broadcast scripts and articles, 1930-1955.

Sir Geoffrey Evans, CIE (1919), Kt (1934), was born in 1883 in Lancashire, England. He was educated at Bury, and Downing College, Cambridge (he received a Diploma in Agriculture in 1905).

After working for a short period in the Agricultural Department of the University of Cambridge, Evans entered the Indian Agricultural Service (1906-1923). He held the posts of Principal of the Agricultural College in Nagpore (1906-1907), Deputy Director of Agriculture for the Central Provinces (1907-1917), and Director of Agriculture in Bengal (1919-1922).

During the First World War, Evans joined the Indian Army Reserve of Officers and saw service in India and Mesopotamia. In 1918 he was appointed Director of Agriculture to the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force (1918-1919). He attained the rank of Colonel and was demobilised in 1919 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Evans joined the Empire Cotton-Growing Corporation in ca. 1922, and between 1923 and 1926 was attached to the Queensland Government in Australia as Director of Cotton Culture. From 1927 to 1938 he was Principal of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad, a post which involved work in Australia, Fiji and New Guinea.

Evans was a Member of the British Guiana Refugee Commission (1939), a Member of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa (1943-1944), and Chairman of the Commission for Settlement in British Guiana and British Honduras (1947-1948). He was also involved with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, as Economic Botanist (1938-1954) and acting Director (1941-1943). Evans died in August 1963.

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Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Administrative/Biographical History compiled with reference to Who Was Who .

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room.

Listed as no. 12 in Manuscript Collections (excluding Africana) in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, compiled by Louis B. Frewer (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1970).

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