This book traces the success, failure, survival and abandonment of land settlement initiatives in a variety of locations, environments, and political scales, from the late C19th to the early C21st.

1. Introduction: The Lives and Legacies of Twentieth Century Land Settlement Schemes 2. Conceptualizing the Frontier 3. Policy Mobilities and Land Settlement Schemes: The Emergence of Homesteading in Western Australia 4. Jewish Farm Settlements and the Jewish Colonization Association in Western Canada 5. Soldier Settlement and the Expansion and Contraction of the Bush Frontier in New Zealand in the 1920s 6. Western Australia's Interwar Group Settlement Scheme: A Case Study of the Leeds Group 1923-1938 7. The Hudson's Bay Company's Sponsored Agricultural Settlement at Vermilion, Alberta, Canada 8. Fordland and Belterra Yesterday and Today: A Regional Political Ecology Approach to Failed Projects in the Amazon 9. Physical and Social Engineering in the Dutch Polders: The Case of the Noordoostpolder10. The Elusive Dream of 'Development' on the Agricultural Land Settlement Schemes in Papua New Guinea 11. The Complexities of the Brazilian Amazon Frontier and its Most Recent Chapter: Soybean Expansion in Roraima 12. Conclusion: Relatively Recent Rural Settlement Schemes - Representations, Realities and Results