The landforms of tropical areas aroused comments by many European travellers from the beginning of the sea voyages of the late 15th century. The great naturalists and travellers of the 19th century set the scene for recording the earliest impressions of the character of tropical landform evolution. Buchanan’s writings on laterite and early studies of fluvial dynamics were among the products of this colonial period. Expansion of the British Empire further east led to comments on granite weathering in Hong Kong and the need for legislation to prevent soil erosion being caused by excessive forest clearance on steep land in the Malay Peninsula. Behrmann took part in a major expedition to the Sepik area and later produced a regional study and the first general accounts of tropical geomorphology in New Guinea. The beginnings of tropical geomorphology thus raised some fundamental questions that have persisted, inadequately answered, throughout subsequent studies.