Thoden van Velzen was born on 5 April 1933 in
Vlissingen. His father was a coxswain in the
merchant navy and teacher at the Rijksnormaalschool in the city of
Deventer. His ancestors are Protestant pastors from the neighbourhood of
Emden in
East-Frisia, which is now part of the German federal state of
Lower Saxony. In the
Second World War he moved together with his parents and siblings to
Utrecht because of the German
Heer declaring the city of Vlissingen and its surrounds as
Sperrgebiet. He finished his secondary school in the Indonesian city of
Batavia (now
Jakarta) and later in Vlissingen. After three years of military service, he began his study of sociology at the
University of Amsterdam In 1966, he obtained his
doctorate under professor A.J.F. Köbben with a thesis titled: "Politieke beheersing in de Djuka maatschappij. Een studie van een onvolledig machtsoverwicht". Thoden van Velzen wrote his last article in cooperation with his wife Wilhelmina van Wetering. The book, called
Een Zwarte Vrijstaat in Suriname was published in 2013. Near the end of his life, he was working on
Prophets of Doom: A History of the Aukan Maroons which will be published by
Brill Publishers. He died on 26 May 2020. ==Bibliography==