Bonno Thoden van Velzen

Hendrik Ulbo Eric "Bonno" Thoden van Velzen (5 April 1933 – 26 May 2020) was a Dutch anthropologist, Surinamist and Africanist.

Life 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.