Explorers & agents · 1939–2017
Svend E. Holsoe
Historian of the Vai and the Condo Confederation; founder of the field of Liberian ethnohistory.
Biography
Holsoe combined archival work in Europe and America with oral collection in Liberia, and produced the reconstructions on which almost all serious study of the pre-1822 western Liberian interior now rests — above all the history of the Condo Confederation and of Vai political organisation.
He also built the Liberian Collections archive, preserving documents and photographs that would otherwise have been lost in the wars.
Historical significance
The scholar who demonstrated that a pre-1822 political history of Liberia could be written at all.
Timeline
- 1967The Cassava-Leaf People, on Vai ethnohistory
- 1971'The Condo Confederation in Western Liberia'
- 1976–77Studies of settler–indigenous relations and Vai slavery
Related entries
References
- Holsoe, Svend E. (1971). 'The Condo Confederation in Western Liberia.'
- Holsoe, Svend E. (1967). The Cassava-Leaf People.
Suggested reading
- Holsoe (1971).