ALLDRIDGE, Thomas Joshua.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Sherbro and its Hinterland. First edition, first impression, of one of the first works to introduce western audiences to traditional Sierra Leonese culture, complete with the two folding maps. The Sherbro and its Hinterland developed from the expeditions of Thomas Joshua Alldridge (1847-1916), who travelled extensively in Sierra Leone as a travelling commissioner for the British colonial administration in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Alldridge spent much of his professional life in Sierra Leone, and eventually served as its first District Commissioner from 1894-1905. In this work, written during that period, he outlines a political, economic and cultural analysis of the traditional cultures he encountered in the Sierra Leonese interior. Alldridge took a camera with him, and this work reproduces his extensive photographs of indigenous dress, ceremonies and practices: a fact much remarked on in contemporary reviews (e.g. that of the Royal Geographical Society). "Alldridge has had a profound influence on the understanding and appreciation of Sierra Leone's traditional culture in the wider world. As one of the first Europeans to travel into the interior of south-eastern Sierra Leone, he is credited with having gained privileged insight into Mende culture, in particular, before it was - to use his own expression - 'transformed' by European intervention" (Hart, p. 155). This work is thus significant not only for its role in introducing western audiences to traditional Sierra

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