Petitions In Social History

This book looks at petitions over the last five centuries to reconstruct the lives and opinions of 'humble' petitioners. Since Pharaonic times, governments have allowed their subjects to voice opinions in the form of petitions, which have demanded a favour or the redressment of an injustice. To be effective, a petition had to mention the request, usually a motivation and always the name or names of the petitioners. As a result, grievances of ordinary people which were not written down anywhere else are now stored safely in the archives of the authorities to which the petitions were addressed. The petitions considered in this book, which come from all over the globe, offer rich and valuable sources for social historians.

This book deals with one of the most pervasive ways by which people have addressed authority throughout history: petitioning. The book explores traditional practices and institutions, as well as the transformation of petitions as vehicles of popular politics. The ability or the right to petition was also a crucial element for the development and operation of early modern empires, playing a major role on the negotiated patterns of the Atlantic World. This book shows how petitions were used in Europe, America and Africa, by the governors and the governed, by the rich and the poor, by the colonists and the colonised and by the liberal and the reactionary groups. Broken down into three thematic parts, encompassing both in chronological and geographical scope, the book deepens our understanding of petitioning and its relation with ideas of consent and subjecthood, nationality and citizenship, political participation and democracy. This book provides a rare comparative platform for the study of a subject that has been receiving growing interest.

"The sheer breadth of historical work here is astounding, encompassing Senegal to indigenous North America (including Florida) to South America and Europe. Neither scholars nor students of the petition will be able to understand its life-force without reference to this remarkable collection." -Daniel Carpenter, Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, Harvard University "This remarkable volume fully demonstrates the fundamental role played by petitions in a crucial chronology: the final phase of European empires in the Americas and the emergence of the first Liberal regimes." -Pedro Cardim, Universidade Nova de Lisboa "This book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of how petitioning shaped political and social relations across the Atlantic world. It expands historical scholarship by illuminating this important dynamic in a wide range of imperial and colonial polities, stretching across the conventional late eighteenth-century divide." -Brodie Waddell, Birkbeck, University of London "This book deals with one of the most pervasive ways by which people have addressed authority throughout history: petitioning. Based on a Congress held at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (Petitions in the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions), in February of 2019, the book explores traditional practices and institutions, as well as the transformation of petitions as vehicles of popular politics. The ability or the right to petition was also a crucial element for the development and operation of early modern empires, playing a major role on the negotiated patterns of the Atlantic World. This book shows how petitions were used in Europe, America and Africa, by the governors and the governed, by the rich and the poor, by the colonists and the colonised and by the liberal and the reactionary groups. Broken down into three thematic parts, encompassing both in chronological and geographical scope, the book deepens our understanding of petitioning and its relation with ideas of consent and subjecthood, nationality and citizenship, political participation and democracy. This book provides a rare comparative platform for the study of a subject that has been receiving growing interest." Miguel Dantas da Cruz is an assistant researcher at Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.

Majid Siddiqi Is Professor Of Modern Indian History In The Centre For Historical Studies, School Of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Filing petitions to the ruler was a common practice in the history of the Middle East. But despite its social and political importance, the institution of mazalim, the so called "Investigation of Complaints," has still not been subjected to adequate investigation, neither its normative regulations and regional settings, nor the petitions themselves, as a source for political, economic, social and administrative history, the petitioning system in pre-modern and modern Iran being no exception. In contrast to royal decrees or official historiography, these petitions reflect complaints of people from all social strata, men and women, farmers, religious people and state officials, urban and rural population, including nomads. The petitions thus express the perspective of common people, their desires and grievances about tax collectors and governors, about the malfunctioning of the legal system and the royal administration. This book is based on a sample of petitions which were submitted to Nasir al-Din Shah between 1301/1883 and 1303/1886 and contains the texts of a selection of these petitions pertaining to the year 1301/1883-1884 as well as their classification and an analysis of the role and functioning of this institution.

New research into petitions and petitioning in the middle ages, illuminating aspects of contemporary law and justice. The mechanics, politics and culture of petitioning in the middle ages are examined in this innovative collection. In addition to important and wide-ranging examinations of the ancient world and the medieval papacy, it focuses particularly on petitions to the English crown in the later middle ages, drawing on a major collection of documents made newly accessible to research in the National Archives. A series of studies explores the political contexts of petitioning, the broad geographical and social range of petitioners, and the fascinating worm's-eye view of medieval life that is uniquely offered by petitions themselves; and particular attention is given to the performative qualities of petitioning and its place in the culture of royal intercession. With their vivid new insights into judicial conventions and the legal creativity spawned by political crisis, these papers provide a closely integrated assessment of current scholarship and new research on these most fascinating and revealing of medieval social texts. CONTRIBUTORS: W. MARK ORMROD, GWILYM DODD, SERENA CONNOLLY, BARBARA BOMBI, PATRICK ZUTSHI, PAUL BRAND, GUILHEM PEPIN, ANTHONY MUSSON, SIMON J. HARRIS, SHELAGH A. SNEDDON, DAVID CROOK

This book examines the contribution that petitioning and litigation made to the maintenance of the social order in Roman Egypt between 30 BC and AD 284. Through the analysis of the many hundreds of documents surviving on papyrus, especially petitions, reports of court proceedings, and letters, Kelly focuses on how the legal system achieved its formal goals (that is, the resolution of disputes through judgments), and discusses in detail the contribution made by the litigation process to informal methods of social control. With particular emphasis on the roles that this process played in the transmission of political ideologies, in the maintenance of family solidarity, and in the fostering of 'private' mechanisms of dispute resolution, the book argues that although the legal system was less than successful when judged by its formal aims, it did have a real social impact by contributing indirectly to some of the informal mechanisms that ensured order in this province of the Roman Empire. However, arguing that, on occasion, one can also see petitioning and litigation being abused for the pursuit of feud and vengeance, Kelly also recognizes that the social impacts of petitioning and litigation were multifaceted, and in some senses even contradictory.

Note 23 on page 252 refers to a Brooklyn papyrus.