Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America from the Late Medieval Period to the Present - (Proceedings of the British Academy) (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first study of petitioning from the late medieval period to the era of e-petitions, Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America explains why these practices have been central to the exercise and contestation of power across North America and Europe.

Book Synopsis

Throughout history, across very different types of state and society, petitions and petitioning have been ubiquitous practices and the interaction between petitioners and authority has been a crucial dynamic in exercising and contesting power. Consolidating and advancing a rapidly expanding field of research across history, law, and the social sciences, Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America is the first study of these venerable practices from their development in the late medieval period to the emergence of e-petitions in the twenty-first century. With a broad focus on Europe and North America, this ambitious volume breaks new ground by examining the concept, history, and practice of petitions and petitioning across chronological and geographical boundaries, opening up this important topic using an interdisciplinary approach across the humanities and social sciences.

About the Author

Richard Huzzey acted as Co-Investigator for the AHRC network on which this volume is based, and Principal Investigator of the Leverhulme Trust project on 'Rethinking Petitions, Parliament, and People in the long nineteenth century' and the AHRC-ESRC project on 'Petitioning and people power in twentieth-century Britain'. He co-edited The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade and edited Pressure and Parliament: From Civil War to Civil Society. He is currently a Professor of Modern British History at Durham University.

Maartje Janse is Associate Professor of History at Leiden University. She jointly led the NWO-funded research group The Promise of Organization and was Principal Investigator of the NWO-funded project Organizing the Masses. She has published widely on political participation, including De Afschaffers: Publieke opinie, organisatie en politiek in Nederland, 1840-1880. She co-edited the volume Organizing Democracy and is one of the editors of the Palgrave Studies in Political History series.

Henry Miller acted as Principal Investigator of the AHRC Research Network on Petitions and Petitioning (2018-19). He has edited a special issue of Social Science History on the comparative history of petitioning in the nineteenth century, and his second book, A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918, was published in 2023. He is currently the Vice-Chancellor's Fellow in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria University.

Joris Oddens is Research Group Leader at the Huygens Institute for the History and Culture of the Netherlands, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He has published widely on the history of petitioning in journals such as European History Quarterly, Eighteenth Century Studies, National Identities, and Low Countries Historical Review, as well as in multiple edited volumes. He recently published a book on petitions and politics in the Netherlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Op veler verzoek. Inclusieve politiek in Nederland 1780-1860.

Brodie Waddell is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Birkbeck, University of London. He was Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project 'The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England' (2019-21). His interest in petitioning began with his first book, God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660-1720. He edited Addressing Authority: An Online Symposium on Petitions and Supplications in Early Modern Society and has published widely on early modern history. He is co-editor of Cultural and Social History.