Conclusion: And Your Petitioners, &c.

This Conclusion summarises the key arguments from the volume relating to the definition, chronology, and impacts of petitions and petitioning. The longevity and ubiquity of petitionary practices in Europe and North America can be broadly explained by the adaptability, mutability, and ambiguity of these genres, which have been an enduringly unstable, dynamic, and unpredictable form of interaction between people and power across the centuries. The Conclusion then pivots to considering possible future directions for studies of petitions and petitioning. The studies in the volume should be placed in a broader global context, enabling comparison and contrast with petitions and related practices from other parts of the globe. The role of petitions within and between empires would be another promising line of research, including the transition from imperial petition systems to the use of petitioning in newly independent post-colonial states. Conceptually, it might be fruitful to think of petitions as a ‘technology’, while new methodologies enabling the linguistic analysis, spatial mapping, or quantification of petitions on a large scale might be usefully employed. Finally, while this volume has focused on petitions and petitioning, we should not forget the importance of petitioners and their ‘voice’, which echoes down the ages.