Introduction: Petitions and Petitioning in Colonial and Post-Colonial Contexts

This Introduction to a special themed issue on Petitions and Petitioning in Colonial and Post-colonial Contexts examines these practices as widespread forms across the British Empire from the mid-eighteenth century to the era of decolonisation in the 1960s. Drawing on an expanding secondary literature on different places, including South Asia, West Africa, Australasia and the Pacific, and the Atlantic World, the Introduction distils some of the key themes from this scholarship. First, the Introduction considers the dual character of petitions as forms that were simultaneously a tool of authority that had a variety of uses for colonial officials, and a popular, often informal, practice that was often shaped from below by petitioners. As much as they might try, colonial officials and the colonial state could never fully contain the popular culture of petitioning. Second, the Introduction places colonial petitions and petitioning within two comparative perspectives. By contrast with the role of petitioning as a driver of democratisation, modern representative politics, and collective action in Britain and Ireland over the long nineteenth century, colonial officials actively sought to contain the latent potential of petitions as a mechanism for mass, collective, popular politics. The comparison with recent work on the early modern Spanish Empire, where petitioners’ requests were regularly inscribed into decrees by imperial authorities, points to some of the limits of petitions for colonial subjects within the British Empire. Third, the Introduction considers how petitions could challenge colonial authority through coded criticisms disguised in imperial rhetoric, the connection between petitioning and more challenging forms of protest, and the development of appeals to international institutions as a higher authority than the imperial state. The Introduction finishes by offering an overview of key themes within the articles that constitute the special issue.