3While common parlance to describe edited volumes as diverse in terms of discussed perspectives and geographical reach, the scope of Petitioning in the Atlantic World is diverse also in practice. In addition to the introduction, it consists of eleven chapters with different perspectives, addressing petitioning in North and South America, Africa, and Europe. Interested in the communicative and negotiative functions of petitioning, most of them discuss the subject from a pointedly colonial aspect: including chapters on Dutch West Indies, Portuguese America, indigenous communities in British and Spanish America, French Senegal, and so on. Despite addressing manifold perspectives and geographical entities, rather than providing a comprehensive presentation of petitioning in a single country, the book succeeds in maintaining consistence − a clear indication of both a shared vision and good editing.

4The book is divided into three thematic sections, focusing on (1) petitionary practices, (2) petitioning and colonialism, and (3) the rise of mass-petitioning. In the first, Jack P. Greene, a heavyweight in the field of Atlantic studies, discusses "the role of consent as it functioned in the construction and operation of long-distance empires and their successor states in America" (22). While Greene uses different angles to address the issue, including reflecting on Albert O. Hirschman and Sir William Temple, he also elaborates the issue through late-medieval English petitioning, concluding that the tradition − also adopted in the American colonies − provided subjects important means to interact with the authorities. Whereas the first chapter elaborates the subject in rather abstract terms, the following three chapters approach petitioning from a concrete perspective, often by providing examples from both sides of the Atlantic. Joris van den Tol, for instance, discusses petitioning in both Dutch Brazil and the Dutch Republic, arguing that "[p]etitions from the colonies to the metropole as well as petitions in the colonies highlight the active participation of colonial inhabitants on the rules that governed much of their lives" (48). Rather than "passive bystanders merely responding to European or colonial regulations", the colonists "actively tried to shape and influence these rules" − by petitioning, for instance.

5Andréa Slemian's and Álvaro Caso Bello's chapters also provide illuminating insights into colonial petitioning from a local perspective. Slemian discusses petitions to the court of appeals in the Portuguese America. More specifically, Slemian focuses on those addressed to the Mesa Grande, "a specific chamber of writs/orders, where extrajudicial matters were handed" (70). These petitions were often pleading for "recognition of rights that could not be granted by a lower-level authority" (75). Caso Bello, on the other hand, focuses on petitions submitted from Santafé Bogotá, employed to deny rumours of revolutionary sentiments in the city in the 1790s. By focusing on both the petitions and practices concerning petitioning, Caso Bello demonstrates how individual petitions − and, indeed, even individual actors − could play a central role in defining the relations between peripheries and central government on different sides of the Atlantic.

6While much of the first section addresses petitioning in colonies from the perspective of the colonists, the second elaborates the issue from a different angle. Adrian Masters and Bradley Dixon, for instance, discusses indigenous petitioning in early-modern British and Spanish colonies, demonstrating that "[m]any hundreds of thousands of non-European communities also turned strategically to petitioning", making use of "Western" instances and institutions (105). Amy Turner Bushnell, on the other hand, explores a more informal sort of petitioning in and around Spanish Florida, involving indigenous communities and escaped slaves. Lastly, Larissa Kopytoff discusses the use of petitions by black and mixed-race men and women in coastal Senegal between the 1760s and 1840s. By submitting petitions to both French officials in Senegal and in France, the petitioners − including both Christians and Muslims − took part in both decision-making processes and identity-construction. "For the African inhabitants of Senegal", Kopytoff notes, "collective petitions were integral to their interactions with the French state and reflected their active role in claiming space within the French body politic" (158).

7By exploring revolutionary ruptures and the rise of mass-petitions, the third section returns to more widely recognised forms of petitioning. James F. Hrdlicka explores petitioning as constitution-making in revolutionary Massachusetts. While addressing a relatively canonical period and subject, Hrdlicka focuses on "the voices and perspectives of non-elites", being actors "who did not write famous treatises or leave behind volumes of personal correspondence" (177). Adrian O'Connor, on the other hand, addresses the issue of petitioning from the perspective of representation in revolutionary France. He explores petitioning as a form of implementing the sixth article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, declaring that "Law is the expression of the General Will" and that "every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its formation" (199). O'Connor also deals with the National Assembly's later endeavours to restrict petitioning to maintain its ability to deliberate and legislate. Diego Palacios Cerezales focuses on the riotous forms of petitioning − usually seen as highly illegitimate. He concludes that in "early modern and modern Spain, and across many other settings, collective disobedience, open resistance, aggressive imposition by the crowd − in short, rioting − was practised and justified as a form of petitioning" (235). Lastly, Miguel Dantas da Cruz elaborates on the changing patterns of petitioning during the First Portuguese Liberal Revolution (1820-1823). Contemplating the sudden parliamentarisation of Portuguese politics − and how it influenced petitioning and vice versa − da Cruz raises questions that should be of interest also to those studying petitioning in other political cultures.

8In general, Petitioning in the Atlantic World succeeds in addressing both petitioning and the inner workings of the Atlantic world. On one hand, the chapters thoroughly demonstrate that petitions, indeed, played a role in the complicated web of connections across the ocean. By focusing on them, the book shows how these connections were, actively and passively, constructed, maintained, influenced, and altered − both within and between the colonies and their metropoles. On the other, the chapters also make it evident that petitions form a source basis with great and often neglected potential. Mainly focusing on non-Anglophone petitioning, the book provides an important contribution also in this field. While meritorious in general, most of the book focuses on petitioning as concrete activity. Due to the focus on practices and functions related to the process of using petitions, less emphasis is put on petitions as texts, especially from a discursive aspect. Although often restricted by the scarcity of systematic records and corpora, approaching petitions from a pointedly discursive perspective can provide important insights both into petitioning itself and the changing patterns of society in a more general fashion. Perhaps it is something at least some of the authors may be interested in the future, sources allowing.