This paper examines the form, content, and role of petitions in the context of protests occasioned by the handloom weavers of colonial Andhra, particularly the northern districts of the northern Coromandel region, between 1770 and 1820. Minor and major protests and revolts by weavers erupted with increasing frequency from around the middle of the eighteenth century, whenever their socioeconomic structures and conditions of work and trade were under threat from the old and new elites, as well as from the commercial interests of the colonial state. On these occasions, weavers expressed their grievances through petitions and representations, either in combination with other strategies or independently. These petitions therefore offer opportunities to study and identify the economic and social conditions that prompted weavers to resort to collective action. Careful analyses of thepetitions yield considerable insights with respect to the causes of the protests; their spatial and social diffusion; the social profile of contending parties, and their mentalities; the changing organizational structure of the textile industry; the petitions' consequences; and, finally, the attitude of the colonial state towards these petitions.

Petitioning as a method of expressing grievances in British history was not peculiar to any particular set of individuals, but was widely used by all sections of society for a range of issues. Given its origins, however, it became ritualized as the means of labour negotiation for workers who were employed by the state, and, by the nineteenth century, by municipal authorities. This was before the institutionalization of trade unions and their recognition as representative agencies for industrial bargaining. One of these groups of workers in the state sector were naval dockyard employees, engaged in the construction, repair, and maintenance of British naval ships. For these workers, the nature of labour relations, and the importance of petitioning as an instrument of negotiation between employees and employer, was both complex and dynamic.

A great part of the political movement in the Revolution of 1848 took place in the form of group and mass petitions. The National Assembly in Frankfurt, the first national German parliament, received 17,000 petitions from more than three million people. A great number of petitions, analysed by German scholars such as Best, dealt with the question of a liberal market economy, with problems resulting out of the developing process of industrialization, and with protective duties. The petitions expressed different group interests, articulated by craftsmen, merchants, entrepreneurs, and workers, who responded to current economic and social restraints. Another complex of petitions formulated requests regarding the constitution, the liberalization of the political system, or the organization of education, especially the separation of church and state. Another large mass of revolutionary petitions was addressed to the rulers or the ruling bodies of the different German states and was concerned with regional conflicts, and the adoption of ideas that were developed at national level.

The disintegration of the USSR, and of the communist system, in the last decade of the twentieth century, the rekindling of ethnic strife, and scholarly research into nationalism – all have renewed interest in the images that different ethnic and religious groups in eastern Europe have had of each other. In this context, the image of Jewishness has been of particular importance, both in political science and in history. An adequate analysis of ideas about Jewishness requires access to numerous mass sources. However, the number of sources available for this kind of enquiry is limited, compared, for instance, to the sources open for traditional Hebrew studies. This is especially true when we speak about the periods of autocracy and dictatorship. Both the Russian Empire and the USSR had – besides periods of overt anti-Semitism – a tradition of hidden anti-Semitism. The hidden and unofficial nature of this prejudice would not allow for mass opinion polls on anti-Semitism before the fall of the USSR.

The premise of the Nationalist government at Nanjing (1927–1937) rested on a precarious balance of democracy and paternalism. The Nationalists drew their power from China's citizens, but they also subjected them to a regimen of training and control. Petitions from the “Nanjing decade” highlight the resulting tensions between government and the governed. Citizens from all walks of life accepted the ruling party's invitation to participate in the construction of the republic. Yet they also used petitions to seek redress when they believed the Nationalists had fallen short of their obligations. These documents mark a turbulent period of transition from imperial rule to representative democracy. They also characterize an era when new political ideas, new media, and new social organizations helped people take an old device and transform it into a useful weapon for asserting their rights as modern citizens.