Lex Heerma van Voss (d.o.b.7 June 1955) studied Social and Economic History in Utrecht and Paris. He wrote his dissertation on the introduction of the Eight Hour working day in the Netherlands and published on the social history of the Netherlands in the Modern period and the North Sea area in the Early Modern period. He organised the European Social Science History Conference and co-edited volumes on Dock Workers, North Sea Culture, Industrial Conflict, Working-Class and Popular Culture, Generations, the Social History of Clothing, the Trade in Textiles and West-European Labour Historiography. Besides being a research fellow at the International Institute of Social History, he is Professor of Social and Economic History at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Utrecht University and associate director of the Netherlands Economic History Archive.

• Introduction Lex Heerma van Voss; 1. Voices from the 'silent masses': humble petitions and social conflicts in early modern Central Europe Andreas Würgler; 2. Supplications between politics and justice: the northern and central Italian states in the early modern age Cecilia Nubola; 3. The power of petitions: women and the New Hampshire provincial government, 1695–1770 Marcia Schmidt Blaine; 4. Officially solicited petitions: the Cahiers de Doléances as a historical source Gilbert Shapiro and John Markoff; 5. Revolt, testimony, petition: artisanal protests in colonial Andhra Potukuchi Swarnalatha; 6. Deference and defiance: the changing nature of petitioning in British naval dockyards Ken Lunn and Ann Day; 7. Petitions and the social context of political mobilization in the revolution of 1848/49: a microhistorical actor-centered network analysis Carola Lipp and Lothar Krempel; 8. The image of Jews in Byelorussia: petitions as a source for popular consciousness in the early twentieth century Aleg G. Bukhovets; 9. 'Begging the sages of the party-state': citizenship and government in transition in nationalist China, 1927–37 Rebecca Nedostup and Liang Hong-Ming; 10. Private matters: family and race and the post-World-War-II translation of 'American' Nancy K. Ota.