At the turn of the seventeenth century, Felipa de la Cruz penned two letters to her freed husband who had moved from Sevilla to Veracruz in New Spain. These letters reveal extended discussions of Cruz’s commitment to securing liberty for herself and their children, as she reminded her husband not to forget her desire for freedom. Felipa de la Cruz’s letters hold immense historical value as they are among the earliest known letters penned by an enslaved Black woman in the Atlantic world that have survived in a historical archive. Reading the private correspondence between Felipa de la Cruz and her absent husband also reveals the day-to-day lives of enslaved people in an urban environment. The Coda presents these two letters transcribed in Spanish as well as in English translation. The Coda also includes a map of the social ties of a generation of free and liberated Black Sevillians who were Cruz’s contemporaries in the late sixteenth century (approximately 1569–1626). The map and extended key allow readers to trace some of Felipa de la Cruz’s Black neighbors who also had ties with the Spanish Americas, and their respective socioeconomic ties across the city.

This introduction poses the central thesis of this volume: that the early Islamic empire was tied together by networks of social dependency that can be tracked through the linguistic and material traces of interconnectivity in our sources. It is suggested that the particular relationships that emerge from the granular case studies in this volume can illuminate the constituent parts of the early Islamic empire as a whole. Studies link material and textual sources, and in particular focus on the language and rhetoric used by sources to describe relations and interactions, and what they show of the modes, expressions and conditions that governed communication and interaction. It is suggested that empires are not ruled by top–down force alone, but that legitimacy and stability are created in various ways, both top–down and bottom–up.

The Introduction opens with an attempt to explain the rift that has developed between German history and German-Jewish history since the early attempts at writing academic history, during the early nineteenth century. This happened despite the fact that the two historiographies developed in parallel from the beginning, chronologically and methodically, and continued to exist well into the post-Second World War years, both in Germany and elsewhere. Social history in Germany and in the United States was eventually crucial for changing this paradigm, and the post-modern turn increased our interest in the history of minorities. Finally, gender history helped not only in adding previously neglected sectors of society into the grand narrative, but also in changing this narrative altogether. Now it could be seen from different perspectives, and in our case it is indeed being seen through Jewish eyes.

This introductory chapter places the volume within its wider academic context through discussion of its method, background, and content. First, the chapter frames the debates that gave rise to the collection and sets out the central research questions that the chapters address. Second, it summarizes the current state of the literature, including a discussion of how similar lines of inquiry have developed in different disciplines (archaeology, legal history, epigraphy, and ancient history). Third, it discusses the contents and significant conclusions of the volume by summarizing the chapters and then by highlighting the major commonalities between them. Fourth, it outlines the volume’s unique contributions to the debate and sketches avenues for future research.

Taking a history is an essential part of patient care for all clinicians but there can be a tendency for the social history to be brief, formulaic or even absent. The possible reasons for this and how liaison psychiatry might respond, given that history-taking skills are highly developed in the specialty, are described. The individual in the wider multidisciplinary team who is best placed to take a social history from a patient is considered, reviewing the attitudes of both doctors and nurses alongside evidence from studies where frameworks have been established to take the social history from all patients. The sources of information other than the patient that might be considered are described. Several key aspects of the social history are explored in detail – debt, employment, housing and social isolation. The evidence of impact on physical health and mental health is detailed for each, together with a summary of the evidence of benefit for interventions. Finally, the issue of how the information obtained should be shared and with whom and what can be done to improve patient outcomes is discussed.

When José Eusebio Llano Zapata travelled from Peru to Spain in the middle of the eighteenth century, he remarked on the difference between the book markets. The Peruvian scholar who had travelled across the Atlantic, and had experienced both places, clearly judged the colonial book market favourably, and saw it as as bearing comparison with Europe's. In characterising the trade, he emphasised the wide variety of books that were available. In addition, he outlined a broad readership composed of both men and women, conveying the impression that books were an accessible object. In the following decades, more and more people in colonial society gained access to locally printed and imported books. This Introduction sets the historical and historiographic scene. It calls for a social history of books and prints, and reflects the status of Lima as a ‘Lettered City’ with social and spatial hierarchies.