Foreword: Writing at Sea / Isabel Hofmeyr Introduction: the written word and the world / Adrien Delmas Rock art, scripts and proto-scripts in Africa: the Libyco-Berber example / Jean-Loïc Le Quellec From pictures to letters: the early steps in the Mexican tlahcuilo's alphabetisation process during the 16th century / Patrick Johansson Edmond R. Smith's writing lesson: archive and representation in 19th century Araucanía / André Menard Missionary knowledge in context: geographical knowledge of Ethiopia in dialogue during the 16th and 17th centuries / Hervé Pennec From travelling to history: an outline of the VOC writing system during the 17th century / Adrien Delmas Towards an archaeology of globalisation: readings and writings of Tommaso Campanella on a theological-political empire between the Old and the New worlds (16th-17th centuries) / Fabián Javier Ludueña Romandini Charlevoix and the American savage: the 18th-century traveller as moralist / David J. Culpin Written culture and the Cape Khoikhoi: from travel writing to Kolb's 'full description' / Nigel Penn Nothing new under the sun: anatomy of a literary-historical polemic in colonial Cape Town circa 1800-1910 / Peter Merrington Mapuche-Tehuelche Spanish writing and Argentinian-Chilean expansion during the 19th century / Julio Esteban Vezub To my dear minister: official letters of African Wesleyan evangelists in the late 19th-century Transvaal / Lize Kriel Literacy and land at the Bay of Natal: documents and practices across spaces and social economics / Mastin Prinsloo The 'painting' of Black history: the Afro-Cuban codex of José Antonio Aponte (Havana, Cuba, 1812) / Jorge Pavez Ojeda On not spreading the Word: ministers of religion and written culture at the Cape of Good Hope in the 18th century / Gerald Groenewald Occurrences and eclipses of the myth of Ulysses in Latin American culture / José Emilio Burucúa. | 
