Living in forms of enforced ´Close distance´ is a very current experience on a global scale. In this special issue, the wide term of close distance is taken to historicize segregational phenomena in a long-term perspective: While classic approaches to the history of urban or colonial segregation are usually starting from a reified link between ´space´ and ´race´, this is hardly sufficient neither for pre-modern times nor for the transition to a postcolonial world. ‘Distance’ does not only refer to physical space, but it is also far more open to cognitive forms of distance with regard to religion, culture, health perception, ethnic and linguistic forms of inclusion and exclusion. ‘Closeness’ aims to draw attention to the fact that both the processing and enacting of separation and difference, from the early to the late period of colonialization, can imply nevertheless frequent intercourse and relationships on all levels of society. By historicizing segregational phenomena – through case studies from the early modern Ottoman Empire, early modern Dutch Indonesia and late colonial Tanzania –, we suggest to focus with the term of ´close distance´ on the epistemic core: Wilful and unconscious ignorance and ignoring, misunderstanding and forms of cultural untranslatability are crucial for that epistemic side of segregational behaviour and for what creates close distance in societies.