Customer Reviews

The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

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A very interesting and highly readable account of the development of our modern system of passports.

Passports have not always been a requirement for crossing international boundaries. The invention and spread of the concept of a nation-state first in Europe and then around the globe has seen fluctuations in various governments' requirements for both internal and external travel documents. The mercantilist monarchies attempted to retain tight controls while New World migration required no entry documents at all. The free trade liberalism of the 1800s brought down some passport requirements such that fictional Phineas Fogg could dash off around the globe with no passport other than a carpet bag full of banknotes. The 20th Century saw the re-introduction of many formerly relaxed passport controls.

Beginnning with the French Revolutionaries' pre-occupation with travel controls, the book covers the development of passport requirements in the formation of the German nation, observes the great changes in passport restrictions following the First World War, and ends with a review of passport controls in the modern era, including the development of "international" passports for Displaced Persons.

This is an excellent study which shows how passports have fit into modern nations' changing needs to identify both their own citizens and foreigners. The author argues persausively that a nation's ability to differentiate "insiders" from "outsiders" is one of the primary definitions of a nation-state.

Great reading for those interested in the development of the modern state, in the development of travel controls, and in the history of identification documents.

Here's a book by a quite well-known sociologist that deals with an important topic -- passports in the modern world and other forms of identification. How did they emerge ? What role did they play at different moments after the late eighteenth century ? But instead of providing a good and careful analysis, Torpey's work is full of careless assertions and poor historical analysis. Archives like that of the International Labour Organization are not properly used. Charles Tilly had already pointed many errors out in a review where he notes many mistakes in dealing with France. But the problems go much beyond this. Torpey wants to cast his work in a Marxist or Foucualtist framework, and so does not see that passports can also be means of empowerment. This means that the whole analogy with labor and the expropriation of labor is flawed. Also, if the book is of so-called leftist sociology, why is the whole colonial question so neglected ? In short this is a superficial analysis and a lost opportunity.