Why read The Invention of the Passport?

Book cover of The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State

Book description

This book presents the first detailed history of the modern passport and why it became so important for controlling movement in the modern world. It explores the history of passport laws, the parliamentary debates about those laws, and the social responses to their implementation. The author argues that modern nation-states…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Invention of the Passport as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sarah E. Igo

Author

Torpey’s book, first published in 2000, is now a classic. With it, he helped open up a whole field of inquiry into the history of official documents and identification techniques that both constrain—and make conceivable—modern society. Here, think of street addresses, fingerprints, birth certificates, credit records, driver’s licenses, tax forms, and visas. For Torpey, the passport, “that little paper booklet with the power to open international doors,” is a window into modern nation states’ interest in regulating movement. For his readers, it is a bracing reminder of how recent those controls are and how habituated we denizens of the 21…

From Sarah's list on The best books on identity documents in the modern world.