In order to distinguish between those who may and may not enter or leave, states everywhere have developed extensive systems of identification, central to which is the passport. This innovative book argues that documents such as passports, internal passports and related mechanisms have been crucial in making distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. It examines how the concept of citizenship has been used to delineate rights and penalties regarding property, liberty, taxes and welfare. It focuses on the US and Western Europe, moving from revolutionary France to the Napoleonic era, the American Civil War, the British industrial revolution, pre-World War I Italy, the reign of Germany's Third Reich and beyond. This innovative study combines theory and empirical data in questioning how and why states have established the exclusive right to authorize and regulate the movement of people.

‘With the world awash in refugees, immigrants, ‘guest workers’, travellers, and the occasional terrorist, an interpretative study of identity papers and passports is certainly timely - the more so since even as the administrative reach of individual states keeps growing with modern technology, international norms of human rights and a movement toward open borders in Europe work, ostensibly, to limit state power … The historical sociologist John Torpey is well equipped to address these issues … his canvass is wide and does ample justice to his subject.’

Source: The American Historical Review

‘In this insightful, carefully documented, and analytically astute account, Torpey has laid out for us with elegance and clarity the history of the passport and the ‘révolution identificatoire’ of which it is an integral part. His theoretically sensitive treatment is essential to our understanding of the modern state system.’

Source: Journal of Modern History

‘In this groundbreaking exploration of the passport’s vicissitudes from the French Revolution to the present time, Torpey argues convincingly that the passport is important to our understanding of the nature of the state and the state system.’

Source: American Journal of Sociology

‘In this insightful, carefully documented, and analytically astute account, Torpey has laid out for us with elegance and clarity the history of the passport and the ‘revolution identificatoire’ of which it is an integral part. His theoretically sensitive treatment is essential to our understanding of the modern state system. What Torpey has accomplished here is to have denaturalized, by close historical analysis, the utterly taken-for-granted, contemporary regime of passports.’

James Scott Source: Journal of Modern History

‘The ingenuity of this book is evident in the focus on the passport. This document represents a kind of sociological Geiger counter for all sorts of far-reaching social and political tensions – tensions arising from endemic struggles between state power and individuals’ own notions of where they want to go and where they prefer to remain … The Invention of the Passport is not just about passports, but also about the interests engaged in their use … [an] excellent achievement.’

Source: Politics, Social Movements and the State

‘In this insightful, carefully documents, and analytically astute account, Torpey has laid out for us with elegance and clarity the history of the passport and the ‘révolution identificatoire’ of which it is an integral part. His theoretically sensitive treatment is essential to our understanding of the modern state system.’

Source: Journal of Management History