Passports are not a good invention. They are a dystopian evil we grew to take for granted and even see as something that exists for our own benefit.
Before WWI there were no passports and no need for them. Those were Good Old Days that are not coming back. It's weird to see some people seeing some kind of benefit in them.
Travel is more free today compared to in the past, at least in for example Europe. You used to need traveling papers from your boss/master/lord granting you specific permission to travel, otherwise you could be arrested. People didn’t trust visitors in general outside of some specific circumstances.
It's not like we would have free roaming in the modern age if passports weren't a thing. People would still face travel restrictions, they'd just be more nonstandard and unpredictable.
Consider how the days before passports also lacked air travel available to the masses. Even cars has only just started to become commonplace.
I don't see how you could possibly have travel that is so cheap, quick, and accessible to such a large population without some way to control who is coming and leaving your country? Especially with how we're quickly making different parts of the planet inhospitable, and given how rapidly populations have risen compared to a century ago.
If only there was a pre-WWI technology that enabled people to travel quickly and comfortably over long distances... Perhaps some sort of wagon on rails :)
The passport is but one piece of the greater system that we have nowadays of international worldwide travel. I can get on a plane and travel pretty much anywhere in the world now, whereas before travel like that was reserved for explorers, missionaries or high ranking dignitaries.
I don't think the passport is an invention itself, so to speak.
I don't think you understand the context. Much before 1920's, you didn't need a document at all to travel anywhere. If you had the resources, you just showed up - go to the border, said hello - and that's it.
Travel like that was never "reserved" for explorers, missionaries or high ranking dignitaries. If you had the money/resources, you could go anywhere.
Now there is a "caste" system of countries that have Visa on Arrival, Free Entry, or Visa required where you have to prove that you are financially capable, or even wanted in the country, or promise not to work or be illegally employed/compensated.
And then that alongside many countries in the developing world that still have undocumented people, no birth certificate, no identification, no tax ID, etc.
How does a country verify someones birth? Especially if someone wasn't born in a hospital? In the west, until 1950's, mostly this was done via church records. Also, are you granted citizenship by birth or only through parents? (Big deal, especially for Puerto Rican births - or countries that don't recognize foreign births in their land, e.g. United Arab Emirates / Saudi Arabia - even Japan or China, where sure you can be born there, but that means absolutely nothing.)
So, no, it isn't really a greater system for international worldwide travel - it is a system of control to ensure someones identity is who they are and that the country they are form atleast certified to some standard that their name, their picture, their birth date, their location of birth are somewhat tangibly real.
And this isn't even getting into information sharing. The above is just a standard, that now is "machine" readable and has an RFID so that collection is more easier for the state.
This simply isn't true outside of a relatively narrow window of time when very few could afford to travel anyway. Go back much past into the 1800s and beyond and you couldn't travel even within your own country without permission. In much of Europe for most of the medieval and early modern era laborers needed traveling papers granting permission just to leave their own village. In general people tended to be suspicious of visitors without a good reason to be there. Being exiled used to be quite a serious punishment.
It is very much true. You are talking about anecdotes of villagers going to neighboring villages which sounds more of being religiously excommunicated than free travel.
Why 1800s? Why not Roman times? All you had to do is state you were a roman citizen, and you could travel - Unimpaired “ Civis Romanus sum”
Borders existed but travel was not impaired, how else do you think trade and commerce worked? Do you think supply chains are a new thing?
It very much sounds like you are conflating serfdom, as an impairment to free travel - it is a different exercise. Because you did have a king, and you were a farmer in that land and in many ways you had lesser rights than a slave.
Trade was heavily restricted, governed, and controlled in the ancient world. Empires were built on collecting transit fees, cities often restricted the entry of sailors aboard merchant ships, and control of rivers and who could use them were dearly held by rulers the world over. There are a number of cities around the world today that started as trading cities, specifically designated places where merchants were allowed to visit to trade but restricted from going anywhere else.
The Roman Empire was a unique example among the thousands of years of history because along with their transportation network of roads they did actually have a couple of passport-like systems in place. Now a third of the people were literally slaves, so they definitely weren't going anywhere without permission, so maybe Rome is not a great starting point for what I presume to be the argument against passports. But the Romans and other Mediterranean civilizations did check your identity when you travelled. Romans had documents they called diplomas for people on official business and several civilizations used clay tablets called tesserae as a sort of ID card, but by far the most common method was simply having known people vouch for you.
Basically nowhere in the ancient world from the Middle East to the pre-colonial Americas could you just show up in a foreign village without people asking questions that you ought better have good answers for. There are a handful of exceptions, but this has never been the norm, and even with passports and visa restrictions it is definitely far easier today than it ever was in the past. I expect it will get easier and easier into the future. Perhaps quite soon in fact as the global population begins to decline and people become more and more valuable.
"Before WWI there were no passports and no need for them."
Passports are much older than that, but in pre-WWI Europe, most countries didn't require them for travel. (Russia and Turkey did.)
Passports certainly do have a dystopian element to them, especially if they are demanded too frequently / aggressively. But on their own, they aren't particularly evil; they just identify you much like your face does.
I got the list from 50 things that made the modern economy. Maybe you’d learn something by listening to the episode on passports - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052spyb
> Before WWI there were no passports and no need for them.
This combination of ignorance and confidence isn’t a good look.
From Hong Kong, I have a mixed feeling for this. UK made everyone of us to apply for a Hong Kong ID since 50 years ago, but when I come to UK it is way worse because UK doesn’t have a National ID while relying on every private entity to verify your identification.
So unless private collection of personal data is completely illegal, I’d rather have a centralised ID system instead
