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OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE
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ABOUT Ilsen, DENIS Vincent, Histoire de l'identification des personnes, Paris, La Découverte, 2010.
CUÉNOD Caroline, "Une signalétique accusatoire : les pratiques d'identification judiciaire au XVIIIe siècle", Crime, history and societies, 12/2, 2008, p. 5-31.
DENIS Vincent, Une histoire de l'identité. France, 1715-1815, Seyssel, Champ-Vallon, 2008.
GROEBNER Valentin, Who Are You? Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe, trans. Mark Kyburz, Cambridge, 2007.
TORPEY John, The Invention of Passport. Surveillance, Citizenship and the State, Cambdrige, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Exercises
1. What is the official name of the 1639 document?
2. Of the various items shown in this video, when does the word "passport" appear on the document?
3. From the documents shown in this video, what are the elements that identify a person before the physical descriptions appear?
4. What evidence do we have that there was a gradual bureaucratisation of passport production in the 18th century?
5. The 1807 document was cut with a chisel along the left edge, detached from a control register. Why did the clerk who issued this passport cut the document in a zigzag pattern rather than in a straight, linear fashion?
Video gallery
Marco Cicchini : Une histoire du passeport en archives le cas genevois (XVe-XVIIIe siècle) [A history of the passport in archives - the case of Geneva (15th-18th centuries)]
