Police of Mobility in the Liberal Theatrum Politicum: Theory and History of Identification in France at the end of the 18th century

Abstract

How has it been possible that the adoption of the passport – a measure closely associated to the Ancien Régime despotism – was generalized with the French Revolution? The article traces a genealogy of the identification regime that organized the government of mobility from within the liberal conceptual apparatus. The metamorphoses of police apparatus studied by social history are here considered in the light of constitutional debates of the Revolution. The concluding paragraph frames the political-economic implication of the emergence of a modern rationality of identification in order to suggest a field of analysis and of historical periodization that I define «mobility regime».