50 things that made the modern economy with Tim Hartford.

What would we English say if we could not go from London to the Crystal Palace or from

Manchester to Stockport without a passport or police officer at our heels? Depend upon

it. We are not half enough grateful to God for our national privileges.

Those are the musings of an English publisher named John Gadsby traveling through Europe

in the mid 19th century. This was before the modern passport system,

we're really familiar to anyone who's ever passed border control. You stand in a queue,

you proper your standardised booklet to a uniformed official, perhaps she quizzes you about

your journey while her computer checks your name against a terrorist watchlist.

For most of history, passports were neither so ubiquitous nor so routinely used.

They were essentially a threat, a letter from some powerful person requesting anyone

the traveller met to let them pass unmolisted. Or else.

The concept of passport as protection goes back to biblical times and protection was a privilege,

not a right. English gentlemen like Gadsby who wanted a passport before venturing across the

channel once needed to unearth some personal social link to the relevant government minister.

As Gadsby discovered, the more zealously bureaucratic of continental nations had realised

the passport's potential as a tool of social and economic control. Even a century earlier,

the citizens of France had to show paperwork not only to leave the country, but to travel from town

to town. While wealthy countries today secure their borders to keep unskilled workers out,

municipal authorities historically used them to stop their skilled workers from leaving.

As the 19th century progressed, the railways and the steamboat made travel faster and cheaper.

Passports were unpopular. France's emperor Napoleon III shared Gadsby's admiration for the

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