France’s Emperor Napoleon III shared Gadsby’s admiration for the more relaxed British approach: he described passports as “an oppressive invention . . . an embarrassment and an obstacle to the peaceable citizen.” He abolished French passports in 1860.5 France was not alone. More and more countries either formally abandoned passport requirements or stopped bothering to enforce them, at least in peacetime.6 You could visit 1890s America without a passport, though it helped if you were white.7 In some South American countries, passport-free travel was a constitutional right.8 In China and Japan,
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