Passport controls, in particular, had been a vital mechanism of domination under the old regime in France, and were clearly regarded as such by those who made the revolution there in the late eighteenth century. Among the many restrictions to which the French revolutionaries objected was a 1669 edict of Louis XIV that had forbidden his subjects to leave the territory of France, as well as to related requirements that those quitting the kingdom be in possession of a passport authorizing them to do so.
