Comings and Goings of the Right to Move: Debates on Passports in Portuguese Constitutional Monarchy

Abstract

This article examines the debates about passports during the Portuguese Constitutional Monarchy and explores why these documents continued to exist after the end of the Ancien Régime. The text discusses the obstacles to the abolition of passports for domestic movement and why passports were still needed for international travel in Portugal in the second half of the nineteenth century when the rest of Europe had already abolished them. Drawing on unpublished sources and analyzing parliamentary debates, this article concludes that the passport did not contradict nineteenth-century liberalism but instead was intended to guarantee principles such as property rights, the equal distribution of civic duties and the freedom of Portuguese citizens in Brazil. The passport requirement created a separation between legal and illegal emigration. However, the difficulties in repressing clandestinity show the limits of a fragile, emerging nation-state.