Consuming Identity and Consuming the State in Britain since c.1750

Abstract

In general terms, it is true to say that the history of identification has been written almost exclusively in terms of the activities of the state. A cursory perusal of the standard work in the field shows that Jane Caplan and John Torpey’s edited volume Documenting Individual Identity of 2001¹ is mainly about state practices in the modern world, and much the same could be said about the present collection (especially the contributions to Part I). Many of the key works in the field, such as Simon Cole and Chandak Sengoopta on fingerprints,² John Torpey on the development of passports,³ and the sociological works of David Lyon on identification,⁴ are predominantly concerned with the motivations and actions of public bodies, and their relations with criminals and citizens. Even Valentin Groebner’s fascinating discussion of identification in Renaissance Europe, Who Are You? Identification, Deception and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe, although covering a wide range of social forms, draws to a considerable extent on the records of public, state and municipal authorities.⁵ This is perhaps understandable given contemporary concerns over state-led projects such as the introduction of national identification cards, the use of biometrics on passports and the implications of the development of such forensic technologies as DNA profiling. The historical profession’s dependence on the archives and documents created and maintained by state bodies also predisposes it to privilege their identification activities over those of other entities, such as commercial organizations, whose records are not always as accessible.