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There's enough circumstances where you can be forced to surrender passports though, and certainly historically they weren't automatically available. I understan
by eftpotrm 16y ago
There's enough circumstances where you can be forced to surrender passports though, and certainly historically they weren't automatically available. I understand British passports were, in the late 19th Century, only available to people who the foreign secretary personally knew or was linked very closely to, with the net effect that many British instead obtained French passports because they didn't require you to be a French national, were easier to get hold of and worked equally well.
- arethuza 16y agoI thought I could remember reading somewhere that passports weren't used that much during Victorian times - this article seems to explain why: http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/articles/destinations/a-short-history-of-passports http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/articles/destinations/a... Apparently rail travel made the whole process of issuing and checking passports a bit of a pain so most countries just gave up - they didn't become common again until 1914.