Utilising sources that range from 16th century parish registers to the 21st century supermarket loyalty card, this collection examines the history and development of identification documents and surveillance techniques over the past 500 years. Combining the knowledge of several experts from a variety of disciplines, this volume successfully demonstrates how identification and registration can enable and empower a population, particularly if the interests of the state and population coincide. It also reveals the weakness of states or corporations when dealing with issues such as popular resistance and fraud, despite great leaps forward in the scientific methods of identifying individuals. This important book offers a vital contribution to the literature on a variety of topical subject areas such as biometric identification, immigration control and personal data use, as such it is of interest to students and scholars of civil and human rights amongst other disciplines.

There has been an enormous rise in the central state's collection of information on individuals since the sixteenth century. Historians have mined this rich seam for their own ends, but--until now--analysis of the significance of this information gathering has been mainly left to sociologists. Raising questions with immense contemporary relevance, Edward Higgs examines how and why the central state has become ever more involved in the collection and manipulation of personal information for both benign and repressive ends.

First published in 1986. At any one time in late nineteenth-century England and Wales over one million men and women were described as domestic servants in the occupational category after agricultural work. This title explores several aspects of domestic service in the area of Rochdale, and the servant population is examined to discover who entered the service, at what age, and from what background they came. This title will be of interest to students of history.

First published in 1986. At any one time in late nineteenth-century England and Wales over one million men and women were described as domestic servants in the occupational category after agricultural work. This title explores several aspects of domestic service in the area of Rochdale, and the servant population is examined to discover who entered the service, at what age, and from what background they came. This title will be of interest to students of history.

This collection examines the subject of identification and surveillance from 16th C English parish registers to 21st C DNA databases. The contributors, who range from historians to legal specialists, provide an insight into the historical development behind such issues as biometric identification, immigration control and personal data use.

Personal identification is very much a live political issue in Britain and this book looks at why this is the case, and why, paradoxically, the theft of identity has become ever more common as the means of identification have multiplied. Identifying the English looks not only at how criminals have been identified - branding, fingerprinting, DNA - but also at the identification of the individual with seals and signatures, of the citizen by means of passports and ID cards, and of the corpse. Beginning his history in the medieval period, Edward Higgs reveals how it was not the Industrial Revolution that brought the most radical changes in identification techniques, as many have assumed, but rather the changing nature of the State and commerce, and their relationship with citizens and customers. In the twentieth century the very different historical techniques have converged on the holding of information on databases, and increasingly on biometrics, and the multiplication of these external databases outside the control of individuals has continued to undermine personal identity security. >