Obaba Museum

There are many questions we think about daily, often times we keep these questions at the level of imagination but you know it’s really a good idea to just share them so you could get answers or, at least, a good explanation/speculation. Today we would be treating the topic of the international passport, its origin and why it became a requirement for international journeys. Other related questions would also be addressed and if there are more questions you would love us to treat, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.

Let’s get started!

For the purpose of our gist, a passport is a travel document issued by the government to its citizens in order to verify the identity and nationality of the bearer for international travels. They generally come in small booklets that usually contain the bearer’s BioData, photograph and signature. There are several types of passports depending on the status of the bearer in their home country.

But why do we even need a passport to travel around the world? What really necessitated the need to hold an official travel booklet which must be stamped on arrival or departure from an international border? Let’s do a brief throwback.

It’s 1920, the First World War ended barely two years ago, the League of Nations (equivalent of today’s United Nations) proposes the idea of a worldwide passport standard at the Paris Conference on Passports & Customs Formalities and Through Tickets of 1920.

During World War I, European governments had introduced border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people with useful skills. Prior to the war, even as far back as the biblical times, there had been the existence of international travel documents, permitting aliens to pass through or even reside in foreign lands. The Bible mentions Nehemiah’s procurement of such a travel document from the ancient Persian king Artaxerxes requesting the governors of the lands beyond the Euphrates to grant him safe passage to Judah. The purpose of Nehemiah’s visit, incidentally, was to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. This is the oldest recorded mention of such a travel document dated around 445BC. Beyond the biblical mention of this letter, we do not have an existing copy or clue of its format or appearance.

However in the next episode, we would be featuring the earliest available records of travel documents.

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