Les modèles administratifs entre imposition et adaptation: la police « moderne » et la transformation des pratiques d’identification

The birth of a modern and centralized police institution in the Kingdom of Naples was undoubtedly one among the several aspects of the administrative modernization process set up during the Napoleonic domination. And one of the first functions attributed to this organism, exclusively responsible for the public order, was the task of certifying and controlling the individual identity. Indeed, in the immediate beginning of the French domination, procedures for individual identification and a sophisticated documentary apparatus of identity and travel cards were introduced in the Kingdom. These administrative innovations let the Kingdom of Naples share in an experience which involved all European countries included in the Napoleonic sphere. In this way, it took part to a phenomenon of intense circulation of patterns and knowledge developed on an European scale, recently investigated by a growing international literature. But how did the installation of new institutional and administrative structures, at the time extensively widespread in Europe, occurred in the specific context of the Kingdom of Naples? The contribution - through an investigation of sources held at Naples State Archive and Naples Historical Municipal Archive - will aim to highlight how in the Neapolitan case the French innovations interacted on the one hand, with previous identification practices, and, on the other hand, with rooted procedures and geographies for the control of territory and with the figures traditionally in charge of it.