ABSTRACT
After an introduction on Belgian passport legislation and the sources used, this chapter elaborates on the different documents foreigners carried with them when moving to Antwerp in 1850 and 1880. Newcomers were possibly urged to complete their documents upon arrival at the Antwerp municipal office, which might indicate the extent to which nineteenth-century travellers were aware of the administrative procedures concerning travel documents. Travellers coming from German territory were already well supplied with documents before arriving in Antwerp. Identity documents were documents delivered by the civil registry recording identity – such as birth, marriage certificates, certificates of baptism, nationality or identity, and so on. In Amsterdam, as was the case in Antwerp, a downward trend could be discerned in the use of travel documents in the second half of the nineteenth century, in favour primarily of identity documents. The migratory trajectory that had been covered before arriving in Antwerp played an important role in the use of documents.
