ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how, in an age before fingerprinting, photographs, and computerized records, French authorities sought to solve the problem of identifying recidivists by branding them on the shoulder with a hot iron. It examines the reinvention of the brand in the sixteenth century as a useful administrative imprint, first taking the form of the fleur-de-lis and later that of crime or sentence-specific letters. Much like marks impressed on commercial products, convicts’ brands both identified them and asserted royal authority over all members of the social body. This chapter argues that rather than representing a backward practice, criminal branding must be understood as a product of the modern state.
