[vanderZwan]

> This is, precisely, how polities have always worked. Personal freedom of movement is circumscribed to lawfully prescribed means. It wasn't until after WW2 and airplanes when ordinary people gained the technical capability to move around. Before then, you had to have lots of money and time to travel. Serfs were considered part of the land, they needed permission to leave.

[Citation needed]

From what I have been taught by friends of mine who studied International Migration & Ethnic Relations, people moved around a lot more freely before the nation state came into existence than they do now, because there were no borders to keep them out.

[vinceguidry]

Sure, if you had the money, time and/or motivation. If you didn't, it was extremely difficult to travel. Nobody would trust you, and staying at inns was expensive. Get caught camping in lands where no one knew you, and you're at their mercy.

[bwanab]

I'm trying to imagine in what historical period that would have been. Whether the border was that of a modern nation-state, a principality, or a village the effect would have been the same.

[Maybestring]

What time period is that? I'm not sure what historians consider the first nation state.

[chimeracoder]

> What time period is that? I'm not sure what historians consider the first nation state.

There's disagreement about this, but the contemporary concept of the nation-state is believed to have merged between the 17th and 19th centuries. 1648 is usually given as the earliest date, though that's partly out of a desire to ascribe a specific year to what was actually a slow process.