This is the oldest known British passport to still exist; it was issued in 1636 and
signed by King Charles I; it’s a little hard to read, but, basically, it says, “Hey,
uh, King Charles here, please do not kill Sir Thomas Littleton while he’s in your
country, or at least don’t kill him for the next three years, after that I don’t
really care.”
Nowadays, passports aren’t issued by kings, they’re issued by national governments…
except, of course, for when they’re not.
You see, the vast majority of passports are documents of national identity—they prove
that you are the citizen of a certain country—but there are a handful of rare, non-national
passports that aren’t affiliated with any countries at all.
And if you want to know what they are, all you have to do is not stop staring at your
phone for the next four minutes.
Here we go!
The first kind of non-national passports are passports issued by, well… nations.
But not the kind of nations that I’m referring to here, I’m talking about nations that
aren’t countries.
There are two main examples of this kind of passport, and both of them are in kind of
a legal gray area, but both of them have also sometimes worked, so I feel like they’re
at least worth an honorable mention.
The first is the Iroquois passport, issued to indigenous members of the Six Nations in
the US and Canada by the Grand Council of Chiefs.
Both the US and Canada have stressed that this is not really a passport, but it has
been used by Iroquois people to successfully enter Japan, Israel, Ireland, and, yes, Canada—despite
the best efforts of Canada.
A similar document exists in Australia, issued by the self-declared Aboriginal Provisional
Government—Australia doesn’t technically recognize the Aboriginal passport, but has
allowed people to re-enter Australia with it on the condition that they wouldn’t do
it again, which means it exists in roughly the same legal gray area as wearing a hat
that says “The Civil Aviation Safety Authority Are A Bunch Of Dweebs.”
The next passport on our list is this one—that of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta;
it is one of the rarest passports I’m gonna talk about, with only about 500 in existence,
but it’s 100% legitimate, ICAO-compliant, and officially recognized by…
some countries, at least.
For those of you who aren’t up to date on the latest sovereign military orders, the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta is a religious order of the Catholic Church who—between
the time that they were gifted the island of Malta by Siciliy in 1530 and the time they
were gifted an ass-kicking by Napoleon in 1798—controlled the island of Malta.
The French occupation of the entirety of their territory might’ve made weaker-willed nations
give up, but the Order of Malta said, “Oh you think we’re not going to be a country
just because we don’t have a country anymore?
Well we’ll show you!”
And then just didn’t stop being a country.
Kind of.
They’ve continued, without any territory at all, to enter into diplomatic relationships
with other countries, sign treaties, mint coins, and yes, issue passports.
Nowadays, the Order mostly exists as a humanitarian organization, and the passports are issued
to high-ranking members, their families, and as temporary “service passports” to anyone
else in the Order who needs to travel for special assignments, which expire at the end
of their trip.
A similar type of service passport is issued by the UN, the EU, and a few other supranational
non-quite-countries—it’s called a “laissez-passer,” which pretty much just translates to “I’m
a French guy saying passport.”
If a UN staff member needed to travel to a foreign country to waggle their finger at
a human rights violation, they would likely travel with one of these; in addition to serving
as a passport, it also grants them certain perks like immunity to border control inspections
and an excuse to keep telling people you work for the UN.
Now, if you’re a big hotshot over at the UN, you might get one of these—a red laissez-passer.
This passport gives the holder all of the same legal immunities as a foreign diplomat,
making it one of the few objects in the world that you can legally beat someone to death
with.
Speaking of beating people to death with no legal repercussions, our next subject is the
police.
Specifically, the International Police—or Interpol—who, since 2009, have been able
to issue themselves non-national passports.
Interpol primarily serves to track criminals and terrorists across national borders, meaning
that crossing those borders is something that they do a lot and, preferably, pretty quickly.
The Interpol passport was created as a way to get the officers through customs as quickly
as possible, but as far as I can tell, the only thing that it actually does is waive
visa requirements in certain countries.
The Interpol website mentions all sorts of “state of the art technologies” built
into the passport, but it never actually clarifies what those are or what they do, so I can only
assume that the passport is also somehow an NFT.
And finally, that leaves us with a question: what kind of passport can you get if you don’t
have a nationality, but you also don’t happen to be part of a Catholic military order or
international crime-fighting syndicate?
Well it turns out, there is an answer—and for a good reason: at any given time, somewhere
between 5 and 10 million people around the world are stateless, meaning that they don’t
belong to any country, and that’s kind of a problem if you need to go to anywhere that’s
not Antarctica.
If you’re one of these people, you might be able to get your hands on what’s called
an “alien’s passport”—calling this a non-national passport is a little weird
because they are usually issued by national governments, but they exist, specifically,
to say, “hey, I’m sorta between countries right now.”
Unlike the two previous passports on this list, the Alien’s passport doesn’t come
with any fun perks like drunk driving, and, generally, comes with some additional headaches
like alternate visa requirements and banned re-entry to the country that issued it.
So if you were thinking of becoming a refugee just for the cool travel document, you might
want to skip this one.
Now, if you have one of these incredibly restrictive passports, or just want to get the feeling
of travel without having to get off your couch, then I have some video recommendations for
you: first, I’d watch our series Crime Spree—we made it about a year ago as a Nebula-exclusive
series, and the jist of it was basically that the two HAI writers, Ben and Adam, chased
me around the US, literally just trying to tag me, while I tried to break all sorts of
those weird laws that you’ve probably seen HAI videos about.
It’s a little weird but y’all seemed to love it.
Then I’d watch City Beautiful’s fantastic series Great Cities, which not only transports
you to cities around the world, but to their biggest moments in history.
Both of these series’, and so, so much more, are exclusive to Nebula—the creator founded,
owned, and operated streaming site where you get the best viewing experience and exclusive
content from all sorts of creators that you probably already watch, including HAI, Wendover,
Jet Lag, Real Life Lore, Legal Eagle, and so many more.
What’s crazy about Nebula is how cheap it is to get access, thanks to CuriosityStream.
They’re a whole other streaming site with this huge catalog of nonfiction shows and
documentaries from big names like David Attenborough and Sam from Wendover, and they’re running
a deal where by heading to our link, CuriosityStream.com/HAI, they’ll include a Nebula subscription for
free for as long as you stay subscribed to them, even when you get the annual plan that
they have discounted right now to less than $15 a year.
Over 30,000 HAI viewers have already signed up, and we can see with our daily-active-user
stats that they’re actually using Nebula regularly—not just singing up and forgetting
about it—so click the button on-screen or head over to CuriosityStream.com/HAI to sign
up, and thanks in advance for your support.