... and the mechanics of the criminal justice system in this period. Part II examines the notorious trials of three subversive authors. The Italian philosopher Giulio Cesare Vanini was brutally executed for blasphemy by the Parlement de Toulouse in 1619. Jean Fontanier was burned at the stake two years later in Paris...

... by shrewd criminal touting syndicates within the bureaucracy. More stringent record-keeping was finally in place by the mid-1920s due to help from migrant associations, although this hardly meant that insider subversion had been completely smothered. The chapter argues that South African border controls...