The first issue of 2020 presents a thematic dossier on the identification of persons in the early modern period and the twentieth century. The framework of the nation-state, within which these questions have generally been studied, is here set aside to focus on other structures. The first article considers the introduction of identity cards in French West Africa under imperial rule; the second is a transcontinental exploration of identification processes under the Hispanic Monarchy during the Spanish Golden Age. This dossier is complemented by a study that interrogates the fragile hegemony of Spanish royal power between the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century. The final article proposes a new approach to the question of death in antiquity, demonstrating that a veritable “politics of the corpse” existed in ancient Greece.