ABSTRACT
At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the process leading to the establishment of the ¿UVWSXEOLFLQWHUQDWLRQDORUJDQLVDWLRQWKHCommission Centrale pour la Navigation du Rhin &&15ZDV LQLWLDWHG ,Q WKH VDPH \HDU WKH ¿UVW YROXPH RI )ULHGULFK Carl von Savigny’s (1961) Geschichte des Römischen Rechts im Mittelalter was published. This work served as a preliminary exercise which subsequently led to the development of the essential principles of modern international private law in his System des heutigen Römischen Rechts (1974 [1840-49]). These two developments illustrate that neither public nor private transnationality is a new phenomenon and that the particular form of modern statehood, which materialised in the époque framing the American and French revolutions, has never stood alone (see Walter 2001: 176ff). On the contrary, the consolidation of modern statehood has, historically speaking, implied more, and not less, transnationality. Or differently expressed: the relationship between nation-state and transnational structures has, to date, always been characterised by a relationship of mutual increase.
