Introduction

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the process which led to the establishment of the first public international organisation, the Commission Centralepour la Navigation du Rhin (CCNR), was initiated. ¹ In the same year, the first volume of Friedrich Carl von Savigny's Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter ² 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 Systems des heutigen Römischen Rechts (1840–49). ³ These two developments illustrate that neither public nor private transnationality is a new phenomenon. More importantly, they also indicate that the particular form of modern statehood which materialised in the époque which framed the American and French Revolutions has never stood alone, as there have always been substantial structures of ordering, which operate beyond the state. Even more importantly, they highlight that, historically speaking, the consolidation of modern statehood has implied more, and not less, transnationality. In other words, the relationship between nation state and transnational structures has — to date — been characterised by a relationship of mutual increase.