ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 shows how in the early 1800s the principle of freedom of navigation of international rivers emerged as a moral appeal and an international legal practice under French hegemony. Contemporaries understood the principle as a political answer to the age-old problem of anarchic river exploitation and as a measure to protect the political economy of France’s ever-expanding empire. Thus, by organising the removal of the threat of arbitrary taxations and regulations to navigation and commerce on the Rhine, France instantly produced a new threat, namely that of shaking up the European balance of power, especially by excluding Britain from the benefits of a prosperous Rhine.
