Introduction

• Author: Anthony Connerty
• Profession: Barrister and member of WIPO arbitration panel
• Pages: 185-

"Given the prodigious expansion of international commercial arbitration over the past half-century (the increase of trade being its fundamental cause, and the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards its primary instrument) modern practitioners may be excused for believing that we are living in an unprecedented golden age of international arbitration. They would be surprised to learn how vast international arbitral jurisprudence was in the 19 ^th Century. In the period between 1814 and 1898, for example, one study enumerated no less than 158 different international tribunals, including the celebrated commissions created in 1853 between Britain and the US; in 1868 between Mexico and the US; and in 1880 between France and the US....

"The list did not include the commissions created under the famous Jay Treaty, UK/US, 8 Stat. 116, which was concluded in 1794 for the purposes, inter alia, of adjudicating claims of British creditors who were...