The medieval Hanseatic League. Brexiteers take note!

 

Hanseatic trade routes

Bing (above map)

Medieval social structure had 3 classes: noble, priest and peasant, a system that allowed the nobility to tax as they wanted. The nobility and the church held so much power that the merchant group was at their mercy, soc­ially and ec­on­omically. So medieval guilds tried to protect merch­ants & crafts­men from the nobility. 

Kievan Rus (862-1242) was a medieval political federation in Belarus, Ukraine & Western Russia. Federation leaders provided for the poor, founded schools to encourage liter­acy, helped trade flourish, founded cit­ies & built churches. 

But the idea of a League probably started with Duke Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony & Bavaria (r1142-80), to physically protect Low German Dutch merchants and their Swedish comp­et­itors from Gotland. Under the Artlen­bur­ger Privil­ege 1161, Henry granted duty-free treat­­­­ment and free­dom, to pro­tect foreign traders near the Baltic.

Lübeck in Northern Germany was one of the few Free Cities i.e an imperial city that owed allegiance only to the Emperor. It was al­ready an important trade centre, with enough herring to sup­ply half of Europe. Alas with no refriger­ation or canning, the sh­ip­ping of highly perishable commodities was difficult. Hamburg, on the other side of the Jutland peninsula, had easy access to the salt produced in the Kiel salt mines, ensuring the salting, drying and distribut­ion of meat and fish. Thus the merchants of these two towns built their shared Kiel Canal. 

In 1241 Lübeck invited Hamburg to start a partner­ship, the Hanseatic League/Hansa, because the two cit­ies need­ed a formal all­iance for mutual supp­ort against aristo­crat­ic rule claims. Danzig, whose port was a gateway to the eastern Baltic, quickly joined, as did most of the important northern cities throughout the C13th.

Lübeck continued as the lead city; its port handled salt, herring, grain, timber, honey and amber. And the Han­sa had produced an inn­ovative ship design, the Baltic cog. Oth­er League members traded copper, fish, flax, furs, iron, salt, resin and text­iles.

Hanseatic merchants' buildings  
Luneburg in Northern Germany

In the grow­ing C13th economy, towns grew, markets in­cr­eased and the pop­ulation grew remarkably. And as trade dev­el­oped, dis­tant towns needed evidence they were get­ting a fair deal so they creat­ed a system of common regul­ations; eg a 1259 trade agree­­ment signed by Russian and German merchants stipulated only German weights were to be used. Shared stand­ards avoided conflicts.

Guilds und­er­stood the diffic­ulties due to heavy tax­ation, robbery and maritime dangers, so the Hansa pooled their resour­c­es to prot­ect each other and to increase profits. Guild members hired milit­ary guards to protect cargo on land and to ensure heav­ily arm­ed men to accompany their ships at sea. And since insur­an­ce didn’t exist, merchants formed partnerships to in­vest in dif­f­erent ships-cargoes.

There were very bad times. The 1348-9 Black Death killed a third of Europe’s population, leading to severe labour shortages af­fecting harv­est­s, transport and storage. It didn’t prevent the League working, but it shook Europe badly.

The northern cities also noted the growing competition of Engl­ish, It­al­ian, Dutch and South German merchants. So in 1356 the Hans­eatic League was ex­panded: c200 towns and cit­ies became members of the League across 7 countries. Major counters/kontors were set up in distant trading posts that were not form­ally within the Han­sa eg in Novgorod NW Russia, Ber­gen Norway, Bruges Flanders and London.

Georg Giese of Danzig; a beautifully dressed merchant in London
Painted by Hans Holbein II, 1532,
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

London was crucial. The community of wealthy German mer­chants who lived on the banks of the Thames were exempt from customs duties! Also in Britain were factories/brick ware­houses on the banks of the Great Ouse in King’s Lynn, on Nor­folk’s coast. Because this was a port that served 10 counties, Lynn’s factories were run mainly by merchants from Danzig Poland, import­ing wax and pepper.

The Hansa had NOT promoted free trade; instead it was about freedom to trade. And their net­work did develop prosperity ­at a time when the Baltic had been a grim area. The League even intervened occas­ionally in politics, sup­p­orting monar­chs, im­posing trade boycotts and fighting wars. But the primary object­ive was always financial.

The Hansa had tight quality control. They had rules about cloth that could be traded; how it had to be stamped, sealed and folded, and priz­ed cloth from Bruges or Leiden was trademarked. Issues like counterfeit goods, trade­marks and rul­es of origin rose, and disputes led to some trading partners falling out. But it was a great example of pan-European co-oper­ation. Bet­ween 1356-1669 Lübeck host­ed 100+ meetings of the Hanse-tag, the assemb­ly which brought agents of Hanseatic towns tog­ether, helped assure quality & created trust.

The C15th Little Ice Age/cl­im­ate change contributed to the League’s de­c­l­ine since there were fewer people to harvest and tran­sport crops. And poorer quality crops due to a shor­t­er grow­ing season.

The League’s connections with Russian ports became unwelcome when their offices were closed by Ivan the Great in 1494 and all their trading privileges removed. Other nations followed suit, citing the League’s tendency to minimise the profits of non-League traders.

The Re­f­ormation (1517–1648) split the cohesion. The Hansa lost its importance in a creeping process from mid C15th until 1669, where the last Hanseatic Day took place. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) hastened the League’s decline, and when the League met in Lüb­eck in 1669 there were only 10 cities represented.

 

A late medieval market scene, unknown artist
C15th manuscript illustration
Standford.edu

So for hundreds of years, the Hansa had played a major role in shaping economies, trade and politics in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. The long-distance trade had made important Hanseatic cities pro­sperous, and the merchant class self-confident. It created a network of trusted associates in far-flung parts of the European market, a network that any individual Hanseatic trader could turn to for protection. Because they often lived together in trading bases, or convened at Hanseatic gatherings, members could gain information about goods for trade and their changing market value. Convoys defended shipping against piracy. And the Hansa oversaw the manufacture of new ships ideally suited to Baltic trade.

But the League had dimin­ish­ed in power, and only Lübeck, Hamb­urg & Bremen cont­in­ued the alliance. The rise of nation states as cen­tres of pol­it­ical power successfully challenged the League, as did the new global markets and trade routes. 

Modernity 
A new Hanseatic League was suggested in 1980 in Zwolle Holland, wanting to revive the League as a social & cultural alliance. Plus Lübeck Hansemuseum opened in May 2015.

The New League was found­ed in 2018 by European Union finance ministers from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden. It now has 192 members in 16 northern coun­t­ries. While Brex­it tragically grinds on, those old links are being reviv­ed on a political level within the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union!!