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Mar 14, 2024 · In the course of the 13th century, the situation changed. The richest merchants, mostly trading from port towns, continued their long distance trade overseas but stayed at home and organized their trade from there.
- Louis Sicking
- 22, Issue3
- 14 March 2024
Oct 11, 2015 · Edward IV eventually returned Hanse privileges under the Treaty of Utrecht after the Anglo-Hanseatic War concluded in 1474, but the die was cast; the Hanse continued its decline over the course of the 16th century.
In the course of the 13th century, the situation changed. The richest merchants, mostly trading from port towns, continued their long distance trade overseas but stayed at home and organized their trade from there. At the same time they became involved in the city administration and were thus able to influenceurban decision
Mar 14, 2024 · This article explores 150 years of historiography of the Hanse, the premodern trade network of mainly Low German merchants and their towns. It focusses on the construction of its infrastructure (the ...
- Overview
- The League at its outset
- Political organization to oppose competitors
- Danish War (1368–70)
The Hanseatic League was now in existence. Its existence and its importance were based on the fact that the league controlled, by virtue of vigorous action and geographical position, the main currents of northern trade. These ran from the economically advanced and populous west—with its large markets for raw materials, its large production of manufactured goods, and its contacts with the products of the Mediterranean and of Asia—to the “colonial” lands of eastern Europe, which could supply food surpluses and raw materials for industry. Grain, timber and pitch, tar, potash and charcoal, wax and honey, and hemp and flax all were drawn from the huge hinterland to the south and east of the Baltic (modern-day Russia and Poland) and shipped to the industrial west (Flanders and England), which in turn sent cloth and other manufactured goods eastward to the Slavs. That east-west carrying traffic, with the economic leverage that the merchants secured in the countries that needed their goods, was the mainstay of Hanseatic power. Scandinavia too was taken into the Hanseatic orbit. Swedish copper and iron ore were traded westward, and herring caught off the southern tip of Sweden was traded throughout Germany and southward to the Alps. Moreover, Norwegian production of whale oil and cod was monopolized.
The major aims of the German merchants who built the Hanseatic League are clear. First, they wanted their traffic to be secure in the wild and often barbarous conditions of northern and eastern Europe. The overriding purpose of many of the associations that preceded the full league was to secure combined action against pirates and land robbers, and the need for such action always remained. With the same general intent, an increasing effort was also put into the provision of lighthouses, marker buoys, trained pilots, and other aids to safe navigation. Second, the Germans combined to obtain assured bases for their trade abroad and to secure the most-favourable conditions in that trade. Finally, the league could be used as an instrument for establishing a monopoly in those branches of trade and in those areas where it was firmly established.
The Hanseatic League was now in existence. Its existence and its importance were based on the fact that the league controlled, by virtue of vigorous action and geographical position, the main currents of northern trade. These ran from the economically advanced and populous west—with its large markets for raw materials, its large production of manufactured goods, and its contacts with the products of the Mediterranean and of Asia—to the “colonial” lands of eastern Europe, which could supply food surpluses and raw materials for industry. Grain, timber and pitch, tar, potash and charcoal, wax and honey, and hemp and flax all were drawn from the huge hinterland to the south and east of the Baltic (modern-day Russia and Poland) and shipped to the industrial west (Flanders and England), which in turn sent cloth and other manufactured goods eastward to the Slavs. That east-west carrying traffic, with the economic leverage that the merchants secured in the countries that needed their goods, was the mainstay of Hanseatic power. Scandinavia too was taken into the Hanseatic orbit. Swedish copper and iron ore were traded westward, and herring caught off the southern tip of Sweden was traded throughout Germany and southward to the Alps. Moreover, Norwegian production of whale oil and cod was monopolized.
The major aims of the German merchants who built the Hanseatic League are clear. First, they wanted their traffic to be secure in the wild and often barbarous conditions of northern and eastern Europe. The overriding purpose of many of the associations that preceded the full league was to secure combined action against pirates and land robbers, and the need for such action always remained. With the same general intent, an increasing effort was also put into the provision of lighthouses, marker buoys, trained pilots, and other aids to safe navigation. Second, the Germans combined to obtain assured bases for their trade abroad and to secure the most-favourable conditions in that trade. Finally, the league could be used as an instrument for establishing a monopoly in those branches of trade and in those areas where it was firmly established.
Conditions changed. The 14th century was marked by the growth of political power in areas where the Hanseatic merchants had thitherto penetrated with little opposition, and by the appearance of strong resistance from local merchants who were developing sufficient strength and experience to resent and to try to oust the intrusive foreigners. Probably, too, the steady expansion in the volume of freight carried on the northern seas ended or weakened at that point, and the relative stagnation of trade exacerbated the other difficulties. Certainly from about 1370 to 1380 the Hanseatic merchants were forced into a position where their privileges and advantages had to be defended by actions that were increasingly severe, rigid, and restrictive.
There were two main consequences. The scope and gravity of the political and economic problems meant that they could be dealt with only from a firm basis of political power, and there was no power that the German merchants could use except that of their own cities. None of the German kings, except Charles IV, and none of the greater princes showed much interest in north German affairs. Thus, the “German” Hanse became in the middle of the 14th century a league of German cities: the great merchants identified the towns that they ruled with the old league that had united both towns and merchant associations, so the “Hanse of the merchants of Germany” became “the cities belonging to the German Hanse.” Significantly, that change is first documented in 1359, when the cities of the league sent representatives to a meeting to discuss the arrangements for a war against Flanders.
An early and famous example of such war is the struggle with Denmark provoked by the expansionist policies of the Danish king Valdemar IV Atterdag. Valdemar himself had secured the crown with the help of Lübeck and the Hanse but soon began the conquest of the southwestern Baltic. In 1360 he annexed Skåne and the island of Öland; Denmark thereby won...
1474-1531 was a time of immense change and upheaval for the Hanseatic League, and not just for them. The Habsburg empire is bedded into being, England’s war of the Roses is over, in the North the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth stretches all the way from Kyiev to Gdansk.
People also ask
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The beginning of the Hanseatic League cannot be traced to a specific year or place. Over the course of the centuries, one of the most powerful trade and city networks in medieval Europe developed from loose associations of long-distance traders into shipping communities, the so-called "hansa".
