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The Hanseatic League (, , , , ) comprised an alliance of trading guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea and most of Northern Europe for a time in the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, between the 13th and 17th centuries. History Historians generally trace the origins of the League to the foundation of the Northern German town of Lübeck, established in 1158/1159 after the capture of the area from the Count of Schauenburg and Holstein by Henry the Lion, the Duke of Saxony. Exploratory trading adventures, raids and piracy had occurred earlier throughout the Baltic (see Vikings) — the sailors of Gotland sailed up rivers as far away as Novgorod, for example — but the scale of international economy in the Baltic area remained insignificant before the growth of the Hanseatic League. German cities achieved domination of trade in the Baltic with striking speed over the next century, and Lübeck became a central node in all the sea-borne trade that linked the areas around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The 15th century saw the climax of Lübeck's hegemony. (Visby, one of the midwives of the Hanseatic league in 1358, declined to become a member. Visby dominated trade in the Baltic before the Hanseatic league, and with its monopolistic ideology, suppressed the Gotlandic free-trade competition.) Foundation Lübeck became a base for northern German merchants from Saxony and Westphalia to spread east and north. Well before the term Hanse appeared in a document (1267), merchants in a given city began to form guilds or Hansa with the intention of trading with towns overseas, especially in the less-developed eastern Baltic area, a source of timber, wax, amber, resins, furs, even rye and wheat brought down on barges from the hinterland to port markets. Visby functioned as the leading centre in the Baltic before the Hansa. For a hundred years the Germans sailed under the Gotlandic flag to Novgorod. Sailing east, Visby merchants established a branch at Novgorod. To begin with the Germans used the Gotlandic Gutagard. With the influx of too many merchants the Gotlanders arranged their own trading stations for the German Petershof further up from the river — see a translation of the grant of privileges to merchants in 1229. They helped establish key towns on the east Baltic coast: Danzig (Gdańsk) Reval (Tallinn), Riga and Dorpat (Tartu), all founded (like others on the Baltic coast) under Lübeck law, which provided that they had to appeal in all legal matters to Lübeck's city council. Before the foundation of the Hanseatic league in 1358 the word Hanse did not occur in the Baltic. The Gotlanders used the word varjag. Hansa societies worked to acquire special trade privileges for their members. For example, the merchants of the Cologne (Köln) Hansa contrived to convince Henry II of England to grant them (in 1157) special trading privileges and market rights which freed them from all London tolls and allowed them to trade at fairs throughout England. The "Queen of the Hansa", Lübeck, where traders trans-shipped goods between the North Sea and the Baltic, gained the Imperial privilege of becoming an Imperial city in 1227, the only such city east of the River Elbe. Lübeck, which had access to the Baltic and North Sea fishing grounds, formed an alliance in 1241 with Hamburg, another trading city, which controlled access to salt-trade routes from Lüneburg. The allied cities gained control over most of the salt-fish trade, especially the Scania Market; and Cologne joined them in the Diet of 1260. In 1266 Henry III of England granted the Lübeck and Hamburg Hansa a charter for operations in England, and the Cologne Hansa joined them in 1282 to form the most powerful Hanseatic colony in London. Much of the drive for this co-operation came from the fragmented nature of existing territorial government, which failed to provide security for trade. Over the next 50 years the Hansa itself emerged with formal agreements for confederation and co-operation covering the west and east trade routes. The chief city and linchpin remained Lübeck; with the first general Diet of the Hansa held there in 1356, the Hanseatic League acquired an official structure and could date its official founding. Expansion
Zenith
Downfall The economic crises of the late 14th century did not spare the Hansa. Nevertheless, its eventual rivals emerged in the form of the territorial states, whether new or revived, and not just in the west: Poland triumphed over the Teutonic Knights in 1466; Ivan III of Russia ended the entrepreneurial independence of Novgorod in 1478. New vehicles of credit imported from Italy outpaced the Hansa economy, in which silver coin changed hands rather than bills of exchange. The Dutch merchants of the county of Holland aggressively challenged the Hansa and met with success. The Hansa cities of Prussia, Livonia and Poland supported Holland against the main cities of the Hansa in northern Germany. After several naval wars between the Burgundian and the Hanseatic fleets, Amsterdam became the leading port for Polish and Baltic grain from the late 15th century onwards. The Dutch regarded grain trade of Amsterdam as the mother of all trades (Moedernegotie). Denmark and England tried to destroy the Netherlands in the early 16th century, but failed. At the start of the 16th century the League found itself in a weaker position than it had known for many years. The rising Swedish Empire had taken control of much of the Baltic. Denmark had regained control over its own trade, the Kontor in Novgorod had closed and the Kontor in Bruges had become effectively defunct. The individual cities which made up the League had also started to put self-interest before the common good. Finally the political authority of the German princes had started to grow — and so to constrain the independence of action which the merchants and Hanseatic Towns had enjoyed. The League attempted to deal with some of these issues. It created the post of Syndic in 1556 and elected a permanent official with legal training who worked to protect and extend the diplomatic agreements of the member towns. In 1557 and 1579 revised agreements spelled out the duties of towns and progress occurred. The Bruges Kontor moved to Antwerp and the Hansa attempted to pioneer new routes. However, the League proved unable to halt the progress around it and so its long decline commenced. The Antwerp Kontor closed in 1593, the London Kontor in 1598. The Bergen Kontor continued until 1754: its buildings alone of all the Kontoren survive (see Bryggen). The end By the late 16th century, the League imploded and could no longer deal with its own internal struggles, the social and political changes that accompanied the Reformation, the rise of Dutch and English merchants, and the incursion of the Ottoman Turks upon its trade routes and upon the Holy Roman Empire itself. Only nine members attended the last formal meeting in 1669 and only three (Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen) remained as members until its final demise in 1862. Despite its collapse, several cities still maintain the link to the Hanseatic League today. Even in the 21st century, the cities of Deventer, Kampen, Zutphen, Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, Greifswald and Anklam call themselves Hanse cities. For Lübeck in particular, this anachronistic tie to a glorious past remained especially important in the second half of the 20th century. Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen continue to style themseves officially as "Free and Hanse cities". The Nazis removed this privilege through the ''Greater Hamburg Act, 1937'' after the Senat of Lübeck did not permit Adolf Hitler to speak in Lübeck during his election campaign . He held the speech in Bad Schwartau, a small village on the outskirts of Lübeck. Subsequently he always referred to Lübeck as "the small city close to Bad Schwartau". Historic maps Image:First.Crusade.Map.jpg|Europe in 1097 Image:Scandinavia in 1219.GIF|The Baltic region in 1219 (German coast occupied by Denmark, before the Battle of Bornhöved (1227) Image:Europein1328.png|Europe in 1328 Image:Europe in 1430.PNG|Europe in 1430 Image:Europe in 1470.PNG|Europe in 1470 Image:Danmark-Norway in 1646, Treaty of Brömsebro.gif|The Baltic region in 1646 (Treaty of Brömsebro) Image:Denmark-Norway in 1658, Treaty of Roskilde.GIF|The Baltic region in 1658 (Treaty of Roskilde) Image:Danmark-Norge i 1814, Wienerkongressen..GIF|The Baltic region in 1814 (Congress of Vienna) Lists of former Hansa cities In the list that follows, the role of these foreign merchant companies in the functioning of the city that was their host, in more than one sense is, as Fernand Braudel pointed out, a telling criterion of the status of that city: "If he rules the roost in a given city or region, the foreign merchant is a sign of the economic inferiority of that city or region, compared with the economy of which he is the emissary or representative". Wendish and Pomeranian Circle
Saxony, Thuringia, Brandenburg Circle Poland, Prussia, Livonia, Sweden Circle Rhine, Westphalia, the Netherlands Circle Principal Kontore Subsidiary Kontore Other cities with a Hansa community See also | |||||||||||||||
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