Hanse Towns

The Hanseatic League ( 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 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, Raid s and Piracy had occurred earlier throughout the Baltic — the Sailor s 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 Gotland ic free-trade competition.) Foundation Lübeck became a base for northern German Merchant s 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 , Resin s, Fur s, even Rye and Wheat brought down on Barge s from the Hinterland to port markets. Visby functioned as the leading centre in the Baltic before the Hanse. 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 Gemanan Petershof further up from the river — see a translation of the grant of privileges to merchants in ) 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 Hanse", 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 Hanse 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 Lübeck's location on the Baltic provided access for trade with n port of Novgorod, where they built a trading post or ''Kontor''. Other such alliances formed throughout the Holy Roman Empire . The League never became a closely-managed formal organisation. Assemblies of the Hanseatic Towns met irregularly in Lübeck for ''Hansetag'', from 1356 onwards, but many towns chose not to send representatives and decisions did not bind individual cities. Over time, the network of alliances grew to include a flexible roster of 70 to 170 cities (Braudel 1984). The league succeeded in establishing additional ''Kontors'' in Bruges (in present-day Belgium ), Bergen (Norway), Copenhagen (Denmark) and London (England). These trading posts became significant Enclave s. The London ''Kontor'', established in 1320, stood west of London Bridge near Upper Thames Street. ( Cannon Street Station occupies the site Now .) It grew significantly over time into a walled community with its own warehouses, weighhouse, church, offices and houses, reflecting the importance and scale of the activity carried on. The first reference to it as the Steelyard (''der Stahlhof'') occurs in 1422 . In addition to the major Kontors, individual ports had a representative merchant and warehouse. In England this happened in Boston , Bristol , Bishop's Lynn (now King's Lynn , which features the sole remaining Hanseatic warehouse in England), Hull , Ipswich , Norwich , Yarmouth and York . The League primarily traded timber, furs, resin (or tar), flax, honey, wheat and rye from the east to Belgium and England with cloth (and, increasingly, manufactured goods) going in the other direction. Metal ore (principally copper and iron) and herring came southwards from Sweden. , Estonia ).]] German colonists under strict Hanse supervision built numerous Hanse towns in the Baltic: towns like Reval ( Tallinn ), Riga , and Dorpat ( Tartu ), some of which still retain many Hansa buildings and bear the style of their Hanseatic days. Livonia (presently Estonia and Latvia ) had its own Hanseatic parliament (diet), and all of its major towns became members of the Hanseatic League. Zenith Eventually, the Hanse capital moved to Danzig (Gdańsk) , the main port for merchandise traded along the Vistula river. Other important cities which became members of the Hanse included Toruń (Thorn), Elbląg (Elbing), Königsberg , and Kraków . (Danzig).]] The League had a fluid structure, but its members shared some traits. First, most of the Hanseatic League (or Hanse) cities either started as independent cities or gained independence through the collective bargaining power of the League. Such independence remained, however, limited; it meant that the Hansa cities in Germany owed allegiance directly to the Emperor of the day, without any intermediate tie to the local nobility. Another similarity involved the cities' strategic locatations along trade routes. In fact, at the height of its power in the late 1300s , the merchants of the Hanseatic League succeeded in using their economic clout (and sometimes their military might - trade routes needed protecting, and the League's ships sailed well-armed) to influence Imperial policy. The League also wielded power abroad: between 1368 and 1370 , Hansa ships fought against the Danes, and forced King Valdemar IV Of Denmark to grant the League 15 percent of the profits from Danish trade ( Treaty Of Stralsund , 1370) and an effective trade monopoly in Scandinavia. The Hansa also waged a vigorous campaign against pirates. Between 1392 and 1440 maritime trade of the League faced danger from raids of the Victual Brothers and their descendants, a mighty Brotherhood of Privateer s hired in 1392 by Albrecht Of Mecklenburg against the Danish queen Margaret I . In the Dutch-Hanseatic War ( 1438 — 1441 ) the merchants of Amsterdam sought and eventually won free access to the Baltic and broke the Hansa monopoly. As an essential part of protecting their investment in trade and ships, the League trained Pilot s and erected lighthouses. Exclusive trade routes often came at a high price. Most foreign cities confined the Hanse traders to certain trading areas and to their own trading posts. They could seldom, if ever, interact with the local inhabitants, except in the matter of actual negotiation. Moreover, many people, merchant and noble alike, envied the power of the League. For example, in London the local merchants exerted continuing pressure for the revocation of the privileges of the Hanseatic League. The refusal of the League to offer reciprocal arrangements to their English counterparts exacerbated this tension. King Edward IV Of England reconfirmed the league's privileges in 1474 despite this hostility — in part at least thanks to the significant financial contribution the League made to the Yorkist side during The Wars Of The Roses . A century later, in 1597 , Queen Elizabeth I expelled the League from London and the Steelyard closed in 1598 . The very existence of the League and its privileges and monopolies created economic and social tensions that often crept over into rivalry between League members. Downfall The economic crises of the late 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. At the start of the 16th century the League found itself in a weaker position than it had known for many years. Dutch and English merchants had started to challenge the Baltic monopoly actively. 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 Brugge 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 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 ). 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 demise, 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:Scandinavia In 1219GIFThe Baltic Region In 1219 (German Coast Occupied By Denmark, Before The	"http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Vrhbosna/Battle_of_Bornhöved_(1227)" class="copylinks">Battle Of Bornhöved (1227)
	Image:Danmark-Norway In 1646, Treaty Of BrömsebrogifThe Baltic Region In 1646 (	"http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Vrhbosna/Treaty_of_Brömsebro" class="copylinks">Treaty Of Brömsebro )
	Image:Denmark-Norway In 1658, Treaty Of RoskildeGIFThe Baltic Region In 1658 (	"http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Vrhbosna/Treaty_of_Roskilde" class="copylinks">Treaty Of Roskilde )
	Image:Danmark-Norge I 1814, WienerkongressenGIFThe Baltic Region In 1814 (	"http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Vrhbosna/Congress_of_Vienna" class="copylinks">Congress Of Vienna )

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Hanse Towns