The Hanseatic League: The Medieval Superpower That Dominated Baltic Trade

The Hanseatic League was a loose confederation of more than 100 city-states controlling shipping and trade in the Baltic and North Seas from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. The League protected sea lanes from piracy and developed new sailing ships. Politically, the federation’s city-states shifted power from nobility to wealthy residents (burghers).

The Old German word “Hanse” translates loosely to “community.” It later became associated with the economic and political link connecting long-distance traders to their home communities. While there is no exact date for the founding of the Hanseatic League, many historians recognize the establishment of the German city of Lubeck in the twelfth century as a starting point. Not only did this city establish a base for traders operating in the Baltic Sea but it enacted a set of laws that gave it a status of a free imperial city with a degree of autonomy that sought to protect merchants and their merchandise from pirates and robbers. Urban dwellers were also exempted from taxation and labor duties in the surrounding states.

The city council was composed less of noblemen and more of free, albeit wealthy, burghers. Controlling city affairs were merchant families whose ties were reinforced through economic interest and kinship. Other towns would soon follow Lubeck’s example, and a powerful economic and political union emerged. The main concern of the traders associated with the league was protection. An increasing number of ships swept the seas from pirates—especially the well-known Victual Brothers in the fourteenth century— and established safe trading posts (kontors) in foreign cities that enjoyed trade monopolies and privileges. The loose nature of the confederacy is best elucidated by the establishment of a diet by the fourteenth century. Meant to meet in the central city of Lubeck every three years, the diet convened much more infrequently. Decisions made by this political association had to be made by consensus.

The organization grew to encompass over 1000 settlements, stretching over seven current nations. Besides Lubeck, the organization included cities such as Bremen, Hamburg, and Rostock in Germany. In addition, the Hanse reached from Zwolle in the Netherlands to Visby in Sweden, Gdansk in Poland, and Riga in Estonia. Its vast trade networks incorporated Russia supplying pelts, the Baltic Republics delivering flax and hemp, Poland with wood and grain, Denmark providing schools of herring, Norway known for cod, and Sweden offering copper, iron, and cow products. Lastly, much-desired textiles came from Flanders. Hanseatic ships also brought salt from the coast of the Atlantic, a much-sought- after means to preserve food before refrigeration. The Hanse managed to negotiate lower or the complete elimination of taxes or fees for members of this organization in major ports throughout the Baltic and the North seas.

The Hanseatic cog provided the vehicle to haul the trade items. A sturdy, bulky sailing ship, the cog’s rounded hull could withstand the pounding of the Baltic and North Sea’s heavy waves and weather. It could also transport up to 125 tons of cargo or experiment with small caliber naval guns. In 1962, the uncovering of an almost complete cog wreck dating to about 1380 in the Weser River provided greater archaeological insight into the construction of such a ship. The Bremen Cog can be visited at the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven.

Starting in the fifteenth century, the Hanse had to contend with competitors over their trade privileges. Primarily, the Dutch Republics emerged as worthy trade adversaries. In the next century, the Hanse cities also encountered strong local states and kingdoms that sought to regain their once-prominent standing, and financial centers from southern Germany started to cut into the commercial routes. Similarly, European overseas expansion shifted markets across oceans rather than seas. In addition, environmental factors contributed to the decline. The plague, for instance, considerably cut into the northern European population.

The “Little Ice Age” of the fifteenth century brought additional hardship by diminishing crop seasons and significantly shifting herring spawn patterns. However, the organization’s official death knell was the Thirty-Year’s War (1618-48) that ravaged the countryside once frequented by the Hanse traders. Many member cities were sacked and plundered during the conflict. Once the Treaty of Westphalia ended the conflict, many former Hanse towns, fearful of their vulnerability, decided to abandon the centuries-old organization and accept their dependency on a local state. In the end, only three cities remained—Bremen, Hamburg, and Lubeck—that would officially renounce their Hansa status in 1862.

While the Hanse faded as an organization in the seventeenth century, the history of the confederation, albeit distorted, came again to the forefront in the nineteenth century with the unification of Germany. To generate pan-German sentiments among disparate member states, the Hanse was evoked as a particular Germanic hegemony over the Baltic and the North seas. Traces of this past are still retained by the entities of Bremen and Hamburg, which maintain city-state status within the Federal Republic of Germany. Even cities without this status, such as Lubeck and Rostock, proudly get to add the letter H, as in Hansestadt, to their license plates. With the expansion of the European Union into the Baltic Republics, numerous cities in the region are now proposing a separate Hanse city grouping within this economic coalition. Rainer F. Buschmann

FURTHER READING:Ewert, Ulf C. and Stephan Selzer. 2016. Institutions of Hanseatic Trade: Studies on the Political Economy of a Medieval Network Organization. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.

Harred, Donald J., ed. 2015. A Companion to the Hanseatic League. Leiden, NL: Brill.

North, Michael. 2015. The Baltic: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Paulsen, Reinhard. 2015. “The History of the “Hanse Cog”: A Ship Type between Science and Politics.” Hanseatische Geschichtsblatter. 133: 99-114.

Wuls-Mrozewicz, Justyna and Stuart Jenks, eds. 2013. The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Leiden, NL: Brill.