Wednesday 4th November 2009
The Hanseatic League by Charles Abdy
Charles who is a member of the Probus Club of Ewell, at very short notice gave a presentation on the Hanseatic League, he stated in his working life attended Sweden on business and was well aware of the Gotland trading enclave but never managed to fit a visit into his schedule. Later whilst visiting the Kings Lynn area came across existing medieval warehouses (see picture below) built for the Hansa traders, it was at this stage he persuaded his wife to visit Sweden with the intention of at last visiting Gotland an island in the Baltic sea about 120 miles south of Stockholm. But being Charles needed to research about the trading setup, so the presentation following his findings and supported by his own colour slides resulted in this interesting and well presented lecture.
The Hanseatic League (also known as the Hanse or Hansa) was an alliance of trading cities and their guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly along the coast of Northern Europe, from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland, during the Late Middle Ages hence the Hanseatic cities had their own law system and furnished their own protection and mutual aid.
Exploratory trading adventures, raids and piracy had happened earlier throughout the Baltic, the sailors of Gotland sailed up rivers as far away as Novgorod, but the scale of international trade 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 (i.e. 13th) century, and Lübeck became a central node in all the seaborne trade that linked the areas around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.
Lübeck
Hanseatic League's foundation in Hamburg, Germany (circa 1241) Lübeck (above) became a base for merchants from Saxony and Westphalia to spread east and north. Well before the term Hanse appeared in a document, 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. The towns furnished their own protection armies and each guild had to furnish a number of members into service, when needed. The trade ships often had to be used to carry soldiers and their arms. The Hanseatic cities came to each other's aid, whilst Visby the capital of Gotland functioned as the leading centre in the Baltic before the Hansa.
Charles continued Hansa societies worked to remove restrictions to trade for their members. For example, the merchants of the Cologne Hansa convinced Henry II of England to free them from all tolls in London and allow 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 a Free imperial city.
Lübeck, which had access to the Baltic and North Sea fishing grounds, formed an alliance, a foundation of the League 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, Henry III of England granted the them a charter for operations in England, and Cologne joined them to form the most powerful Hanseatic colony in London.
The league succeeded in establishing additional Kontors in Bruges (Flanders), Bergen (Norway), and London (England). These trading posts became significant enclaves. The London Kontor, shown on one of Charles's slides established in 1320, stood west of London Bridge near Upper Thames Street. He said that the present Cannon Street station occupies the site now. It grew significantly over time into a walled community with its own warehouses, church, offices and houses, reflecting the importance and scale of the activity carried on.
Charles pointed out in addition to the major Kontors, individual Hanseatic ports had a representative merchant and warehouse. In England this happened in Boston, Bristol, Bishop's Lynn (now King's Lynn shown below), which features the sole remaining Hanseatic warehouse in England, Hull, Ipswich, Norwich, Yarmouth (now Great Yarmouth), and York.
Bishop's Lynn Hansa warehouse (now King's Lynn shown above)
Lübeck City
German colonists under strict Hansa supervision built numerous Hansa cities on and near the east Baltic coast, some of which still retain many Hansa buildings and bear the style of their Hanseatic days. Most were founded under Lübeck law, which provided that they had to appeal in all legal matters to Lübeck's city council.
The League had a fluid structure, but its members shared some characteristics. First, most of the Hansa cities either started as independent cities or gained independence through the collective bargaining power of the League, though such independence remained limited. The Hanseatic free imperial cities owed allegiance directly to the Holy Roman Emperor, without any intermediate tie to the local nobility.
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, as Charles stated at their height of power about 1200 ships supported the League and was a force to be reckon with.
The League also wielded power abroad and waged war against Denmark. Initially unsuccessful, Hanseatic towns in 1368 allied in the Confederation of Cologne, sacked Copenhagen and Helsingborg, and forced King Valdemar IV of Denmark and his son-in-law Hakon VI of Norway to grant the League 15% of the profits from Danish trade in the subsequent peace-treaty of Stralsund in 1370, thus gaining an effective trade and political monopoly in Scandinavia. This favourable treaty was the high-water mark of Hanseatic power.
The Hansa also waged a vigorous campaign against pirates, as an essential part of protecting their investment in trade and ships, the League trained pilots and erected lighthouses.
A century later Queen Elizabeth I of England expelled the League from London and the Steelyard closed the following year. 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.
The economic crises of the late 14th century did not spare the Hansa Charles outlined the benefit for the Hansa was its domination of the shipbuilding market, but 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.
By the late 16th century, the League had imploded and could no longer deal with its own internal struggles, the social and political changes that accompanied the Protestant Reformation, the rise of Dutch and English merchants, and the incursion of the Ottoman Empire 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.
Charles then digressed to give us a whistle stop tour of Visby the capital of Gotland, following are only a selection typical of those shown, but basically covering the churches (reduced to only one apart from ruins) the Church of St Mary's the Cathedral, many shots of the walled city, market places, houses etc shown below.
Visby The Walled City, Capital of Gotland Island.
Ruins of a Visby Church
St Mary's Cathedral, Visby
Visby Medieval City
Visby Medieval City
Visby Medieval City
In answer to a question, Charles stated three years ago King's Lynn became the only English member of the newly formed modern Hanseatic League, whose members include Hamburg and Lubeck. The "new" HANSE hopes to foster and develop business links and tourism within towns and cities as well as promote cultural exchange.
In 1980, it was decided to re-establish the Hanseatic League as the Hanseatic League of New Time (also known as the New Hansa). Apart from old Hanseatic cities, the New Hansa granted membership to some cities which had not been members of the medieval Hansa but had had wide trade connections with the Hansa in the Middle Ages.
Another question about who was the President of the medieval league, Charles said this was not known but assumed the Council were the supreme equivalent but the revise Hansa and current President of the Hanseatic League of New Time is Bernd Saxe, Mayor of Lübeck, based at the headquarters of the New Hansa is in Lübeck, Germany.
Jackie Briggs gave a moving vote of thanks to Charles for a most informative presentation and stated before he knew very little bout the history of the League but was now well informed and just wondered if the new and forming European Union would follow the same pattern of trade domination leading to a decline in the future, but I guess we will not be around to see!.
Never the less the membership gave Charles a well deserved thank you in our normal manner
where is Gotland?...................map here
