Portal:Germany/Selected article/2006/January

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The foundations of the Hanseatic League (German: Hanse), an alliance of trading cities that for a time in the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period maintained a trade monopoly over most of Northern Europe and the Baltic, can be seen as early as the 12th century, with the foundation of the new town of Lübeck in 1158/9 under the patronage of Henry the Lion of Saxony. Lübeck would become a central node in all the seatrade that linked the North Sea and the Baltic. There had been exploratory trading adventures, raids and piracy throughout this area— the sailors of Gotland sailed up rivers as far away as Novgorod— but there was no truly international economy before the Hanse (Braudel 1984).

Well before the term Hanse appeared in a document (1267), merchants in a given city began to form societies, or Hanse with the intention of trading with foreign cities, especially with the undeveloped Baltic, a source of timber, wax, resins, furs, even rye and wheat brought down on barges from the hinterland to port markets.

These societies worked to acquire special trade privileges for their members. For example, the merchants of Cologne (Köln) were able to convince Henry II of England to grant them special trading privileges and market rights in 1157. The Hanse creation, Lübeck, through which goods were transhipped between the North Sea and the Baltic gained the Imperial privilege of becoming an Imperial city in 1227, the only one east of the River Elbe. ... More