Die Hanse historic
The Hanseatic League (HANSE) was an organisation of merchants in North
Germany, including some 70 cities and 100 to 130 smaller towns. These
towns and cities were located in an area that is spread over seven
European countries today - from the Zuidersee (Netherlands) in the West
to Estonia in the East, and from the Visby (Sweden) in the North to a
line from Cologne-Erfurt-Breslau-Krakow in the South. From that base,
the Hanseatic traders developed a sphere of economic influence
extending in the 16th century from Portugal to Russia, and from
Scandinavia to Italy - an area covering 20 European countries today. In
its heyday, the Hanseatic League was so powerful that it was able to
impose economic blockades against kingdoms and principalities, and in
exceptional cases even waged war.
From the 13th century to the mid-15th century, the Hanseatic League dominated most of international trading in Northern Europe, though it was never able to establish a monopoly position. The Hanseatic merchants supplied Western and Central Europe with luxury goods, food and raw materials from Northern and Eastern Europe, for example furs, wax, cereal, fish, and also flax, hemp, wood, and timber construction products such as pitch, tar and potash. In return, they imported finished products from the West and South to the North and East, such as cloth, metal goods (especially weapons), and spices.
The central handling points for this trade were the Hanseatic depots such as St. Peterhof in Novgorod (North-West Russia), in Bergen (Norway) e.g. the "Deutsche Brücke", in Bruges (Flanders), and in London (England) e.g. "Stalhof". The Hanseatic League also maintained a large number of smaller trading posts known as "Faktorei" in an area extending from Russia to Portugal
he efforts of the merchants were directed at trading. But from the second half of the 14th century onwards, the Hanseatic towns and cities also tried to establish a more permanent alliance organisation for mutual support against claims to power by noble families. Their purpose in this more permanent alliance was to deal with problems arising from the growing competition from English, Italian and Southern Italian merchants and Dutch freight carriers, and from the growing influence of the state in the countries with which they traded. So external pressure led to closer alliance among the towns and cities of the Hanseatic League.
But in the long run they were unable to stop the ongoing developments, and the influence of the Hanseatic League gradually declined, despite the enormous growth in trading in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The rise of national and territorial economies left no more room for cross-border trading communities such as those of the Hanseatic merchants and the Hanseatic towns and cities. The last Hansa Convention of the historic Hanseatic League was held in Lübeck in 1669.
