There is scarcely a more remarkable chapter in history than that which deals with the trading alliance or association known as the Hanseatic League. The League has long since passed away, having served its time and fulfilled its purpose. The needs and circumstances of mankind have changed, and new methods and new instruments have been devised for carrying on the commerce of the world. Yet, if the League has disappeared, the beneficial results of its action survive to Europe, though they have become so completely a part of our daily life that we accept them as matters of course, and do not stop to inquire into their origin. To us moderns it seems but natural that there should be security of intercourse between civilized nations, that highways should be free from robbers, and the ocean from pirates. The mere notion of a different state of things appears strange to us, and yet things were very different not so many hundred years ago.

The Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive federation of merchant guilds based in harbour towns along the North Sea and Baltic coasts of what are now Germany and her neighbours, which eventually dominated maritime trade in Northern Europe and spread its influence much further afield. The League was formed to protect the economic and political interests of member cities throughout a vast and complex trading network. The League continued to operate well into the 17th century, but its golden age was between c.1200 and c.1500; thereafter it failed to take full advantage of the wave of maritime exploration to the west, south and east of Europe. During its 300 years of dominance the League's large ships – called 'cogs' – were at the forefront of maritime technology, were early users of cannon, and were manned by strong fighting crews to defend them from pirates in both open-sea and river warfare. The home cities raised their own armies for mutual defence, and their riches both allowed them, and required them, to invest in fortifications and gunpowder weapons, since as very attractive targets they were subjected to sieges at various times.

Forces of the Hanseatic League

The Companion to the Hanseatic League discusses the importance of the Hanseatic League for the social and economic history of pre-modern northern Europe. Established already as early as the twelfth century, the towns that formed the Hanseatic League created an important network of commerce throughout the Baltic and North Sea area. From Russia in the east, to England and France in the west, the cities of the Hanseatic League created a vast northern maritime trade network. The aim of this volume is to present a “state” of the field English-language volume by some of the most respected Hanse scholars. Contributors are Mike Burkhardt, Ulf Christian Ewert, Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, Donald J. Harreld, Carsten Jahnke, Michael North, Jürgen Sarnowsky and Stephan Selzer.

A Companion to the Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League was a remarkable and unique organisation in medieval Europe. It extended from Novgorod to London, Lubeck to Venice. The Wash havens of Lynn and Boston have the earliest and strongest commercial links; six experts, working from their own specialisms and viewpoints, contributed conference papers which are presented in this title.

Six Essays in Hanseatic History

Traders, Ties and Tensions

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The German Hansa

The Hansa Towns and the Hanseatic League is a fantastic history of the famous trading group.

The Hansa Towns and the Hanseatic League

The Baltic Story recounts the shared history of the countries around the Baltic, from the events of a thousand years ago to today. It shows the ties of blood and commerce that have bound the different lands which now lie in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Western Russia and eastern Germany. The narrative encompasses the foundation of some of Europe's greatest cities, including St Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Gdánsk. The earliest settlers created a commercial network. As these Hansa merchants became wealthier, they began to impose on the political affairs of their neighbours. In Poland, descendants of her first rulers eventually united their territories and created a state offering religious tolerance and an elective monarchy. Meanwhile, one of Europe's most ancient dynasties, the Oldenburgs, assumed power in Denmark, but the king was deposed after his massacre of Swedish nobles. When Gustav Vasa takes the Swedish throne, the Kalmar Union collapses. The Catholic king of Poland invades Russia and his son is elected tsar. Russia's turmoil ends with the election of Michael, the first of the Romanovs. As the feud between the Poles and Swedes continues, Karl X ravages Poland and moves on to Denmark, where he crosses the frozen sea to attack Copenhagen. Having stood firm against further Swedish assault, the Danish king attains absolute power. This history shows the growth of autocracy, from Denmark's absolutist kings to the opulent world of the eighteenth-century Russian empresses. It analyses the period of the Enlightenment, in particular the achievements of Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia and the problems facing Poland that ended with the country's collapse. And it shows how Enlightenment thinking influenced Denmark and Sweden and rocked the monarchies. It also explores the threat of Napoleon's France to the Baltic and the impact of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, which led to the radical re-shaping of the region.

The Baltic Story

"The merchants of the medieval Hanse monopolised trade in the Baltic and North Sea areas. The authors describe the structure of their trade system in terms of network organisation and attempts to explain, on the grounds of institutional economics, the coordination of the merchants' commercial exchange by reputation, trust and culture. The institutional economics approach also allows for a comprehensive analysis of coordination problems arising between merchants, towns and the 'Kontore.' Due to the simplicity and flexibility of network trade, the Hansards could bridge the huge gap in economic development between the West and the East. In the changing economic conditions around 1500, however, exactly these characteristics proved to be a serious limit to further retain their trade monopoly"--Provided by publisher.

Institutions of Hanseatic Trade

Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. They managed their territories as business interests, treating their subjects as employees, customers, or competitors. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised virtually unaccountable, dictatorial political power over millions of people. The merchant kings of the Age of Heroic Commerce were a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life men who, for a couple hundred years, expanded their far-flung commercial enterprises over a sizable portion of the world. They include Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the violent and autocratic pioneer of the Dutch East India Company; Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of the Dutch West India Company, whose narrow-minded approach lost Manhattan to the British; Robert Clive, who rose from company clerk to become head of the British East India Company and one of the wealthiest men in Britain; Alexandr Baranov of the Russian American Company; Cecil Rhodes, founder of De Beers and Rhodesia; and George Simpson, the "Little Emperor" of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was chauffeured about his vast fur domain in a giant canoe, exhorting his voyageurs to paddle harder so he could set speed records. Merchant Kings looks at the rise and fall of company rule in the centuries before colonialism, when nations belatedly assumed responsibility for their commercial enterprises. A blend of biography, corporate history, and colonial history, this book offers a panoramic, new perspective on the enormous cultural, political, and social legacies, good and bad, of this first period of unfettered globalization.

Merchant Kings

The first sailors braved the North Sea and the Baltic in open wooden boats: their aims were varied - to fish, to trade, to conquer and plunder. Without maps or compasses, they steered by the sun or by landmarks on the coast. Nevertheless they discovered Iceland and North America and explored the rivers that flowed through Europe and Russia into the Black Sea. With the Frisians and the Vikings, extensive trade routes, better ships, larger harbours and wealthy coastal towns developed. The pinnacle of these advances was the Hansa, a commercial network that ran from Bruges to Riga. In recent years archaeologists have discovered much about the development of their ships: the elegant Viking longboat, the ubiquitous cog, the carrack and the caravel. Much, too, has been revealed about life in Viking settlements and the bustling Hanseatic cities. In this engaging and highly-illustrated volume, Dirk Meier brings to life the world of the medieval seaman, based on evidence from ship excavations and contemporary accounts of voyages. Dr Dirk Meier teaches ancient and medieval history and is Head of Coastal Archaeology at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.

Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages

This book demolishes the widely held view that the phrase 'medieval business' is an oxymoron. The authors review the entire range of business in medieval western Europe, probing its Roman and Christian heritage to discover the economic and political forces that shaped the organization of agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, transportation and marketing. Businessmen's responses to the devastating plagues, famines, and warfare that beset Europe in the late Middle Ages are equally well covered. Medieval businessmen's remarkable success in coping with this hostile new environment was 'a harvest of adversity' that prepared the way for the economic expansion of the sixteenth century. Two main themes run through this book. First, the force and direction of business development in this period stemmed primarily from the demands of the elite. Second, the lasting legacy of medieval businessmen was less their skillful adaptations of imported inventions than their brilliant innovations in business organization.

A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550

In this overview of the Baltic region from the Vikings to the European Union, Michael North presents the sea and the lands that surround it as a Nordic Mediterranean, a maritime zone of shared influence, with its own distinct patterns of trade, cultural exchange, and conflict. Covering over a thousand years in a part of the world where seas have been much more connective than land, The Baltic: A History transforms the way we think about a body of water too often ignored in studies of the world’s major waterways. The Baltic lands have been populated since prehistory by diverse linguistic groups: Balts, Slavs, Germans, and Finns. North traces how the various tribes, peoples, and states of the region have lived in peace and at war, as both global powers and pawns of foreign regimes, and as exceptionally creative interpreters of cultural movements from Christianity to Romanticism and Modernism. He examines the golden age of the Vikings, the Hanseatic League, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and Peter the Great, and looks at the hard choices people had to make in the twentieth century as fascists, communists, and liberal democrats played out their ambitions on the region’s doorstep. With its vigorous trade in furs, fish, timber, amber, and grain and its strategic position as a thruway for oil and natural gas, the Baltic has been—and remains—one of the great economic and cultural crossroads of the world.

The Baltic

An exhaustive account, making many original contributions to the study of the Hanse.

England and the German Hanse, 1157-1611

Saints and spies, pirates and philosophers, artists and intellectuals: they all criss-crossed the grey North Sea in the so-called “dark ages,” the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of Europe’s mastery over the oceans. Now the critically acclaimed Michael Pye reveals the cultural transformation sparked by those men and women: the ideas, technology, science, law, and moral codes that helped create our modern world. This is the magnificent lost history of a thousand years. It was on the shores of the North Sea where experimental science was born, where women first had the right to choose whom they married; there was the beginning of contemporary business transactions and the advent of the printed book. In The Edge of the World, Michael Pye draws on an astounding breadth of original source material to illuminate this fascinating region during a pivotal era in world history.

The Edge of the World

In the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, Northern Europe was a crucible of political, maritime and economic activity. Ships from ports all around the Baltic Sea as well as from the Low Countries plied the Baltic waters, triggering market integration, migration flows, nautical innovations and the dissemination of cultural values. This archival guide is an essential research tool for scholars studying these Baltic connections, providing descriptions of almost 1000 archival collections concerning trade, shipping, merchants, commodities, diplomacy, finances and migration in the years 1450-1800. These rich and varied sources kept at more than 100 repositories in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Sweden are herewith collected for the first time.

Baltic Connections (3 vols.)

In the 13th and 14th centuries German Hansa merchants dominated North European maritime trade. They created trade settlements abroad and new towns in the Baltic. The Kontor in Bergen was the largest of these settlements and had ca. 1000 residents in winter, increasing to 2000 in summer. Its counterpart was a Norwegian state whose authority declined after 1319. The resulting military, administrative and judicial relations are unique in Northern Europe. The great expansion in the Bergen stockfish trade took place 1250-1320 and declined after the Black Death. Norwegian merchants and state officials found the Kontor presence problematic, but stockfish producing households between Bergen and the Barents Sea saw the trade as a source of economic welfare and better food security.

The German Hansa and Bergen 1100-1600

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Engineering - Civil Engineering, grade: A, University of California, Berkeley, 15 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In 1894 the British architect John Tavenor wrote an article about the remains of medieval architecture in the Baltic area. He concluded that the style in this area has been carried throughout the Middle Ages and further stated that the style is "quite dissimilar to those of the rest of the continent", meaning the Gothic style, that started to spread over Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. He calls this architecture the "Baltic style" and considers it to be a sub-style of the Gothic style. The Holy Roman Empire, which contributed to the spread of the Gothic style, only reached as far as the Elbe River in Germany. The Baltic area, as the heart of Northern Europe, was fractured into many kingdoms, principalities and lordships in the 1st millennium B.C. So how was it possible that cultural and economic goods could spread in these disadvantageous circumstances, at a time when "commerce by sea was little more than outrageous piracy and commerce by land was obliged to follow one or two beaten tracks across Europe in order to escape merciless exactions of the robber barons" One answer could be the Hanseatic League, a protected network created by merchants, in order to protect their trade. This alliance allowed trading guilds to manifest a trade monopoly within the entire Baltic area. Since the League was not tied to any sphere of control but the merchants themselves, trades could be made easily within Northern Europe. Consequently the simultaneous appearance of the League and the Baltic style suggest that there is a possible correlation between the architecture in the Baltic area and its spread along the Hanseatic League's trading routes. During this essay I am going to support this assumption by finding exemplifying similarities among buildings in the Hanse towns along the m

Hanseatic Architecture

The Hansa

The Hanseatic Control Of Norwegian Commerce During The Late Middle Ages

The Hanseatic League was a powerful commercial and defensive alliance of merchant guilds and market towns in Northern Europe, active from the late 12th to the 17th century. It dominated trade along the Baltic and North Seas, facilitating the exchange of goods like timber, grain, fish, and textiles between regions such as Germany, Scandinavia, and the Low Countries. Key cities like Lübeck, Hamburg, and Riga served as hubs for its extensive network. The League wielded significant political influence, often negotiating treaties and operating independently from regional rulers. Its decline began in the 16th century due to shifting trade routes, internal conflicts, and the rise of nation-states.

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