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The Hanseatic League - A History of the Rise and Fall of the Hansa Towns
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...
351 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 18, 2015
About the author
Helen Zimmern
218 books7 followersHelen Zimmern was a naturalized British writer and translator born in Germany. She was instrumental in making European culture more accessible in English.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 11, 2018
Nationalist commentators dwell on the supposed incapacity of international bodies to act effectively and overcome obstacles. It's certainly true that, lacking a unified means of internal compulsion, collaborations are constantly in jeopardy of dissolution from tragedy of the commons effects. But there are examples of successful international enterprises, some of which exerted considerable power for longer than the current age of the United States. One example is the Hanseatic League, a loose and protean constellation of trading cities, stretching from Belgium to Russia, chiefly along the southern Baltic coast. At its peak, the League exercised a near monopoly on international trade in much of northern Europe.
The Hanseatic League arose out of the weakness of the central state. The Holy Roman Empire, which nominally exercised suzerainty over central Europe, was too diffuse and distracted to attend to commercial interests. By the 13th century trade was beginning to grow, and the maritime cities along the Baltic shared a common need for maritime security. The cities joined to combat piracy and privateers, which were then often instrumentalised as a tool of war raging within Scandinavia. The success of their initial effort led to a flourishing of trade, increasing both their capacities and the will for further collaboration.
With the (mostly) benign neglect of the Empire, the Hanseatic League grew to the point where by diplomatic, commercial and occasionally military means, it was able to dominate the north, imposing exclusionary trading conditions, deposing any ruler who stood in its path. Annual Diets took place in Lübeck, where League policy and dues were set. During its rise, the only instrument of compulsion the League needed to quell internal dissent was the threat of de-Hansing. And even with the negative effects of the religious, political and technological change of the 16th and 17th centuries, the League's decline was gradual.
There isn't much popular writing about the Hanseatic League. Perhaps it is looked at as a minor narrative within German history; its status as a precursor for the WTO (or even the EU and UN) being overlooked. This book by Helen Zimmern was written in the late 19th century. It shows its age, isn't particularly well written and tends toward the polemical. Yet it was good enough to support my hunch that international organisations can be potent and resilient, and helped me develop some hypotheses on the conditions which promote its development and decay.
The Hanseatic League arose out of the weakness of the central state. The Holy Roman Empire, which nominally exercised suzerainty over central Europe, was too diffuse and distracted to attend to commercial interests. By the 13th century trade was beginning to grow, and the maritime cities along the Baltic shared a common need for maritime security. The cities joined to combat piracy and privateers, which were then often instrumentalised as a tool of war raging within Scandinavia. The success of their initial effort led to a flourishing of trade, increasing both their capacities and the will for further collaboration.
With the (mostly) benign neglect of the Empire, the Hanseatic League grew to the point where by diplomatic, commercial and occasionally military means, it was able to dominate the north, imposing exclusionary trading conditions, deposing any ruler who stood in its path. Annual Diets took place in Lübeck, where League policy and dues were set. During its rise, the only instrument of compulsion the League needed to quell internal dissent was the threat of de-Hansing. And even with the negative effects of the religious, political and technological change of the 16th and 17th centuries, the League's decline was gradual.
There isn't much popular writing about the Hanseatic League. Perhaps it is looked at as a minor narrative within German history; its status as a precursor for the WTO (or even the EU and UN) being overlooked. This book by Helen Zimmern was written in the late 19th century. It shows its age, isn't particularly well written and tends toward the polemical. Yet it was good enough to support my hunch that international organisations can be potent and resilient, and helped me develop some hypotheses on the conditions which promote its development and decay.
September 22, 2021
When ordering this, I noted the publication date of sometime in the 2010's. It took me a few pages to decide that the language and style employed was rather "flowery" or "chatty" I thought. A few more pages in, I felt I was reading a quite direct translation from German, the length and structure of sentences caught my ear. I investigated and found the original publication date was 1889, and that the author, Helen Zimmern, was a German-born naturalised Brit. So, mystery solved.
All that said, I found the book to be very enlightening, on a subject that I knew something about, but not much of the detail. This provides an excellent understanding of perhaps the 500 years span of the history of these independent thinking cities and towns. It concludes that the Hansa, rather than the Holy Roman Empire and later Prussia and Bismark's (modern) view, was, and continues to be the true spirit of Germany. Perhaps after the 20th Century which was to come and the rise of West, then Unified, Germany as a global manufacturing and trading power, this view is borne out.
It is interesting to see how the arguments and battles for free trade stretch back to the medieval period, as we live through the aftermath of Brexit, and the very many problems and issue that arise from that with both European and global trade partners and how to make commerce flow fairly to everyone's satisfaction and prosperity.
All that said, I found the book to be very enlightening, on a subject that I knew something about, but not much of the detail. This provides an excellent understanding of perhaps the 500 years span of the history of these independent thinking cities and towns. It concludes that the Hansa, rather than the Holy Roman Empire and later Prussia and Bismark's (modern) view, was, and continues to be the true spirit of Germany. Perhaps after the 20th Century which was to come and the rise of West, then Unified, Germany as a global manufacturing and trading power, this view is borne out.
It is interesting to see how the arguments and battles for free trade stretch back to the medieval period, as we live through the aftermath of Brexit, and the very many problems and issue that arise from that with both European and global trade partners and how to make commerce flow fairly to everyone's satisfaction and prosperity.
May 13, 2018
"There is scarcely a more remarkable chapter in History than that which deals with the trading alliance or association known as the Hanseatic League." So begins this book, and lives up to the promise of the first sentence. The Hansa was an association of mostly German towns that came into being towards the beginning of the second millennium and achieved great prosperity and power before its eventual decline beginning from the middle of the sixteenth century. Lubeck was the key town in this alliance, and long after the alliance as such was over Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen kept the flag flying for quite some time.
The prime motivation for forming the league, according to the author, is providing a measure of security to trade in a time when the nobles, who were to provide security to other, were often themselves the biggest bandits. Trading towns came together to pool their resources and to take care of their own security. Salted herring, plentiful in the Baltic, was the trading item where it all began, but at its peak in the fourteenth century it encompassed almost everything.
At its peak the Hansa had its 'factories' or trading depots from London in the west to Novogorod in the east. It was strong enough to bully local princes to extract monopolies and concessions from them. If a prince didn't fall in line, the Hansa traders and their hired mercenaries didn't shy from using force of arms to make their point. King Christian II learned his lesson the hard way, when the Hansa forced him out of power in 1523 and propped up Frederick I in Denmark, and Gustav Vasa in Sweden to succeed him. Frederick and Gustav, however, proved to be more independent than the traders of Hansa bargained for and their desire to run their kingdoms their own way started the process of the Hansa's decline. Rise of Netherlands and England as strong maritime traders took a lot away from Hansa. It made an effort to stay relevant. As late as 1564 it started building an ambitious new factory in Antwerp. This factory, however, never took off and only accumulated bad debts.
Life within a Hansa factory was tightly controlled with a monastic discipline. It was, for all intents and purpose, an independent enclave in foreign territory. Local populations chafed under the excesses of Hansa factories, but for most of its life the benefits of having a Hansa factory outweighed the nuisance. For this reason the threat to close down a factory and take the business elsewhere was a potent bargaining tactic.
The Hansa factory in London was one of the richest and lasted the longest. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the British set up their own factories in India and China and extracted trading concessions from the local rulers by inducement, bribes and threats. From the middle of the eighteenth they intervened in the fights between local rulers and then replaced them. In this they went one step beyond Hansa traders who did everything else, but didn't become rulers. Other things like bending local rulers to their will by threats or inducement, obtaining monopolies to the detriment of local traders, are things the British must have learnt from the Hansa.
The style is fluent and the readability good despite the books vintage. It is full of interesting stories and anecdotes that spice up what could otherwise become a dry and boring account of history.
The prime motivation for forming the league, according to the author, is providing a measure of security to trade in a time when the nobles, who were to provide security to other, were often themselves the biggest bandits. Trading towns came together to pool their resources and to take care of their own security. Salted herring, plentiful in the Baltic, was the trading item where it all began, but at its peak in the fourteenth century it encompassed almost everything.
At its peak the Hansa had its 'factories' or trading depots from London in the west to Novogorod in the east. It was strong enough to bully local princes to extract monopolies and concessions from them. If a prince didn't fall in line, the Hansa traders and their hired mercenaries didn't shy from using force of arms to make their point. King Christian II learned his lesson the hard way, when the Hansa forced him out of power in 1523 and propped up Frederick I in Denmark, and Gustav Vasa in Sweden to succeed him. Frederick and Gustav, however, proved to be more independent than the traders of Hansa bargained for and their desire to run their kingdoms their own way started the process of the Hansa's decline. Rise of Netherlands and England as strong maritime traders took a lot away from Hansa. It made an effort to stay relevant. As late as 1564 it started building an ambitious new factory in Antwerp. This factory, however, never took off and only accumulated bad debts.
Life within a Hansa factory was tightly controlled with a monastic discipline. It was, for all intents and purpose, an independent enclave in foreign territory. Local populations chafed under the excesses of Hansa factories, but for most of its life the benefits of having a Hansa factory outweighed the nuisance. For this reason the threat to close down a factory and take the business elsewhere was a potent bargaining tactic.
The Hansa factory in London was one of the richest and lasted the longest. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the British set up their own factories in India and China and extracted trading concessions from the local rulers by inducement, bribes and threats. From the middle of the eighteenth they intervened in the fights between local rulers and then replaced them. In this they went one step beyond Hansa traders who did everything else, but didn't become rulers. Other things like bending local rulers to their will by threats or inducement, obtaining monopolies to the detriment of local traders, are things the British must have learnt from the Hansa.
The style is fluent and the readability good despite the books vintage. It is full of interesting stories and anecdotes that spice up what could otherwise become a dry and boring account of history.
May 7, 2023
This is an old school history, told as the unfolding over time of great events, guided by great historical actors. You could easily write a history of the Hanseatic League from an economic perspective, focused on goods sold, the changing mix of products at different ports, the ups and downs of merchant companies and growth of wealth over time. Or you could look at the society - how were families put together, what did they eat, what was their education, their level of culture. Or you could do it from a class perspective. There are a dozen more ways that modern historians do their work, but I didn't know the basic facts of the Hansa - how it came together and grew, how it was governed, what were its great turning points, who were its important leaders, and how did it eventually decline and fall. This old-fashioned book is great for conveying that kind of information, particularly because Ms. Zimmern is a master storyteller who writes in an engaging style in the tradition of Herodotus, Gibbon and Macaulay.
It was interesting to me to think of the Hansa in relation to other great mercantile empires - The Phoenicians and Athenians in the ancient world, and the British and Americans in the modern world. Often kingmakers but rarely kings, all of these empires have practiced imperialism primarily through and for the sake of business. None of them hesitated to back up business demands with arms, but arms and conventional political power for all of them were always put in the back seat. For the Hansa, as Ms. Zimmern explains, this strategy was sometimes a source of great strength, but sometimes led to fatal miscalculations. I'll bet that the same analysis could be successfully applied to the other great commercial empires.
It was interesting to me to think of the Hansa in relation to other great mercantile empires - The Phoenicians and Athenians in the ancient world, and the British and Americans in the modern world. Often kingmakers but rarely kings, all of these empires have practiced imperialism primarily through and for the sake of business. None of them hesitated to back up business demands with arms, but arms and conventional political power for all of them were always put in the back seat. For the Hansa, as Ms. Zimmern explains, this strategy was sometimes a source of great strength, but sometimes led to fatal miscalculations. I'll bet that the same analysis could be successfully applied to the other great commercial empires.
October 22, 2017
I’m no historian and no expert, but this book did change how I see the world. What was the role of a Northern German city in the Holy Roman Empire? How was this merchants’ empire-within-empire perceived economically and morally by peers in England, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Russia? What about its superiors - generations of kings? Was the Reformation and it’s disregard for fasting one of the leading causes for its loss of clout? This won’t be the last book I read about this era. My only complaint is that it lacks any citations whatsoever, as well as any description of the author or introduction to her work. It reads like a series of informative lectures from a knowledgeable expert, with somewhat, but not explicitly, related illustrations from the period. The prose is florid and beautiful. [Edit - I read the Didactic Press version; other versions may have more in the way of citations and context for the author.]
January 8, 2019
Interesting book about a fascinating League
This is quite an old book, written before World War I. It shows, both in the language and in some of the theories put forth, which are no longer generally accepted (e.g., that the term 'sterling' as in 'pound sterling' is related to the word 'Easterling', referring to Hanseatic merchants). The author also seems to have a strange problem with the regnal number IV: Erik IV of Denmark is referred to as Erik II; Valdemar IV of Denmark as Valdemar III; Ivan IV (the 'Terrible') of Russia as Ivan II; and a portrait of Kristian IV of Denmark is said to be Kristian II. All that being said, an interesting book, which accurately charts both the rise and the fall of a fascinating institution which is once again today seen as an example and a memory of a better age.
This is quite an old book, written before World War I. It shows, both in the language and in some of the theories put forth, which are no longer generally accepted (e.g., that the term 'sterling' as in 'pound sterling' is related to the word 'Easterling', referring to Hanseatic merchants). The author also seems to have a strange problem with the regnal number IV: Erik IV of Denmark is referred to as Erik II; Valdemar IV of Denmark as Valdemar III; Ivan IV (the 'Terrible') of Russia as Ivan II; and a portrait of Kristian IV of Denmark is said to be Kristian II. All that being said, an interesting book, which accurately charts both the rise and the fall of a fascinating institution which is once again today seen as an example and a memory of a better age.
July 11, 2024
Frau Zimmern writes with a point of view and makes no bones about it! I really enjoyed just falling into the antique world view and language of this book.
Reading historical history--this book was published in 1889--is thought-provoking and unfiltered. I'm not reading *about* what people thought in 1889, I'm reading in their own words.
Reading historical history--this book was published in 1889--is thought-provoking and unfiltered. I'm not reading *about* what people thought in 1889, I'm reading in their own words.
August 12, 2023
This is an old book, from the 19th century. It’s well written, not pedantic, a great resource for learning about the league, who they were, how they came about, and how they disappeared. Quite enjoyed it.
July 28, 2022
Mercantilism at its height. The united Hansa towns showed that a strong bourgeoisie class can resist pressure from monarchs and even fight back stronger adversaries.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews