The New International Encyclopædia/Hanseatic League, The

HANSEATIC LEAGUE, or HAN'SA, The (from OHG. hansa [hanse], Goth. hansa, AS. hōs, league). A union established in the thirteenth century by some of the cities of Northern Germany for their mutual safety and for the protection of their trade. This union grew out of associations of German merchants organized abroad. In order to travel and trade with greater security, these had long been accustomed to band themselves together into companies; and through such associations had secured privileges in certain cities, notably in London, Novgorod, Bergen, in Norway, Bruges, and Wisby, in Gothland, off the coast of Sweden. In London the merchants of Cologne had obtained a letter of protection as early as 1157, and other German merchants who resorted to London joined the Cologne Hanse. When Lübeck, in the thirteenth century, began to threaten the supremacy of Cologne, the merchants of the latter city endeavored to exclude the men of Lübeck from trading in England. Possibly this opposition was influential in causing Lübeck to seek allies to strengthen its position. Between 1241 and 1255 she entered into a treaty with Hamburg for the mutual protection of the commercial highway between the two cities. This alliance, which is often regarded as the origin of the Hanseatic League, resulted in putting the control of commerce in the Baltic and the North Seas into the hands of the merchants of Hamburg and Lübeck. In 1259 Lübeck, Rostock, and Wismar formed an alliance against pirates on the sea and robbers on land. In 1267 the merchants of Lübeck were allowed to form a separate hanse in London. In 1284-85 the five Wendish cities of Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, and Greifswald waged war against King Eric of Denmark, and secured from him certain privileges. Before the end of the thirteenth century Cologne had been forced to take a subordinate position, and Lübeck was the recognized leader.

In the thirteenth century there were several instances of alliances formed between different groups of cities. These allied cities gradually found it advantageous to join the Lübeck union, which was constantly becoming more powerful. In 1343 it was officially designated as The Hansa. In 1362 the allies began a war against Waldemar IV. of Denmark, who had attacked Wisby in 1361, and in 1370 Denmark was compelled to conclude a treaty with the ‘seventy-seven hansen,’ in which the latter were guaranteed freedom to trade and an indemnity for the losses which they had suffered. In addition, it was agreed that no one in the future should receive the Danish crown without the advice of the cities and without the confirmation of the privileges of the Hanseatic League.

The entire League, which at one period embraced at least eighty-five towns, and included every city of importance between the Netherlands and Livonia, was divided at first into three, and later into four, classes or circles: (1) The Wendic cities of the Baltic; (2) the towns of Westphalia, the Rhineland, and the Netherlands; (3) those of Saxony and Brandenburg; (4) those of Prussia and Livonia. The capitals of the respective circles were Lübeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Danzig.

The professed object of the League was to protect the commerce of its members by land and by sea, to defend and extend its commercial relations with and among foreigners, to exclude as far as possible all other competitors in trade, and firmly to maintain, and, if possible, to extend, all the rights and immunities that had been granted by various rulers to the corporations. For the promotion of these ends, the League kept ships and armed men in its pay, the charge of whose maintenance was defrayed by a system of taxation and by the funds obtained from the money fines which the Diet levied for infringements of its laws. In its factory at Bergen, in Norway, only unmarried clerks and serving men were employed, and an almost monastic discipline was enforced; but the by-laws of the League prescribed a system of daily sports and light occupations for the recreation of the men, while judicious regulations for their comfort and cleanliness, and for the celebration of festivals at certain fixed times of the year, bear evidence of the sound sense that influenced the mode of government of the Hansa. This was further shown by the injunction to the masters of its factory to avoid everything that could hurt the prejudices of the foreigners among whom they were placed, and to conform in all things lawful to the habits of the country. At the Steelyard in London, where a German hanse was established as early as 1250, the regulations were similar in their severity to those of Bergen, and probably the customs at other factories were not far different.

For many years the Hanseatic League was the undisputed mistress of the Baltic Sea and the German Ocean. It created new centres of trade and civilization in numerous parts of Northern Europe, and contributed to the expansion of agriculture and of the industrial arts by the construction of canals and roads. It carried on trade with every European country. The greatest powers dreaded its hostility and sought its alliance, and many of the powerful sovereigns of the Middle Ages were indebted to it for most substantial benefits.

The League reached its culminating point in the fifteenth century. Its decline was rapid. In proportion as the seas and roads were better protected by the States which now arose in Europe with the passing of the old feudal anarchy, and as rulers learned to comprehend the true commercial interests of their dominions, the power of the Hansa declined. The discovery of America and of the new sea route to India gave an entirely different direction to the trade of Europe. The Hansa had, moreover, arrogated to itself, in the course of time, the right of imposing the greater and lesser ban, and of exercising other acts of sovereignty which were incompatible with the supremacy of the rulers in whose States they were enforced. Hence the League was necessarily brought into frequent hostile collision with the local authorities. In accordance with their narrow commercial policy, the Hansards refused to grant to merchants trading in foreign parts the same privileges in the Hanseatic cities which they themselves had enjoyed for centuries in England, Russia, and Scandinavia, and hence arose dissensions, which not unfrequently ended in a fierce maritime warfare. By way of retaliation for the pertinacity with which the League refused to grant to the English the same immunities which had been accorded to traders of other nations, the English Parliament required that Germans should pay the tax on wool and wine which was exacted from all other foreigners in the English markets; and although the Hansards strongly resisted, they were at length condemned by the courts, in 1469, to pay a fine of £13,500. They would probably have lost all they possessed in England if their cause had not been advocated by Edward IV., who had more than once been indebted to them for money and aid, and who in 1474 secured for them, by a clause in the Treaty of Utrecht, a restitution of nearly all their former rights in England. In 1598 their obstinacy in insisting upon the maintenance of their old prerogatives, notwithstanding the altered condition of the times, drew upon them the anger of Queen Elizabeth, who dispatched a fleet under Drake and Norris to seize upon the ships of the Hansa, sixty-one of which were captured. At the same time she banished the Hansards from their factory in London. These measures had the desired effect of compelling the League to receive English traders on equal conditions, and thenceforward the Hansards were permitted to occupy the Steelyard, as before. The Hansa had, however, outlived its usefulness, and at the Diet held at Lübeck, in 1630, the majority of the cities formally renounced their alliance. Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, and for a short time Danzig, remained faithful to their ancient compact, and continued to form an association of free republics, which existed unchanged until 1810, when the first three were incorporated in the French Empire. In 1815 they became members of the German Confederation. By a convention concluded in July, 1870, the powers and privileges of the three free towns were reëstablished and reorganized, and under the new German Empire they still retain their self-government. Consult: Sartorius, Geschichte des hanseatischen Bundes (Göttingen, 1802-08); Barthold, Geschichte der deutschen Hansa (Leipzig, l854); Hansische Geschichtsblätter (Leipzig, 1871 et seq.); Hansische Rezesse (21 vols., Leipzig, 1873-99); Lindner, Die deutsche Hansa (Leipzig, 1901); Helen Zimmern, The Hansa Towns (New York, 1889).