Hanseatic League
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Hanseatic League (also known as the Hanse or Hansa; Middle Low German: Hanse, Deutsche Hanse, Template:Lang-la or Template:Lang) was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 1100s, the league came to dominate Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period (c. 15th to 19th centuries). Hanse, later spelled as Hansa, was the Middle Low German word for a convoy, and this word was applied to bands of merchants traveling between the Hanseatic cities whether by land or by sea.
The league was created to protect the guilds' economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and furnished their own armies for mutual protection and aid. Despite this, the organization was not a state, nor could it be called a confederation of city-states; only a very small number of the cities within the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.
See also
- Baltic maritime trade (c. 1400-1800)
- Bay Fleet
- Brick Gothic
- Company of Merchant Adventurers of London
- Hanseatic Cross
- Hanseatic Days of New Time
- Hanseatic flags
- Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene
- Hanseatic Trade Center
- List of ships of the Hanseatic League
- Lufthansa
- Maritime republics
- Thalassocracy
- The Patrician
