The length of 11·32 inches points to the probability of the Hanseatic foot being a reduced Rhineland foot, 11/12 of 12·356 inches = 11·3264 inches. There are several instances of the popular objection to a long foot and of the artifice which reduces it to a more convenient length by taking 11 inches of the government standard, and making from them a foot of 12 short inches.
4. The Amsterdam foot = 11·146 inches, also used in the Dutch parts of New England. This foot is divided into 11 inches, an evident instance of a reduced foot, unconcealed by any division into 12 new inches. The practice of making a reduced foot stands revealed, and is confirmed by the Amsterdam rod (roede) being 13 of these reduced feet, evidently to make up in land-measure for the reduction in the foot in the home and in the workshop. This compensation is of the same kind as that now used in English agricultural weights where, to compensate for the statute reduction of the ancient 16 lb. stone, of which 16 made a wey or load of 256 lb., the custom arose of taking 18 statute-stones of 14 lb. to make a load of 252 lb. approximately the same as the old load.
The question now arises: What was the foot of 12·16 inches which the Hollanders reduced to 11/12 = 11·146 inches? Was it the Olympic foot?
The seafaring Netherlander, to whom the nautical mile and its 1/1000 part = the Olympic fathom, were familiar, would very possibly take its sixth part as their foot, just as the seafaring Greeks had taken it. But landfolk accustomed to the short Roman foot, which is still to be found in the land-measures of Holland, would reduce the longer foot to 11 inches for popular use.
Yet the longer foot has left traces in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam roede of 13 Amsterdam feet is = 12·07 feet, i.e. 12 feet of 12·07 inches. The Amsterdam Ell, = 27·08 inches at present (= 3 spans of 9·023 inches), was, in 1647, according to John Greaves, = 27·216 inches, giving a foot of 12·1 inches, and he gives the Antwerp Ell as = 27·396 inches, which gives an Antwerp foot 12·176 inches, a length very close to that of the Olympic foot of 12·16 inches. There appears to have been a slight shrinkage in the Amsterdam ell.
Austria
There are two standards of foot. While the ordinary foot, 1/6 of the Klafter or fathom, is = 12·441 inches, that of the ell (which is 2-1/2 feet) = 12·245 inches. It looks as if the one were increased, and the other equally decreased, from the Rhineland foot, = 12·356 inches.
2. The Latin Countries
Italy
Here every state, almost every city, had a different standard of length. The foot was generally of Roman type = 11·67 inches, or of a very short type, = about 10·3 inches, referable possibly to half an Egyptian royal cubit, = 20·64 inches, a measure still extant in Egypt. There was usually also a braccio or cloth-ell of 23 to 26 inches, probably of Eastern origin.