With good reason the world's commerce is to-day accepted as one of the most imposing and unique phenomena of our time. It is but necessary to consult a statistical handbook in order to obtain a conception of the gigantic figures involved in the exports and imports of the multifarious articles of commerce to and from all countries—figures whose magnitude precludes the possibility of forming an adequate conception of their true significance. No less astonishing are the means employed by traffic to-day to develop our system of credit and our complex and useful web of communication. One fact, however, should be borne in mind: namely, that our commerce is of comparatively modern growth. The two factors chiefly responsible for its development were: (1) The great voyages of discovery which began at the close of the fifteenth century and opened a theretofore unsuspected field of production and consumption; and (2) the utilization of steam, that great triumph of the nineteenth century. Perhaps a brief sketch of that earlier commercial development which immediately preceded our extensive modern commercial network may not be unwelcome to the reader desirous of contrasting the narrower but nevertheless fascinating mediæval conditions of the German Hansa with those prevailing in our present mercantile world. Let us inquire how the confederation of the Hansa arose, and, after briefly sketching its external history, review in greater detail its commercial and industrial methods, its art work, domestic life, and constitution.
The development of the German Hansa may be traced to two principal sources: (1) The associations formed by German merchants abroad, and (2) the union established by the Low-German cities at home.
In the days of Charlemagne, Germany's eastern boundary was extended to the Elbe, and beyond it to Holstein, but it was not until four centuries later, that is, in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, that the Baltic was reached, the southern borders of which sea, now constituting Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Prussia, having theretofore been inhabited chiefly by Slavonic and Lithuanian peoples. The credit for this increase of power is due primarily to the Saxon duke Henry the Lion, who, while the Emperor was engaged in maturing and executing mighty plans of world conquest, developed upon this virgin soil an extraordinary colonial activity, transplanting hither German peasants, burghers, and priests, and with them German customs and Christian civilization. In this way there arose about the year A.D. 1200, upon soil wrested from the Slavs, a number of promising towns, foremost among which was Lubeck, a place endowed by Duke Henry with municipal rights especially designed to promote commercial intercourse and affording liberal and far-reaching privileges to the counsellors and burghers. Soon thereafter the rapidly developing neighboring cities of Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Anklam, and Stettin, usually called "the Wendish cities," became participants in the constitution thus granted. The territory now grew rapidly. In the course of the thirteenth century, the then pagan country of Prussia and the present Baltic provinces of Russia were conquered by the Teutonic knights and kindred orders and were occupied and settled. The same historical process which took place in Greece, and in more recent times in America, also repeated itself here: the youthful colonial offshoots overcame the narrowing and confining influence of the mother country, yet reacted favorably upon it by virtue of that vivifying influence, due to more rapid and exuberant growth.
In the mean time the other countries contiguous to the North and Baltic seas, that is, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England, had become converted to Christianity. Some of them, indeed, had embraced the Christian creed several centuries prior to this time. The natural consequence was that a lively intercourse was cultivated upon the two seas, especially after the crusades, which enterprises, by opening new avenues of commerce and increasing the knowledge concerning numerous articles of utility, had greatly augmented the demands of the people of the Occident. The extraordinary development of trade on the Baltic, indeed, vividly recalls the ancient commercial activity on the Mediterranean; and the phrase, "a basin fruitful of culture," often applied to the latter region, may with equal justice be applied also to the former. In the beginning, Russians, Danes, and Englishmen participated in the active trade conducted on the northern littoral. Eventually, however, they were displaced by their German rivals. As the northern nations upon their acceptance of Christianity had once before formed their political and social institutions upon German models, so they now, in such cities as Stockholm, Bergen, Copenhagen, and others, became subject to the cultural and, above all, the commercial influence of the German burgher.
It is interesting to note the manner in which this extraordinary influence was secured. In later mediæval times all classes of the population were compelled to rely upon self-help. In other words, they were compelled to replace the defective or insufficient protection afforded by the State by corporate bodies. Thus the merchants of a Low-German German town, when in search of a common centre of trade, pledged themselves by a solemn oath to a defensive and offensive alliance and mutual furtherance; and wider alliances between the various towns themselves soon followed. Of all these private commercial associations none attained to greater importance than did the Gothland Company, a society of Low-German merchants who visited Gothland, the centre of commercial activity in the Baltic, for trading purposes. Here was the seat of the mighty city of Wisby, which contained such wealth that a Danish king once declared that the swine there ate from silver troughs. Even at the present day the massive ruins of the old city wall and of the eighteen churches which once existed there bear testimony to the former magnitude and grandeur of the city. The Gothland Company flourished chiefly during the thirteenth century and enjoyed all the privileges of a political power; bearing its own seal, policing the seas, and insisting upon strict compliance on the part of all navigators of the Baltic with the marine laws which it had created.
Parallel with this development was the formation of unions between inland towns, caused by the depredations of robber-knights; the menacing increase of power among the nobility; and by commercial motives of all kinds, as, for example, the necessity of preventing banished criminals and debtors from seeking an asylum in neighboring communities. Along the entire region from Esthland to Holland, both of which at that time belonged to the German crown, the municipalities united. In the far-western part of the German empire there was the municipal group of the Netherlands, among which such cities as Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Deventer belonged. Farther inland was the Rhenish-Westphalian group, consisting of Cologne, Dortmund, Munster, and others, which cities, though somewhat distant from the sea, nevertheless occupy a place of honor as pioneers of German marine commerce. Between these two western groups and those in the East there was a wide gap extending as far as the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. At the entrance to these rivers, however, and along the borders of the Baltic were the great maritime communities, the chief members of the Hanseatic League, including the before-mentioned Wendish group and the cities of Bremen and Hamburg. Yet not these alone, although they were in some respects the most important. Inland, the municipal groups extended so as to embrace Berlin, then very unimportant, Perleberg, etc., in the Mark of Brandenburg, the Saxon cities of Magdeburg, Hanover, Luneburg, Goslar, Hildesheim, Brunswick, and others; in the far-eastern part of the empire the six rapidly growing cities of the Teutonic order, Kulm, Thorn, Dantzic, Elbing, Braunsberg, and Koenigsberg; and finally, in Livonia and Esthonia, Riga, Dorpat, Reval, and Pernau. Noteworthy was the treaty concluded in A.D. 1241, between Hamburg and Lubeck, whereby the former assumed control of the interests in the North Sea and the Elbe, while the latter safeguarded those of the Baltic. This treaty between Hamburg and Lubeck is sometimes regarded as the beginning of the Hanseatic League. It has here been sufficiently demonstrated, however, that the association was the result of a slow and gradual process, enforced by conditions, and that it did not originate in the mind of any particular statesman as a definite plan.
The two groups, the maritime and the inland municipal, had developed independently: it now remained to unite them; and from the union thus effected sprang the great institution of the German Hansa. The private associations, not excepting the Gothland Company, in view of the rapid extension of commerce and the consequent jealousy of foreign competitors, were no longer able to afford sufficient protection to the foreign trade—a condition which did not escape the statesmen of Lubeck, with their marked power of initiative and political sagacity.
Thus it came, during the last decades of the thirteenth century, that the private societies became more and more dependent upon the municipal unions, which, under the leadership of the free and centrally located city of Lubeck, now assumed the energetic guardianship of maritime commerce, by reason of which they were drawn from their hitherto isolated position and gradually became fused into an increasingly compact union.
Already at the close of the thirteenth century the young institution of the Hansa received its initiation in warfare in a conflict with the kingdom of Norway, which country was compelled to purchase peace at the price of new and greater concessions to the league. Soon thereafter, however, the steady progress of the Hansa met with a rebuff. Denmark, at that time the foremost power of the North, had for more than a century endeavored to obtain the supremacy of the Baltic, at the entrance to which it was so advantageously situated. At one time Lubeck was for an entire decade forced into a sort of vassalage to the energetic king Eric Menved of Denmark, although the relations to the sister-cities of the league, which had never been entirely severed, were subsequently restored and confirmed by new treaties. When finally, in A.D. 1361, the Danish king Waldemar Atterdag, inspired by rapacity and revenge, went so far as to fall upon the metropolis of the Baltic, the Swedish city of Wisby, in the midst of peace, and to annex it, thereby inflicting serious losses upon the resident Low-German merchants, Lubeck once more placed herself at the head of the Wendish cities and at the diet of Greifswald decreed war against the ruthless invader. But the expedition proved disastrous, owing chiefly to the tardiness of the kings of Sweden and Norway, who had been drawn into the alliance. Nevertheless, the unfortunate admiral of the Lubeck fleet, Johann Wittenborg, who also enjoyed the rank of burgomaster of the Hanseatic city, was put to the axe in the public market-place of Lubeck in expiation of his failure.
A doubtful peace was now concluded with the Danes, but was soon broken by their renewed plunderings of Hanseatic vessels and the obstacles placed by them upon traffic. Another passage at arms was required. The ensuing conflict was the greatest and most glorious ever fought, not only by the Hansa, but by Germany, upon the sea. In 1367 deputies from the Prussian, Wendish, and Netherlandish cities assembled in the city hall of Cologne and there prepared those memorable articles of confederation which decreed another war with King Waldemar of Denmark; stipulated the levying of a definite contingent of troops on the part of the contracting cities; provided for a duty on exports to defray the expenses of the campaign; and draughted letters of protest to the Pope, to Emperor Charles IV, and to many of the German princes. That auspicious day marks a turning-point in the history of the Hanseatic League, and was fraught with high importance to the whole German empire. The preliminary history of the Hansa here ends and its brilliant epoch begins. The warships of the cities and their army so thoroughly vanquished Denmark that, after two years of warfare, the Danish royal council and the representatives respectively of the municipalities, the nobility, and the clergy despatched a commission of thirty-two to Stralsund to sign a treaty, ostensibly in the name of their fugitive ruler—a treaty which may justly be said to mark the climax in the development of the power of the burghers of Germany.