The league in its final form

During the 14th century the Hanseatic League was molded into its definitive form. That form was neither clear-cut nor rigid. The league was not a true political federation, and it was not a true corporation. It had no permanent governing body, no permanent officials, and no permanent navy. Moreover, it had no central treasury and no central court. It was “governed” by a diet that met generally at Lübeck and theoretically every three years, but the meetings were in fact held irregularly, and their frequency declined after 1400 as divergences between the various members grew and as the conduct of routine affairs was gradually transferred to the town council of Lübeck. The diets were assemblies of delegates from the various towns, and their decisions (Recesse) were determined by a majority vote of the towns represented. In practice the smaller towns, eager to avoid the financial burden of an embassy, entrusted their interests to the representative of some larger town. In general, it was the views of a small group of leading cities that determined the policies of the league.

The membership of the league was essentially a membership of towns. The number of members fluctuated and is in any case uncertain, as no official lists were ever compiled. At the league’s peak, about the middle of the 14th century, the total number of participating towns certainly surpassed 100, but generally it was less, and it tended to decline in the 15th and 16th centuries. To qualify for membership a town had generally to be German, independent, represented at diets, and a prompt payer of all dues imposed. There were exceptions, however, and various groups and individuals were members of the Hanseatic League, in the sense of participating in its privileges, without passing the aforementioned tests. There were foreign cities, such as Stockholm and Dinant (in Flanders), with full rights, and towns in Poland that had partial rights; some hamlets in Westphalia, important for their manufactures, enjoyed the rights of membership; and so did various individuals and groups of merchants resident in Germany or as far away as Iceland, Ireland, and Spain.

The other essential elements in Hanseatic organization were the Kontore, the establishments of Hanseatic merchants overseas. The four Kontore at London, Brugge, Bergen, and Novgorod were communities that enjoyed exemption from the jurisdiction of the land in which they were established, administering their own (German) law and subject to the directives of the Hanseatic diet. Their members corporately owned a large complex of houses, halls, warehouses, and other buildings where they lived a severely disciplined life and carried on their trade with the natives.

Besides those major settlements, the league also possessed local depots, such as those at Oslo and Tønsberg in Norway, at Ålborg in Denmark, and at York, Boston, Lynn, and Norwich in England. These depots were subject to the control of a Kontor, to which major transactions were confined.

Because the main purpose of the league was the defense of its trading interests in all lands served by the northern seas, much of its activity naturally concerned non-German affairs. However, effective action against the outside world could be achieved only if there was solidarity at home and if control of trading conditions was as effective inside Germany as outside, so the internal policy of the league was the natural counterpart to its external policies. The league tried to ensure the maximum of peace and order at home: warfare between towns, civic strife inside towns, and robbery on the high roads were all suppressed as far as possible. No city was allowed to make war on another without permission from its nearest neighbours; every member town and each citizen of such a town could claim justice and assistance from all others. All the Hanseatic cities had to make a common front against their common enemies; every town had to prohibit the permanent residence of foreign traders; every town had to see to it that no partnerships were made between their own merchants and foreigners; and all had to boycott any person who robbed or broke his contract with a member. It was also of vital importance, in view of the fact that the league had no common treasury or navy, that there be the maximum of cooperation from all cities in contributing proper shares to the financial and naval levies imposed by the diet. All these were great demands to make of so loose an organization, but they were met in great part while the towns were convinced of the mutuality of their interests and while the threat of “unhansing” (involving the loss of all privileges and the arrest, boycott, and confiscation of merchants, trade and goods, respectively) remained a fearful sanction.

Decline (15th–17th centuries)

The decline of the Hanseatic League was slow. It was caused by the destruction of German monopoly, especially in the Baltic, and of the mutuality of interest between the towns.

Political developments in the countries bordering the Baltic became a threat to Hanseatic interests almost immediately after the defeat of Valdemar IV had seemed to ensure German supremacy there. The union of Poland and Lithuania in 1386 did much to harm Hanseatic interests in the eastern hinterland, and soon afterward, in 1397, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were united under the rule of Margaret I, the queen of Denmark. That union did not last long but was symptomatic of the resurgence of Danish power that had enabled Margaret to break the Hanseatic League’s political dominance in her country and compel it to relinquish its castles and the tolls that it gathered on Danish territory. Before the end of the 15th century, moreover, Russia had joined in the attack on the league’s Baltic monopoly: in 1478 the grand prince of Moscow, Ivan III, after having captured Novgorod, expelled the Hanseatic merchants living there; and in 1494 Saint Peter’s court at Novgorod formally ceased to be a Hanseatic Kontor.

Not only were the nations of the Baltic region itself undermining the league’s monopoly; there was intrusion from the west. The English and the Dutch, who had learned and gained so much from the Hanseatics, were growing in mercantile and industrial strength and were increasing their will and capacity to oust the Germans not only in the domestic markets but also in the trade on North Sea and even in Germany and the Baltic. At first the Dutch were more successful than the English in that aim. During the 14th century their economy grew rapidly in strength and their mercantile marine underwent a great expansion, and in the 15th century the growth of their textile and brewing industries made them far more independent of Hanseatic importers. At the same time, their herring fishery in the North Sea completely eclipsed that of Skåne—where, in the first quarter of the 15th century, for reasons still not satisfactorily explained, the herring catch declined catastrophically. Strong in the west, supported by the Danes and even by some eastern Hanseatic towns, the Dutch broke into the Baltic and by the middle of the 16th century were the major carriers of Baltic produce to the west. By the first decade of the 17th century, Dutch ships were dominating the Baltic trade.

Those grave and mounting external pressures set up severe strains within the league and destroyed its unity of purpose. In early Hanseatic days the overland route across the base of the peninsula had formed the chief link between the Baltic and North Sea. The initiative of Hamburg and especially of Lübeck in creating the league and their preeminence and central position within it when it was established owed nearly all to the fact that they controlled that passage and so acted as the natural focus of the widespread German trading system. During the 14th century the overland path was largely superseded by the direct route through The Sound, a development that made possible the easier and cheaper transport of bulky goods. Meanwhile, Dutch and English traders began to make increasing use of the new route and to do so with the encouragement of the Danes. As a result, Lübeck lost its preeminent position; its wealth was threatened; and its influence with other cities was weakened just when the town was under the greatest pressure to use the league to attack the foreign interlopers. At the same time, some German towns were not too unhappy at the new developments; at least they were loath to follow the extreme policies of Lübeck. One group, centred on Cologne, had such close and profitable connections with the Low Countries and England that it was unwilling do anything to upset those countries—especially for a Baltic trade that meant little to them. Another group, centred on Danzig, was not displeased at being able to make use of the competitive terms offered by Dutch skippers, behind the back of the Lübeck monopolists, when exporting their Baltic produce.

Cooperation between the members of the league became increasingly difficult. Membership dwindled; effective common action became rare; and other developments sped the process of disintegration. A narrow parochialism, characterized by a concentration on local trading interests, supplanted the wider visions of earlier town councils. The strengthening of princely power in Germany forced the detachment of many cities from the league—notably Berlin and other towns of Brandenburg, which had to withdraw in the 15th century. By the end of the 16th century, the Hanseatic League was moribund. The new patterns of European trade that slowly evolved in the age of great discoveries hastened its end. The last diet was held in 1669.