LA LIGA HANSEATICA
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- Category: Historia de la Marina Civil
- Published on Saturday, 06 January 2024 22:05
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Preface
It was during my first university student years that for the first time, following the curiosity of our ancient seafarer Pytheas, I visited coastal cities of the North Sea and Baltic. There, thanks to the knowledge of the European history of culture, which I had been taught, I saw important monuments, quite neglected by the historiography of culture, of about the same time that the Renaissance flourished in medieval Italy. After much searching, I then decided to write a book in which I would present the attractively unusual culture of the Hanseatic League, which emerged as the first institutionalized northern European trade association. My old wish came true after almost three years of academic research work on the study and interpretation of medieval chronicles that refer mainly to the history and culture of the Hanseatic League in the North Sea and the Baltic.
According to these medieval chronicles, the first reference to the Hanseatic League took place in 1358, but it has been proven that it has existed since the middle of the 12th century. Throughout the 13th century, this trade League (Hansa) developed through the promotion of the Germans, who were based in Lübeck, east of Elva, opening new markets with the simultaneous establishment of cities in them. This policy was quickly followed by the main commercial cities that had come from the earlier Viking markets in the area of the North Sea and the Baltic.
In 1160 a group of German merchants set up at the Baltic a trade transit station in Visby, Gotland Island, to facilitate the ware transportation among coastal towns in the area. Later in 1241, the first agreement was signed between Lübeck and Hamburg to facilitate foreign trade in the North Sea and the Baltic. By the end of the 13th century, similar agreements had been reached with a large number of cities that had decided to join the trade Union. In 1370 the Hanseatic League numbered 77 cities, which forced the then King of Denmark, Valdemar IV, to grant them free navigation between the two seas and exemption from customs duties. This agreement led to the final formation of the Hanseatic League. The 15th century was the golden age of the Hanseatic League. It had managed to establish trade communities in all the states of the North Sea and the Baltic.
These communities lived independently, but participated in the administration of the cities in which they belonged. Through them the Hanseatic League had succeeded in imposing monopoly on Baltic trade, forcing local merchants to trade only with it. Later, with Denmark's gradual expansion into Schleswig and Holstein, the major centres of the Hanseatic League (mainly Hamburg and Lübeck) began to be threatened, so that they could no longer impose their will on the Scandinavian kingdoms, which had allied themselves with the Treaty of Kalmar. At the same time, the Baltic states (mainly Poland and Prussia) began to be liberated by the Hanseatic League and sought to develop their trade to its detriment. In 1478, Tsar Ivan III occupied Novgorod and by 1494 abolished the League's privileges, depriving it of one of its main markets.
At the end of the 15th century, new overseas trade routes began to develop with the discovery and colonization of America, which reduced the economic importance of the Baltic and North Sea. The Thirty Years' War and the devastation it caused in the German countries was the final blow to degenerate the Hanseatic League, which in 1669 operated only in its metropolises (Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg). However, the main reason for the decline was the lack of a strong state structure and military support, as a result of which it was gradually displaced by stronger and more centralized states, which wanted to become financially autonomous.
The history and culture of the Hanseatic League have left many testimonies and monuments in modern times, which are preserved mainly in the centres and settlements of many cities in the areas around the North Sea and the Baltic. In the pages of this book, the reader will discover interesting and peculiar elements that are traditions of earlier cultures adapted to borrowed standards from the then advanced southern Europe. Through this influence emerged the first essentially monopoly homogeneity that determined the economic and social life of the inhabitants of the northern countries during the Middle Ages.
The transnationality imposed by the Hanseatic League's monopoly trade on the North Sea and the Baltic has not been a simple matter. Throughout its mercantile operation, there have been many military confrontations and conflicts over the distribution and control of trade centres and routes. The economic interests, mainly of regional cities and non-German regions, very often set terms and claims of commercial autonomy, despite the benefit of the institutionalized rules of a transaction of the Hanseatic League.
The imposition power of the Hanseatic merchants was mainly the accumulated money capital, the business administration and the quality evaluation and management of the exchangeable products in the markets. Based on their knowledge of these issues, countries in the neighbouring Hanseatic League have established North German terminology in economic transactions, transport-ation, construction and shipbuilding. With this paper, the reader will understand the importance of the multinational trade union established in Northern Europe during the Middle Ages and its contribution to the development of the economies and culture of the countries formed in states through its operation (Sweden, Norway, Poland and the other Baltic countries).
It will also understand the basic principles that inspired even the founding of our time of the multinational economic cooperation, the European Union, with the primacy of that of the Federal Republic of Germany, a historical analogy whose importance should not be overlooked by a social-economic point of view of what is happening in our time.