organization. Money for common purposes was raised from
time to time, as necessity demanded, by the imposition on Hanse
merchandise of poundage dues, introduced in 1361, while the
counters relied upon a small levy of like nature and upon fines
to meet current needs. Even this slender financial provision
met with opposition. The German Order in 1398 converted
the Hanseatic poundage to a territorial tax for its own purposes,
and one of the chief causes for Cologne’s disaffection a half-century
later was the extension from Flanders to other parts of
the Netherlands of the levy made by the counter at Bruges. Since
the authority of the League rested primarily on the moral support
of its members, allied in common trade interests and acquiescing
in the able leadership of Lübeck, its only means of compulsion
was the “Verhansung,” or exclusion of a recalcitrant town from
the benefits of the trade privileges of the League. A conspicuous
instance was the exclusion of Cologne from 1471 until its
obedience in 1476, but the penalty had been earlier imposed,
as in the case of Brunswick, on towns which overthrew their
patrician governments. It was obviously, however, a measure
to be used only in the last resort and with extreme reluctance.
The decisive factor in determining membership in the League was the historical right of the citizens of a town to participate in Hanseatic privileges abroad. At first the merchant Hansas had shared these privileges with almost any German merchant, and thus many little villages, notably those in Westphalia, ultimately claimed membership. Later, under the Hansa of the towns, the struggle for the maintenance of a coveted position abroad led to a more exclusive policy. A few new members were admitted, mainly from the westernmost sphere of Hanseatic influence, but membership was refused to some important applicants. In 1447 it was voted that admission be granted only by unanimous consent. No complete list of members was ever drawn up, despite frequent requests from foreign powers. Contemporaries usually spoke of 70, 72, 73 or 77 members, and perhaps the list is complete with Daenell’s recent count of 72, but the obscurity on so vital a point is significant of the amorphous character of the organization.
The towns of the League, stretching from Thorn and Krakow on the East to the towns of the Zuider Zee on the West, and from Wisby and Reval in the North to Göttingen in the South, were arranged in groups, following in the main the territorial divisions. Separate assemblies were held in the groups for the discussion both of local and Hanseatic affairs, and gradually, but not fully until the 16th century, the groups became recognized as the lowest stage of Hanse organization. The further grouping into “Thirds,” later “Quarters,” under head-towns, was also more emphasized in that century.
In the 15th century the League, with increasing difficulty, held a defensive position against the competition of strong rivals and new trade-routes. In England the inevitable conflict of interests between the new mercantile power, growing conscious of its national strength, and the old, standing insistant on the letter of its privileges, was postponed by the factional discord out of which the Hansa in 1474 dexterously snatched a renewal of its rights. Under Elizabeth, however, the English Merchant Adventurers could finally rejoice at the withdrawal of privileges from the Hanseatics and their concession to England, in return for the retention of the Steelyard, of a factory in Hamburg. In the Netherlands the Hanseatics clung to their position in Bruges until 1540, while trade was migrating to the ports of Antwerp and Amsterdam. By the peace of Copenhagen in 1441, after the unsuccessful war of the League with Holland, the attempted monopoly of the Baltic was broken, and, though the Hanseatic trade regulations were maintained on paper, the Dutch with their larger ships increased their hold on the herring fisheries, the French salt trade, and the Baltic grain trade. For the Russian trade new competitors were emerging in southern Germany. The Hanseatic embargo against Bruges from 1451 to 1457, its later war and embargo against England, the Turkish advance closing the Italian Black Sea trade with southern Russia, all were utilized by Nuremberg and its fellows to secure a land-trade outside the sphere of Hanseatic influence. The fairs of Leipzig and Frankfort-on-Main rose in importance as Novgorod, the stronghold of Hanse trade in the East, was weakened by the attacks of Ivan III. The closing of the Novgorod counter in 1494 was due not only to the development of the Russian state but to the exclusive Hanseatic policy which had stimulated the opening of competing trade routes.
Within the League itself increasing restiveness was shown under the restrictions of its trade policy. At the Hanseatic assembly of 1469, Dantzig, Hamburg and Breslau opposed the maintenance of a compulsory staple at Bruges in the face of the new conditions produced by a widening commerce and more advantageous markets. Complaint was made of South German competition in the Netherlands. “Those in the Hansa,” protested Breslau, “are fettered and must decline and those outside the Hansa are free and prosper.” By 1477 even Lübeck had become convinced that a continuance of the effort to maintain the compulsory staple against Holland was futile and should be abandoned. But while it was found impossible to enforce the staple or to close the Sound against the Dutch, other features of the monopolistic system of trade regulations were still upheld. It was forbidden to admit an outsider to partnership or to co-ownership of ships, to trade in non-Hanseatic goods, to buy or sell on credit in a foreign mart or to enter into contracts for future delivery. The trade of foreigners outside the gates of Hanse towns or with others than Hanseatics was forbidden in 1417, and in the Eastern towns the retail trade of strangers was strictly limited. The whole system was designed to suppress the competition of outsiders, but the divergent interests of individuals and towns, the pressure of competition and changing commercial conditions, in part the reactionary character of the legislation, made enforcement difficult. The measures were those of the late-medieval town economy applied to the wide region of the German Baltic trade, but not supported, as was the analogous mercantilist system, by a strong central government.
Among the factors, economic, geographic, political and social, which combined to bring about the decline of the Hanseatic League, none was probably more influential than the absence of a German political power comparable in unity and energy with those of France and England, which could quell particularism at home, and abroad maintain in its vigour the trade which these towns had developed and defended with their imperfect union. Nothing was to be expected from the declining Empire. Still less was any co-operation possible between the towns and the territorial princes. The fatal result of conflict between town autonomy and territorial power had been taught in Flanders. The Hanseatics regarded the princes with a growing and exaggerated fear and found some relief in the formation in 1418 of a thrice-renewed alliance, known as the “Tohopesate,” against princely aggression. But no territorial power had as yet arisen in North Germany capable of subjugating and utilizing the towns, though it could detach the inland towns from the League. The last wars of the League with the Scandinavian powers in the 16th century, which left it shorn of many of its privileges and of any pretension to control of the Baltic basin eliminated it as a factor in the later struggle of the Thirty Years’ War for that control. At an assembly of 1629, Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg were entrusted with the task of safeguarding the general welfare, and after an effort to revive the League in the last general assembly of 1669, these three towns were left alone to preserve the name and small inheritance of the Hansa which in Germany’s disunion had upheld the honour of her commerce. Under their protection, the three remaining counters lingered on until their buildings were sold at Bergen in 1775, at London in 1852 and at Antwerp in 1863.
Bibliography.—Hansisches Urkundenbuch, bearbeitet von K. Höhlbaum, K. Kunze und W. Stein (10 vols., Halle und Leipzig, 1876–1907); Hanserecesse, erste Abtheilung, 1256–1430 (8 vols., Leipzig, 1870–1897), zweite Abtheilung, 1431–1476 (7 vols., 1876–1892); dritte Abtheilung, 1477–1530 (7 vols., 1881–1905); Hansische Geschichtsquellen (7 vols., 1875–1894; 3 vols., 1897–1906); Inventare hansischer Archive des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (vols. 1 and 2, 1896–1903); Hansische Geschichtsblätter (14 vols., 1871–1908). All
