Hanseatic cities
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Hanse
Hansa Hanseatic League |
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Northern Europe in 1400, showing the extent of the Hanseatic League
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| Capital | Lübeck |
| Lingua franca | Middle Low German |
| Membership | see list below |
| Establishment | 1358 |
The Hanseatic League (also known as the Hanse or Hansa; Middle Low German: Hanse, Dudesche Hanse, Latin: Hansa, Hansa Teutonica or Liga Hanseatica) was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 1100s, the League came to dominate Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period (c. 15th to 19th centuries). Hanse, later spelled as Hansa, was the Middle Low German word for a convoy, and this word was applied to bands of merchants traveling between the Hanseatic cities whether by land or by sea.
The League was created to protect the guilds' economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and furnished their own armies for mutual protection and aid. Despite this, the organization was not a state, nor can it be called a confederation of city-states; only a very small number of the cities within the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.
Historians generally trace the origins of the Hanseatic League to the rebuilding of the North German town of Lübeck in 1159 by the powerful Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, after Henry had captured the area from Adolf II, Count of Schauenburg and Holstein. Exploratory trading adventures, raids, and piracy had occurred earlier throughout the Baltic region (see Vikings) – the sailors of Gotland sailed up rivers as far away as Novgorod, for example – but the scale of the international trading economy in the Baltic area remained insignificant before the growth of the Hanseatic League.
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Wikipedia