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The Hanseatic League and freedom of trade.

Article Excerpt
The Hanseatic League was an unusual entity. It was embedded in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (founded in 800 AD and ended in 1806 AD). But, there were many kings, princes, dukes, barons, bishops, abbots, and free cities under the cloak of the Holy Roman Empire. In fact, free cities were a very important part of the Holy Roman Empire. The free cities held charters of self-government from the Emperor, after payment of a fee.

The German Hansa began as associations of north German merchants, and in the mid-fourteenth century developed into a unique entity, an association of cities. Merchant senates ruled the free cities. The Hansa comprised almost 200 maritime and interior cities (along rivers). It extended from Bruges and Ghent in Flanders and London in the west to the Republic of Novgorod in western Russia and Tallinn on the Gulf of Finland in the east; from Bergen in the north to middle Germany in the south. But, Hansa activities extended to Venice where there was the famous German fondacio (factory) where German merchants lived and warehoused their goods. The Baltic (East Sea) and the North Sea were at the center of the Hansa. In the context of the merely formal nature of the Holy Roman Empire, the Hansa conducted its own diplomacy to maintain its access to trade and its own naval strength (armed merchant vessel) to protect its commerce against unrestrained governments. The Hanseatic League had no finances, army or fleet of its own. There were no Hanseatic officials, only the officials of the member cities. There was a diet or Hansetag that rarely met. Philippe Dollinger (1970, pp. xvii-xviii) declared:

But in spite of these structural weaknesses and the conflicting interests inevitable in an association of towns so different and so distant from one another, the Hansa was able to hold its own for nearly five hundred years. The secret of its...

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