page_title: Hanseatic League
section_title: Zenith
hierarchical_section_title: Hanseatic League / History / Zenith
caption_attribution_description: Български: Кметството на Талин, Естония. Deutsch: Rathaus von Tallinn. English: The Town hall of Tallinn, Estonia. Eesti: Tallinna raekoda. Français&#160;: L'hôtel de ville de Tallinn, en Estonie. Русский: Таллинская Ратуша.
context_page_description: The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwestern and Central Europe. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 1100s, the league came to dominate Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the coasts of Northern Europe. Hansa territories stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages, and diminished slowly after 1450.
  Hanse is the Old High German word for a band or troop. This word was applied to bands of merchants traveling between the Hanseatic cities — whether by land or by sea. Hanse in Middle Low German came to mean a society of merchants or a trader guild.
  Merchant circles established the league to protect the guilds' economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes which the merchants used. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and operated their own armies for mutual protection and aid.
context_section_description: The league had a fluid structure, but its members shared some characteristics; most of the Hansa cities either started as  independent cities or gained independence through the collective bargaining power of the league, though such independence remained limited. The Hanseatic free cities owed allegiance directly to the Holy Roman Emperor, without any intermediate family tie of obligation to the local nobility.
  Another similarity involved the cities' strategic locations along trade routes. At the height of their power in the late-14th century, the merchants of the Hanseatic League succeeded in using their economic power and, sometimes, their military might—trade routes required protection and the league's ships sailed well-armed—to influence imperial policy.
  The league also wielded power abroad. Between 1361 and 1370 it waged war against Denmark. Initially unsuccessful, Hanseatic towns in 1368 allied in the Confederation of Cologne, sacked Copenhagen and Helsingborg, and forced  Valdemar IV, King of Denmark, and his son-in-law  Haakon VI, King of Norway, to grant the league 15% of the profits from Danish trade in the subsequent peace treaty of Stralsund in 1370, thus gaining an effective trade and economic monopoly in Scandinavia. This favourable treaty marked the height of Hanseatic power. After the Danish-Hanseatic War (1426–1435) and the Bombardment of Copenhagen (1428), the Treaty of Vordingborg renewed the commercial privileges in 1435.
  The Hansa also waged a vigorous campaign against pirates. Between 1392 and 1440 maritime trade of the league faced danger from raids of the Victual Brothers and their descendants, privateers hired in 1392 by  Albert of Mecklenburg, King of Sweden, against  Margaret I, Queen of Denmark. In the Dutch–Hanseatic War (1438–1441), the merchants of Amsterdam sought and eventually won free access to the Baltic and broke the Hanseatic monopoly. As an essential part of protecting their investment in ships and their cargoes, the League trained pilots and erected lighthouses.
  Most foreign cities confined the Hanseatic traders to certain trading areas and to their own trading posts. They seldom interacted with the local inhabitants, except when doing business. Many locals, merchant and noble alike, envied the power of the League and tried to diminish it. For example, in London, the local merchants exerted continuing pressure for the revocation of privileges. The refusal of the Hansa to offer reciprocal arrangements to their English counterparts exacerbated the tension. King Edward IV of England reconfirmed the league's privileges in the Treaty of Utrecht (1474) despite the latent hostility, in part thanks to the significant financial contribution the League made to the Yorkist side during the Wars of the Roses of 1455–1487. In 1597 Queen  Elizabeth of England expelled the League from London, and the Steelyard closed the following year. Tsar Ivan III of Russia closed the Hanseatic Kontor at Novgorod in 1494. The very existence of the League and its privileges and monopolies created economic and social tensions that often crept over into rivalries between League members.
caption: Town Hall of Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia)
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