Hanseatic League, or HANSA, a politico-commercial association or league of cities in the north of Germany and the adjoining states, which flourished all through the middle ages. Neither the circumstances out of which it grew, nor the date of its origin, can be precisely determined. The original germs of the union may undoubtedly be recognised in those fortuitous or temporary combinations of merchants, trading along the same routes or in the same places, which were formed for purposes of mutual protection, whether from pirates at sea or from robbers on land, at any rate from the thousand and one vexations and dangers to which the isolated trader was in those rude times constantly exposed. In course of time more permanent associations were founded abroad, partly for mutual protection, partly for the purpose of securing from the rulers of the state they were domiciled in more favourable conditions for trade, partly in order to control the market and exclude from participation in it all who were not members of their own body.
The earliest guild of German merchants established in a foreign country seems to have been founded in London in or before the 12th century. Certain it is that traders from Cologne were at that time settled there in the enjoyment of special trading privileges. This guild was viewed with favour by the English kings, who from time to time conferred upon its members valuable prerogatives and advantages, in return for services which the wealth and connections of the guild allowed it to render to them. Thus it was with money borrowed from them that Edward III. carried on his campaigns in France. This royally-fostered colony of Easterlings (whence 'sterling,' from the purity of their coined money), as they were called by the English, subsequently, about 1474, developed into the powerful association known as the Merchants of the Steelyard. Other guilds existed later at Boston, Hull, York, &c. Another important centre of the Hanseatic cities in the early years of their confederation was Wisby, on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic. Here, although the guild embraced merchants from several towns, the influence of Lübeck reigned supreme, as that of Cologne did in London. This station was the chief depot for the trade with Russia, and with the German colony of Livonia, the name given at that period to all the eastern seaboard of the Baltic as far north as the Gulf of Finland. Wisby was also the mother-city of a no less important Hanseatic settlement at Novgorod, near Lake Ilmen, in Russia. At Witten, in the province of Skåne, the southern portion of Sweden, which during the greater part of the middle ages belonged to Denmark; at Bergen, on the west coast of Norway; and at Bruges in Flanders there were Hanseatic depots of first-rate importance, besides numerous others of secondary consequence scattered along the shores of the North and Baltic seas. Most of these trading-colonies were governed by their own code of laws and customs, different from those of the country in which they were established. In fact each of them was to all intents and purposes an independent state within a state. As a general rule the members of the colony were not allowed to marry, were put through rough and trying initiation ceremonies, had to work their way up through the various grades of the guild, and after serving a certain number of years had to give place to newcomers from the mother-cities at home; whilst the regulations governing their domestic life, their style of housing, eating and drinking, and amusing themselves, were very similar to those which prevailed in the monasteries of the time.
But there was another and more important phase of the movement—viz. that which developed itself at home. At first the individual cities seem to have acted almost independently of each other in founding trading-colonies abroad; at all events the influence of Cologne was for some time supreme in London, and that of Lübeck supreme in Wisby. But gradually merchants from other commercial towns of Germany were admitted to share the prerogatives of the guild and colony. This spirit of association reacted in turn upon the mother-cities, and about the middle of the 13th century, under the cementing force of a close community of interests, the large trading-cities of north Germany began to co-operate together in leagues, more or less officially constituted. Amongst the earliest of supreme moment was that formed, at the period indicated, between Hamburg and Lübeck (1241) for the protection of the highways connecting the two cities. When, however, Lübeck, which had rapidly acquired a leading position among the commercial towns of north Germany, desired to enter the league of towns which had allied themselves with Cologne, the latter city strove hard to exclude her, but in vain. From this time dates the introduction of a political element into the league. Lübeck soon formed alliances with the Wendish towns on the Baltic, lying to the east—viz. Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, and Greifswald. The Saxon and Westphalian towns, which had already banded themselves together in separate and independent confederations, joined the principal league, at the head of which Lübeck soon placed herself by common consent of the rest; and the Prussian towns associated themselves about 1340 with those of Westphalia. The cities of the principal league did not, however, form a democratic confederation of municipal states with a regular, well-conceived constitution, such as we find in confederated states at the present day. The first and principal object of the association was to maintain a monopoly of trade, by jealously excluding all rivals, in such countries as Russia, Norway, and the south of Sweden, as well as to preserve in their own hands the special commercial prerogatives which they had managed to acquire in countries like England and Flanders. Thus, in the beginning their interests were mainly concentrated upon their colonies and trading-depôts, and whatever foreign policy they may have had was shaped by the necessities of protecting or furthering those interests, which were of course of a purely commercial character. Yet, as their wealth increased, and therewith their political influence, these Phœnicians of the north began to pursue other than mere ordinary mercantile aims. In Norway, for instance, they insisted that the entire trade of the country, at least of the northern and western portions, should pass through their depôt at Bergen, where they ousted the native Norwegians from their own wharves and warehouses, seized upon their trade, and refused all obedience to the civic authorities of the town. And in Russia their behaviour was not a whit less arbi- trary and high-handed. But the first awakening of the league to the consciousness that it was the possessor of real political power came in 1370, when it brought King Waldemar of Denmark, the most powerful and energetic sovereign on the Baltic shores, to his knees, and imposed upon him a humiliating peace. For many, many years relations between the Hanseatic merchants and the Danes had been, and continued to be, those of latent or open hostility, for the Danes were the only serious rivals the Hansa had to encounter, and Denmark had, as now, control of the Sound and the Belts, besides holding possession of the south of Sweden, off whose coasts the great herring fisheries, one of the principal sources of wealth to the Hanse merchants, were in those ages carried on.
From the peace of Stralsund (1370) the Hanseatic League claimed the right of controlling the election of each successive sovereign who was crowned king of Denmark. And by the 16th century its officers had advanced so far in statecraft, and the league itself had acquired so much political influence, that it was able to depose the king of Denmark (Christian II.), and bestow, not only his crown, but also that of Sweden, upon candidates of its own nomination. Yet its power was then already a century on the wane. This result was brought about by the co-operation of a variety of causes, chief amongst which were the following. The discovery of America and of the sea-route to India struck the severest blow at the Hansa by diverting the stream of commerce from the Baltic to the Atlantic shores of Europe. Amongst other changes, it caused a falling-off in the demand for furs, a staple commodity of Novgorod; while towards the middle of the 15th century the herrings ceased to enter the Baltic in such large quantities, but began to direct their course instead to the coasts of Holland. The Dutch members of the league broke away from it early in the 15th century, and by adapting themselves to the altered conditions of the age, soon rose to be formidable rivals of their former associates. The English too were laying the foundations of their subsequent commercial supremacy, and in 1598 Elizabeth deprived the Steelyard merchants of all their privileges, and banished them from the country. The discovery by Sir Richard Chancellor of the sea-route to the White Sea struck a fatal blow at the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by the Hanse merchants in the trade with Russia. The conversion of so many European nations to Protestantism greatly lessened the demand for dried and salted herrings in Lent, as well as for wax for candles, which the Hanse merchants imported in large quantities from Novgorod. In the middle of the 16th century the 'contor' or depôt of Bruges was removed to Antwerp, where, however, the old-fashioned methods of doing business still practised by the Hanse merchants were unable to compete successfully against the more modern and enterprising methods of the Dutch and the Flemings. And unity no longer prevailed within the league itself, for, whilst Lübeck clung with jealous tenacity to the antiquated conservative policy of the past, Hamburg insisted upon conforming itself to the newer conditions of the age; and several of the other towns, finding that the advantages which had formerly accrued to them from their participation in the league were no longer reaped by them, fell off from it one after the other. But the decay must also be attributed in large measure to the advances made by the states of Europe in the knowledge and application of the principles of government; whilst the more perfect preservation of public order, and the removal of many of the vexatious impediments to the free circulation of commerce, deprived the league of its most efficient raison d'être. Finally the Thirty Years' War occasioned an entire derangement, and even at times cessation, of all trade relations, a state of things from the evils of which the members of the league never were able to recover. From 1628 onwards the only cities which made any real endeavours to revive the once powerful association were Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen. But the resuscitated league, even after its confirmation by the treaty of Vienna in 1815, was more a thing of name than of reality; and in the 19th century Hanseatic cities was not so much the collective title of a combination of towns for trading purposes, as a common name for the independent republican municipal states of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. In 1870 each of these was made an integral part of the German empire, and by 1889 all had joined the German imperial customs union.
The administration of the affairs of the league was in the hands of deputies representing the constituent towns of the confederation, who met together at least once in every three years, though as a general rule every year, at one of the towns of the league, usually at Lübeck, at which town the archives of the Hansa were always preserved. These assemblies represented the political corporation of the Hanseatic cities; they determined the amount of the duties to be levied on imported and exported goods, fixed the amount of the periodical contributions to be paid by the several towns to the common treasury of the league, decided all questions of peace and war, settled all internal quarrels between the members of the league, and punished disobedient or offending towns by fine, or, in the last instance, by exclusion from the Hansa, called 'unhansing.' As it was always the practice for towns to join the confederation and withdraw from it at their own will, it is not possible to state the precise number of towns which constituted the league. The war against Waldemar of Denmark, which took place when the Hansa was at the summit of its power, was waged by at least seventy-seven cities, though probably the league embraced more than these. See histories of the league by Sartorius (1802-8), Lappenberg (1851), Barthold (1862), and Helen Zimmermann (in English, 1889); also the Hanse-Recesse, or official proceedings of the assemblies (1873 et seq.).