In Our Time - The Hanseatic League

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hanseatic League or Hansa which dominated North European trade in the medieval period. With a trading network that stretched from Iceland to Novgorod via London and Bruges, these German-speaking Hansa merchants benefitted from tax exemptions and monopolies. Over time, the Hansa became immensely influential as rulers felt the need to treat it well. Kings and princes sometimes relied on loans from the Hansa to finance their wars and an embargo by the Hansa could lead to famine. Eventually, though, the Hansa went into decline with the rise in the nation state’s power, greater competition from other merchants and the development of trade across the Atlantic. WithJustyna Wubs-Mrozewicz Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of AmsterdamGeorg Christ Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of ManchesterAnd Sheilagh Ogilvie Chichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, University of OxfordProducer: Victoria BrignellReading list: James S. Amelang and Siegfried Beer, Public Power in Europe: Studies in Historical Transformations (Plus-Pisa University Press, 2006), especially `Trade and Politics in the Medieval Baltic: English Merchants and England’s Relations to the Hanseatic League 1370–1437`Nicholas R. Amor, Late Medieval Ipswich: Trade and Industry (Boydell & Brewer, 2011)B. Ayers, The German Ocean: Medieval Europe around the North Sea (Equinox, 2016)H. Brand and P. Brood, The German Hanse in Past & Present Europe: A medieval league as a model for modern interregional cooperation? (Castel International Publishers, 2007)Wendy R. Childs, The Trade and Shipping of Hull, 1300-1500 (East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1990)Alexander Cowan, Hanseatic League: Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press, 2010)Philippe Dollinger, The German Hansa (Macmillan, 1970)John D. Fudge, Cargoes, Embargoes and Emissaries: The Commercial and Political Interaction of England and the German Hanse, 1450-1510 (University of Toronto Press, 1995)Donald J. Harreld, A Companion to the Hanseatic League (Brill, 2015)T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157 – 1611: A Study of their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy (first published 1991; Cambridge University Press, 2002)Giampiero Nigro (ed.), Maritime networks as a factor in European integration (Fondazione Istituto Internazionale Di Storia Economica “F. Datini” Prato, University of Firenze, 2019), especially ‘Maritime Networks and Premodern Conflict Management on Multiple Levels. The Example of Danzig and the Giese Family’ by Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz Sheilagh Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)Paul Richards (ed.), Six Essays in Hanseatic History (Poppyland Publishing, 2017)Paul Richards, King’s Lynn and The German Hanse 1250-1550: A Study in Anglo-German Medieval Trade and Politics (Poppyland Publishing, 2022)Stephen H. Rigby, The Overseas Trade of Boston, 1279-1548 (Böhlau Verlag, 2023)Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz and Stuart Jenks (eds.), The Hanse in Medieval & Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2012) Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz, ‘The late medieval and early modern Hanse as an institution of conflict management’ (Continuity and Change 32/1, Cambridge University Press, 2017)

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, for much of the medieval period, the Hanseatic League, or Hansa, dominated trade around the Baltic and the North Sea, with bases from London to Bruges, Bergen to Novgorod.

Hansa merchants gained privileges from the growing cities and princes, such as monopolies and tax breaks, for bringing them goods like timber, fur, and fish from distant lands. The Hansa became hugely powerful and influential, funding wars and waging wars, before eventually losing out a competition, stronger nation-states and the burgeoning Atlantic trade. We meet to discuss the Hanseatic League, or Hansa,

are Justina Verbs-Merasevich, Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam, Georg Christ, Senior Lecture in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Manchester, and Sheila Ogilvie, Chichli Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, University of Oxford. Sheila Ogilby, when and why did the Hanseatic League come into being? That was a question that puzzled people even at the time.

Medieval Londoners called the German Hansa a crocodile because it showed only its head and jaw while the rest of the body remained concealed beneath the water. And this was partly because nobody knew how big the Hansa was or where it had come from. There wasn't a specific starting point. It didn't have a founding charter. It didn't have a treaty.

It didn't have an agreement. It emerged in the, or it emerges for us, in the documents in the middle of the 12th century, when merchants from North German cities and some Dutch cities, started trading abroad and they agreed to work together to get privileges from foreign rulers. And then it evolved into a clearer organization in the 14th century when the town councils of the Hanseatic cities got involved. But it still remained a network, a loose network of merchants, not of cities. And the first attempt to set up a town league among the Hanseatic cities didn't

take place until the 1550s, which was 400 years after the Hansa began. By that time, the Hansa was stagnating commercially, and the League plan didn't really work out. And yet, the Hanseatic parliaments, the diets, as they were called, continued to be held until 1669, although in the end, hardly anyone was attending. So this very mysterious crocodile of a trading organization emerged organically. It survived for almost 500 years. but it remained just as mysterious in the 17th century as it had been in the 12th century. What role did the Hansiatically play in the development of North European and Baltic trade? I think we can think about that question in two phases.

There was a first phase between about 1150 and maybe the Black Death around 1350, when it's a phase of explosive economic growth in Europe. You have fast population growth. you've got greater urbanization in northwest Europe, whereas previously most of the urbanization had been in the south along the Mediterranean, and the Baltic started being included in European trade. But my feeling is that the Hansa was a symptom rather than a cause of this economic growth. It was the individual merchants of many different northwest European towns that made this happen,

not the Hansa in particular. The merchants of the Hansa were major players in that, trade, but they weren't exclusive players. So there were always so-called interlopers, or at least the Hansa called them interlopers, outsiders who competed with Hansa merchants and competed so seriously that the Hansa was constantly attacking them and trying to keep them out of the North Sea and Baltic trade. So you have Dutch merchants, Flemish merchants, Scandinavians, non-Hansiatic German merchants, English, Scottish merchants. They were also really active in the Northern European and Baltic trade in this period. And they were only gradually and partially

excluded by Hansa political privileges and actually the violence, which as we'll see, the Hansa exerted. I was just going to say that after the Black Death, after 1350, there was a different phase, I think, in the contribution of the Hansa to Northern European and Baltic trade, because after 1350, the Hansa became increasingly violent and restrictive. For a couple of centuries previously, it had opened up new trading routes to Russia and Scandinavia. After 1350, it started trying to use its privileges from rulers to prevent other merchants from participating. It tried to act as a cartel. And I think during that phase, it increasingly had a bad effect on Northwest European trade.

What was driving this growth? There were a lot of primary products in Northwest Europe, especially in Scandinavia and in Russia. So there were furs, there was tar, there was pitch, there was amber collected along the Baltic. There were stockfish, cod and herring, which were really important. You wouldn't think fish were an important trading good, but they were needed in a Catholic era when people had to eat fish on certain days. And so the Hansa and the Northwest European merchants were providing these. primary products and trading with the South European merchants who were in turn trading with

the Middle East for spices and sort of Middle Eastern luxury products. Thank you. Gail Christ, to what extent was the Hanseatic League? Well, to what extent was it a league? Was it basically German or German? Can you tell us a little bit more about what this means, the League? Yes, that's very much debated, to which extent it was a league, because there were different types of Hansas if you want. Basically, Hansa just means a bunch of people, an association, a group. And while it is quite easy to pinpoint that travelling merchants, or to understand why traveling merchants would form groups to travel,

to be safer, to help each other, and why they would form groups when they find themselves in a foreign place, such as Novgorod or London, where they maybe don't understand the language are faced with extortions and so on is quite clear. What is not so clear, and that brings us back to the League, the Hanseatic League, why would cities form a Hansa? Can cities be a group of people? Not really.

I mean, cities are associations in and of themselves, but why would they form together and form an association and did they really? And that is very much contested. But now you asked also about the Germanicness or the German identity of the Hansa. In one privilege, we find the formulation. These privileges are for the merchants of the Roman Empire, of German tongue from whatever cities they may hail.

So it's a multi-layered identity. They're still claiming association with the Roman Empire. Yes, that is very important. With the 12th century? Absolutely, all the way through to the early modern period. association with the Holy Roman Empire is absolutely crucial, especially for this ephemeral or contested notion of Hanseate Gleek, crucial in the sense that, say, Lubick, when they acted on behalf of their merchants, or different Hamas, they claimed to act on behalf of the empire, because the empire

really was responsible of sort of protecting the interests of and rights of merchants, the right to move freely, the right to trade freely, the right to be protected in their lives and in their goods. That is basically a task for the emperor to ensure that. But because the emperor is far away, the emperor is weak, cities take over. Now, back to the Germanicness. So after the belonging to the empire, yes, the belonging to some sort of Germanitas or Germaness was important. But what kind of a German is intended here? It is not just German. It was a very specific kind of German, both linguistically and geographically.

We are talking of low German here. So the Hansa, as a whole, is an association of associations of merchants who share this low German language. Is it always their first language? Not necessarily. Is it their only language? In many cases, certainly not. We have Hanseatic merchants who speak Frisian, who are from Gotland. So they speak German, but also Gutnish, and so on and so forth.

So there is a culture of multilingualism. Can you give us an example of how, say, Lubbock benefited from the Hansa? Lubic benefited from the Hansa because as a city of their own, they could try to claim to act on behalf of their merchants and to improve their privileges, improve their state. and their infrastructure abroad. But they were not a huge city. So Lubig was limited in its resources.

So by claiming to act, on the one hand, as I said, on behalf of the empire, on the other hand to act on behalf of the entire Hanse, i.e. this big group of merchants who share this low German language and culture, they, of course, had much more clout. What was there, muscle? What did they threaten? Why were they feared? Trade generates income and wealth.

So these Hanseatic cities or trading cities, they had the financial resources that enabled them to wage wars. For instance, to hire mercenaries, to hire corsairs or you could call them pirates, entrepreneurs of violence or specialists of violence at sea. Also, because of their trade, they had fleets. Of course these were fleets of merchantmen, but these fleets could be reconverted to navies for military purposes. Thank you very much. Justina, where does the term league come in? What significance does it have, the Asiatic League? It's not really a league, so it's more a kind of shortcut that we use, especially in English.

But it's become a term which is quite obsolete in other languages, in Scandinavian languages, in Dutch and Polish. So we've moved away from it to, well, perhaps the fuzzy term, Hansa or Hansa, but which kind of indicates more that it was a phenomenon in its own kind. So what were the visible signs of the Hansa during the time it operated? How did one Hansa ship know another ship was a Hansa ship? So there were no visible unifying signs. So there was not one Hanseatic flag, for instance, or a seal,

or until late in the 16th century, not one representative for the whole of the organization. It was the collectivity. For instance, when they were signing treaties, they were attaching seals of individual cities. So it was the togetherness, you could say, which signalled the Hansa and the might of this group of cities and merchants. The Hansa, you could say, was a layer in the urban, medieval urban identity. It was not something all encompassing. It was not intended to work in such a way, but it was a fact that those cities worked together. And on the other hand, they did have shared institutions, so settlements abroad, for instance,

in London, Bruges, Novgorod, Bergen and Norway. So there you had buildings, warehouses, dwellings, chapels, and sometimes taverns. In London, it was really a whole compound. So these were visible signs of... of an organization where people coming from various cities worked and lived together. So in Kingsland, we still have a warehouse of Hanseatic merchants. So these were the visible signs. And also, as Sheila mentioned, the diets, the meetings of the Hansa,

which sometimes happened every year, sometimes with some breaks, mostly in Lubbock. So the representatives of cities came together for several weeks, debating issues, regulations, conflicts, drafting privileges, the way they would like them to be discussing all kinds of matters, but also going to church together, drinking, having meals, being present in the city, being visible. So, yeah, indeed a crocodile,

but people were very well aware that there were more parts and that they were connected and potentially dangerous. So did they go to a city to make it simple, What is it the mixture of a promise and a threat, as clear as that? I think the way it grew, it was more creating opportunities, which were there from both sides, mostly, obviously the elites. What we do see is violence or threats of violence when privileges and agreements which have been made with city councils or rulers were not lived up to.

How, Sheila, how was this viewed? Was it viewed as legitimate trade? I think both rulers, And other merchants and ordinary people regarded the Hansa with mingled respect and fear. I think they were seen as perfectly legitimate. Most medieval trade was organized or much medieval trade was organized by merchant guilds or merchant hanzas, in fact. The German hansa was just the biggest and most crocodile-like of all of the merchant hanzas in Europe. But I think rulers and other merchants and towns regarded the Hunza with a combination of respect and fear.

Respect because the German Hunza brought together a large group of merchants in the places where it traded. It was financially strong. So it could put pressure on rulers and towns by offering them bribes and loans in exchange for trading privileges. And in England, for instance, from 1299 onwards, the German Hansa were basically acting as a credit bankers lending a lot of money to the crown. And in 1327, Hansa loans helped Edward III to the throne and then aided him in fighting his wars in France. So in return for that, the English monarchs granted the German Hansa wool exporting privileges, tax cuts, rights to collect customs dues from other merchants. And that was a fairly typical deal between merchant guilds or the

Hansa and rulers. So there was a respect. side of things. It was a perfectly legitimate way of doing medieval trade. There was a fear side of things because if you didn't do what the Hansa wanted, it could deny you loans for your next war, or it could impose a trade embargo on your territory, which could choke off business and even cause famine. And there were some notorious embargoes when the German Hansa declared embargoes, for instance, against Norway in order to expand its trading privileges there, and it affected grain imports into Norway so seriously that famine broke out, and the ruler capitulated and granted the Hansa better privileges. So there were a series of that sort

of embargo which the German Hansa declared against Novgorod, against Bruges, against other places if it didn't get what it asked. And sometimes it was just that the Hansa wanted better privileges than any other merchants, and they were willing to use blackmail and violence to get them. Yeah, so it was straightforward muscle when it came to it. In many cases, Gayle and Chris, how much did the Hanseatic League look outside the North European trade and consider its opportunities in Africa and Asia? The Hanseatic League, or the Hanseatic League, or the the Hanza Rada or this web of Hanseatic connections was very much focusing on northern Europe,

but that didn't mean that it was not connected to the wider world. It was very much connected because this old world web, or the sort of the economic system that connected Africa, Asia and Europe in the Middle Ages, was a system of overlapping and interlocking networks. And this system enabled. goods to travel quite astonishing distances. Think of Giafalken, traveling from the icy north of Greenland

all the way to Mamluk, Egypt, Cairo. And the Hanseatic League, or the Hanseatic merchants, they had their part in that. They controlled the transport indirectly from Greenland, certainly all the way to Bergner, England, and then to the Mediterranean, where the Venetian took over and brought it to Egypt. And there are many other examples,

such as Chinese silk, making it all the way, to Scandinavia through these interlocking networks of the Maritime Silk Road. So how was also ideas, if you want, and technologies? So the famous ship of the Hansa merchants, the Koch, for instance, did make it into the Mediterranean.

So not so much Hanseatic merchants are not in great numbers, but their ships. They appeared in the Mediterranean. They're slightly transformed, altered, and in a way, they're part of the ingredients technologically that powered European expansion over the Atlantic.

Justina, can we be a little local now and talk about it, the relationship with the Hansen with England, with London? On the one hand, London, England was a very crucial market and a partner because of the exchange of goods. So England famously was one of the major producers of textiles, woolens in the medieval period. And that was something that was very much coveted. in, for instance, the Baltic area.

So it was exchanged against grain and furs and wax and fish, so herring stockfish also coming from Scandinavia, and also ships, timber. So there's really a kind of long history of commercial interconnections, interest in each other's goods. But at the same time, also the English were key competitors. So they were called in the sources non-hansets. They were really the emblematic non-Hansert, Wuttenhansen.

So Hansets and the English met on the one hand in London, the major trading centre obviously, but also in Boston and Kings Lynn. But the English also ventured to Hanseatic cities and settlements, so to the low countries, Bruges and Antwerp, where they met Hansets, went to Scandinavia to buy fish, and also to Prussian cities, who were members of Hansa. So this exchange was actually more multi-level and on various grounds.

And that's created also tensions because Hanseatic traders had more privileges in England than they had when they came to, let's say, Danzig, Gdaeis. So there was a lot of negotiation and also, well, at times, wars, especially in the 15th century. So the 1470-74 English Hanseatic War was about rights and about ships taken and goods, confiscated and everything that kind of showed the tensions.

But this history was really long of their relations and Hansa's were well aware of it. So they were clonement merchants were granted rights in England in London already in the 12th century. And they established really a settlement very early there. So there was a guild hall which grew into the compound, which we know from 14th century sources and especially later ones, the steel yard. Could we concentrate on the steel yard for a few moments? How did it operate? Yes, the steel yard was right where nowadays a Kennan Street station is.

So it was between Cousins Lane and All Hallows Lane, Thames Street and the River. And it covered about 500 square meters, so 1.3 acres, so quite a sizable area, which appeared in such a way as a compound with gates and which contained dwellings, tavern, chapel and so on, especially after this war between Hansa and England ended, so in 1474, that Stelias grew and became the larger settlement, as we know it, from the 16th century sources and depictions, for instance, also the portraits by Hans Holbein of Stelior mansions are really emblematic city. Thank you. Sheila, they're not, they're still.

not quite a league, but they do make decisions, collective decisions. How did they arrive at doing that? Justina has already mentioned that they held diets, so meetings of a sort of Hansa Parliament, which mostly met in Lubek. But as an association of merchants from multiple cities, the Hansa had to operate through consensus. So formally, it held these diets, usually in Lubek, and everyone hung out together for three weeks and went drinking and so on. But I think that the behind-the-scenes diplomacy was also important, both the merchants from different cities discussing things in the four main contours in London, Novgorod, Bruges and Bagu, but also some behind-the-scenes diplomacy by the Hanseatic towns with one another.

decisions could be quite strongly held because Lubek was a very powerful city, but it was only one of perhaps 70 core Hunza towns, and there was a periphery of perhaps another hundred towns that were sometimes Hansa towns and sometimes not. So the German Hansa could not act cohesively when the interests of the merchants of different cities diverged. And there were times when, embargo was declared and one or more Hanseatic cities or the merchants of those cities

thought that it was not in their interest to comply with the embargo. And Bremen was a good example. And I think it was either threatened with what was called forhanzung, which meant being kicked out of the Hanse and ceasing to enjoy all of the Hansa privileges, or it was either kicked out or it was threatened with being kicked out. So when the interests of the merchants of different cities diverged, then the Hansa could not make very cohesive decisions. I think divisions in Hanseatic decision-making were often a blessing in disguise even for its own members, let alone for Northwest European trade, because it stopped some of these embargoes and some of these more coercive, more violent, more monopolistic decisions from being taken. So we shouldn't think, oh, non-cohesive decision-making was bad.

It might actually have been good for trade. Georg, can you give us some idea what effect this league, which wasn't really calling itself a league, but the effect they were having, were they just sweeping across Northern Europe, as if they were a country, as if they were a fighting force, which indeed there were. There were indeed hundreds of ships really ploughing this disease, because this is bulk cargo, right? wood, salt. This requires like big ships, lots of them

to satisfy all the needs. The economic effect, of course, was you mentioned the showing of force, although this was a peaceful fleet, say if you take the Bay Fleet, loaded only with salt, no cannons, nothing, but still, it was a powerful show of force.

This is the fleet of the Hansa, through wealth, through the size of their trade. There was also, of course, a massive impact of their trade, of the connectivity these ships created across Northern Europe that led to the emergence of some sort, if you want, economic integrated area.

I hesitate to say free trade area because, as we heard already from both Sheila and Justina, the Hanseatic merchants or these ad hoc coalition of Hansa cities were not always big promoters of free trade, but defended their monopolies. But nevertheless, they massively increased connectivity across northern Europe, changed patterns of consumption by bringing new goods to all sorts of places. They also had an impact in terms of a certain standardization of legal standards and cultures,

architecture, art. It was not only salt and timber and furs, but also ideas, artwork and so on, that was travelling with or in the wake of these ships. Thank you. Justina, when they had these disputes between the cities and the merchants, can you just give us a specific example and how are we resolved? Yes, so cities between themselves or city governments could have disputes about, well, not following agreements which they have made, for instance, holding a staple market in Bruges for textiles,

that was very often violated internally. There were disputes about taxations, whether everyone paid up as they were supposed to, whether they would participate in a war, to what extent collective liability could be addressed or preferably not. That was the whole point of the Hansa being a loose network. So it's almost like a state of its own on the water, isn't it? It is, it is. Something as important as a state and as powerful as a state. And at the same time, when it fit them, they had totally different interests. and so some of the members

and they could move out in a sense of the Hansa. So that makes it really fascinating because it was so flexible and difficult to grasp. And some of the conflicts were really connected to specific merchants, for instance, escalated debt conflicts or cases of shipwreck and the question whose property it was, but also really more human conflicts, you could say, inheritances or conflicts about property

because those people really moved around the area and not only merchants, but also their families, sailors, craftsmen. The approach seems to be, have been that conflict was a part of life, for instance. Is there any sense in which the Hanjatic League was a trailblazer for free market economists, for instance? Sheila. I think that's a romantic view, but a wrong one. The Hansa, well, as Georg was saying, in many ways it was the exact opposite of a free trade.

like the EU. It usually sought to act as a protectionist cartel for its members. It tried to protect its members against disruptive competition, get cartel profits, keep rival merchants out. And the shocking thing is that it didn't even guarantee free trade among different Hanseatic cities. So that's not that one on the head. No, I think so. Yeah. Gahe Hogg, over the last 200 years, the Hanseatic League began to fade away, decline and eventually, as it will almost disappear. Can you give us some idea of that process? Yes. I mean, it's a difficult question.

Questions about decline, fading away tend to be. Because on the one hand, you could say, well, did it fade away? Yes, as an ephemeral, maybe not even ever real existing coalition or league of cities, yes. But the cities themselves, they don't. And they do very well, also in the later people. period. Hamburg, Bremen, Danzig, especially, they do quite well in the early modern period and into the modern period. They profit from these new opportunities of a radically changed world. So what has changed two main things? On the one hand, there's this massive expansion of European economies because of global expansions or voyages of discovery, a shift to the Atlantic but also to the Far East. and that entails a change in trading organization as well. So we have now ships traveling directly from England to India, for instance, or the Far East or from the Netherlands.

As I said, Bremen, Hamburg dancing, do relatively well in this new world. Others do not. Because there's another thing happening in this period, and that's the rise of, you could call the modern territorial. state, England, Netherlands, Sweden, who on the one hand eliminate the necessity for Hansas, protecting each other traveling because traveling is now safer, but also they would not accept this sort of acting on behalf of the empire by Lubig or any other city. Now you really had to go through the empire and that was difficult because they were different interests. Upper Germany did not agree with what Lubick wanted and that weakened Lubick and many other cities

considerably. So overall, massive growth, they do okay, but others do much better. Sheila, it's often portrayed as a standard bear for capitalism. Does that make any sense? The Hansa merchants were rich, but I don't think they were specially capitalistic. We've already talked about how they tried to erect barriers to entry and behave like a cartel. But they also, the Hanseatic merchants largely failed to adopt the pioneering early capitalist practices that were emerging elsewhere in the medieval Islamic world, in central and northern Italy, and even in southern Germany. Merchants were developing large companies with huge capital resources.

They were developing new types of banks and financial instruments. They were using double-entry bookkeeping. They were understanding foreign exchange arbitrage. They were even developing putting out systems to develop pre-factory industries. and then from about 1,500 onward, the Dutch and Flemish and English merchants were doing the same thing. These fragmented merchants and their firms were the real standard-bearers of capitalism. And I think that Hansa kind of sat out this early capital, this development of early capitalistic practices. Sometimes the Hansa actually forbade its members to do this sort of thing.

So it forbade businesses. Well, for instance, the Hunza actually forbade its members. Hansa forbade its members to engage in business associations with non-Hansiatic merchants, or to use particular types of financial instrument for particular periods. But probably the more important thing was that the Hansa used its cartel privileges to shelter its members from competition so they could stay in business even though they didn't adopt early capitalist practices. So I think the Hansa merchants were very rich.

and you can see their beautiful mansions in North German cities even now. But I think it would be wrong to see them as capitalistic. There were proto-capitalists in medieval Europe and the Middle East, but the Hunza were not them. Gail, could you tell Lucis, did religion play a part in this? Because it seemed to play a part in almost everything else at the time. Yeah, religion did matter. Certainly before the Reformation, when you look at how these different Hansa,

us institutionalize, it is around religious symbols. How earnestly there were religious feelings or spiritual feelings, that's not a question. But of course, the churches of the merchants play an important role and are often bigger than the church of the bishop, which shows the power of the merchants, but also how they express their aspirations and their identity through churches, through religion. And you absolutely right, the reformation was a major challenge. It did not obliterate the Hansa, if you want, all together or immediately, but it was driving a wedge.

And I shall say somewhat, from what I can see, under-explored, under-researched wedge, sort of into the Hansa, because Cologne, for instance, remained Catholic, and other Westphalian towns, even Munster, after a non-abaptist, an interlude, while in the north, along the Baltic, so Lybeg, Hamburg, Bremen and so on, and further into the Baltic, embraced the Reformation. And so, yes, there was this divide. In a way, the Hansa lived with it

because the empire lived with that divide as well. So they learned to accept it, but it did weaken the Hanseye League, as it did weaken the empire. Yes. Justina, we're coming towards the end now, but there's still time to talk about the legacy. What was the legacy of that period of time?

We have the physical evidence briefly alluded to, in great buildings and so on. But did it have other legacies inside the basic area of the Hansa, which is north-east, northwest Europe? Yes, so indeed the physicality of it, the buildings, the brick architecture is still very visible and recognizable, and also connecting those cities. So also the topography of layout of the cities. When you're in Lubbock and you travel to Tallinn, so Léval in the medieval period, you kind of recognize. is the same elements you feel at home. So this is something which is still there,

which is very much used for tourism. Art, Georg mentioned it briefly. The Hansa was also an art trading network. So art produced in the low countries and northern Germany, altarpieces, sculptures and so on. They were brought to Scandinavia really far north or to the Eastern Baltic, and you can still admire them.

And it was also a kind of recognizable element back then, and it is now. I think also this idea that there are various ways of creating identities and identifications, so not only national and ethnic ones, this is something which is a kind of lasting

legacy, so that there are various ways to connect. And for instance, in 1980, the city of Zvalim in the Netherlands kind of called into life created a union of cities of the Hansa, a modern one. So there are almost

200 members now, so almost like in the Middle Ages, the yearly festivals, days where business science are being forged, culture, tourism, medieval fairs and so on. So it's really a kind of lived experience of

these connections which don't refer to anything national in a sense, but to the urban medieval culture. And we have recognizable names like the Luft Hansa, so the flying company, the flights of Germany or universities of Appliant Sciences,

which bear this name, they're bored and computer games about the Hans, including Hans. And it kind of also lives on as an inspiration for historical fiction. So there are novels being written on the basis of our research, which is really exciting. And I think we're waiting for a Netflix series as well. So I just go around the table. get your final thoughts on whether this was an enriching time in Europe, whether it was held things up.

Gail, would you like to start with that one? Well, any period is enriching in its own ways. And I personally would always be careful with sort of ideas of progress. So you're careful of the idea of progress? Yes, in the sense that this is something we are sort of, well, we have to, sort of struggle, wave and tackle as historians that our discipline, history as we practice it now in universities

as we teach it in schools, is very much sort of in the service of an idea of progress from some sort of origins to the modern liberal state. And of course there are elements that are

that we can hardly deny such as there was massive economic growth over the last few hundred years and massive demographic growth. So in that sense, yes, there was an important development, but I would agree with also in the Middle Ages, and the Hanseatic merchants were involved. And I would agree with Sheila, however,

that it was in a way more symptom than driver. The main driver was climate change, fostering demographic growth, and this demographic growth fostered the need, or sort of triggered the need for wood from the Baltic, for grain from Pomerania and other places, for salt from the Atlantic coast, and the Hanseatic merchants, they did contribute something important.

They made it happen, right? They shipped this stuff around and, yes, contributed to this growth dynamic. So in that sense, I would also say, although agreeing with Sheila, yes, it depends on how you define capitalism. Doesn't it really want to call it capitalistic or not? But yes, it's different from the dynamics are different from the Netherlands or from London around 1600. there is no stock exchange and so on. But for their time and the needs to ship around, to move these massive cargoes,

they came up with good solutions. And because these solutions were so good and worked so well for such a long time, we might be a little bit more forgiving for them hanging on to them and not embracing something new that they were not sure it would work. So yes, this is conservatism. Conservatism that is problematic maybe.

Hindsight is always 2020, isn't it? So we can now say it's problematic. But for them, it would have been foolish to easily embrace something new. And it reminds me of the situation today, right? Things are changing. We are holding on what we are doing. It's natural to do that. Justina, would you like to make your comments?

What I think is really fascinating is this kind of human creativity, which you can spot in the sources connected to the Huntsers. So not only Hansets, but also all their partners and the locations and so on where it's going on. There's such a richness of sources which are left from these interactions that it's really a treasure trove, which I'm gladly and dive into. So it's a very nice framework to work with as a historian. As an economic historian, I think we learn a lot from the Hansa, as is shown by the fact that even just mainstream economists,

let alone economic historians, are still trying to draw lessons for the medieval Hansa for modern developing economies. And I think the reason that we do that is that the Hansa was this protein, mollusk-like crocodile-like organization, which brought together, if you like, two sides of economic activity. One side was the profit-seeking, innovative, entrepreneurial side, and I think the individual Hanseatic merchants often were incredibly clever, very, very entrepreneurial.

They sought out new trade routes, as Georg was pointing out. They devised new types of ship. They were doing all sorts of things that were really important for the medieval and early modern economy. But on the other hand, like many organizations, there's this tendency. of entrenched producers to try to keep their profits to maybe cartelize a particular or monopolize a particular branch of the economy. And I think that attention between the entrepreneurial side

of the Hansa and the more, if you like, rent-seeking extractive side trying to get state privileges is endlessly fascinating. And I think that's why economists and economic historians keep going back to it to try to understand what was going on within this crocodile-like organization. Well, thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much, Sheila Ogilvie.

Thanks to Georg Christ and Justina Verbs Mazewicz and to our pseudo-engineer Duncan Hannant. Next week, the dozens of different chemicals we make in our bodies all the time to keep us going. That's hormones. That's what we've been talking about. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now

with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Go around the table in the reverse way. Gail, what would you like to say that you didn't have the opportunity to say? I might have chipped in when Sheila was talking about the Hansa Tager and the principle of a sort of consensus, right? So that the Hansa Taga, they try to form a consensus. And I agree with that, but I think it's important to note that the Hansa Taga were in many ways

were very strongly a self-selecting happening so you showed up when you wanted to show up it was very difficult to force people to show up and they tried and they tried to have penalties for people not showing up and forcing them to send proper excuses and so on but it was very difficult as it is in many struggling societies today

to force people to attend so yes it was a consensus that was formed but there was sort of the ingenuity or the brilliance of it it was the consensus of the people who already had a consensus because these were the people or cities showing up. So only because of that things were possible. It would never have been possible to form a consensus among all cities that could be considered

belonging to the Hansa or having something to do with the Hansa to boycott Bruges or to escalate tensions with England into an almost military or low-level military conflict. So that's something you could easily dismiss as, oh, yes, failed institutionalization. They did not make it into a proper state as they didn't make it into a proper capitalist economic system and so on. Or you could say, no, there's something brilliant about this. A very flexible system that enables people to switch in and switch out according to their needs and still keep it somehow together, although cities do very, very different things.

And a very cheap way of doing things because this last, The lack of institutionalisation means that they perform state-like services, if you want, for their members, with an incredibly low overhead. Shilu, would you like to comment on what did you not have a chance or an opportunity to say that you would like to have said? I think a theme that came up again and again in our conversation was the theme of security of property and persons, because you can't have long-distance trade across political borders unless you have some sort of security guarantees. And I think it's often argued that medieval trade and maybe early modern trade needed to have these quasi-monopolistic organizations

like the German Hunza and individual merchant guilds in order to get that sort of commercial security. It's certainly the case that you need security. The question is, do you need to grant all, of these other monopolistic privileges to these merchant groups along with it. And I think that's one of the open questions which economists and economic historians keep asking. I think drawing a balance sheet on the security effects of the German Hanse for international trade and just general political relationships in the medieval and early modern period is an important issue

because on the one hand, the German Hansa got these security guarantees from ruling. rulers and towns. On the other, we've heard again and again over the last three quarters of an hour about all of the violence that the Hansa itself caused. And, you know, it wasn't just the wars, although the Hansa both had internal wars inside itself. So in 1438 to 41, you got wars between the Holland merchants of the Hansa and the Vendish Hunza towns, 22 ships of neutral merchants were captured. So neutral third parties got harmed when the Hansa had its own internal civil wars. There was a lot of harm caused when the Hansa, you know, declared war against Spain when King John II of Castile attacked the Hanseatic trading fleet in 1419. There were a lot of

ships that were sunk. I think 40 vessels were sunk and their their cargoes were lost with them. So I I think understanding the balance sheet that on the one hand, the German Hansa created security for its own members. And the other, it generated insecurity for outsiders and for neutral third parties. And I think sort of drawing a balance sheet between those two sides on the security front is something which we need to think about when we try to assess the legacy of the Hansa. Thank you. And Justina. Yes, I would like to expand a little bit on the steel yard and more the social side of it, because we need to think we. we have wonderful sources about, well, the interactions. And there we also have this kind of duplicity,

so the closed system of it, and, well, partly not letting foreigners in non-Henserts, the English and so on. But on the other hand, really close contacts with the English, as neighbours, direct neighbours, who went to the same church, the old-hellows church. The Hansets went to English taverns, and they came to the tavern and the steelyer. There was quite a lot of contact with women,

as well locally. So for instance in 1450 a Hanseatic merchant said well my fathered a child in London but we were merchants, we were not angels so they were quite aware of I think various signs of life going on and this was a place where

really young people came so we see it in the interesting bands of what they were not allowed to do in the steel yet so it was forbidden to fight to play football to climb trees and to gamble so we get a little bit a little bit of a sense of what were the fun sides of stay in London.

It was a place to come, to learn commerce, to learn languages, to learn how to interact with others for better and for worse. Well, thank you all very much. Yeah, thanks so much. I'd like a cup of tea, yes, please. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. 30 years ago, Britain's farms were hit by an epidemic of an infectious brain disorder.

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nobody knows for sure where mad cow disease originally came from. And the general feeling is that we will never know the answer. Subscribe to The Cows Are Mad on BBC Sounds.