Hanseatic League (Merveilles des Morte)
Hanseatic League | |
|---|---|
| c. 1159 – 1607 | |
|
Flag
 Hanseatic
Emblem | |
 Hanseatic League in 1595 | |
| Capital | Lübeck |
| Largest city | Hamburg |
| Common languages | Middle Low German |
| Religion | Starkism, Jungism, Roman Catholicism, Northern Catholicism |
| Government | Confederate, mercantile republic |
| Grand Syndic | |
• -1607 | Simon II Burkhart |
| Establishment | |
| Historical era | Middle Ages |
• Established | c. 1159 |
• Established | c. 1159 |
• Disestablished | 1607 |
The Hanseatic League (/ˌhænsiˈætɪk/; Middle Low German: Hanse, Düdesche Hanse, Hansa; German language: Deutsche Hanse; Dutch: De Hanze; Latin: Hansa Teutonica) was a loose confederation of semi-independent polities in the Holy Roman Empire. Initially founded as a commercial and defensive collection of merchant guilds and market towns around the year 1159, the League steadily grew and centralized into a recognized union by the early 16th century. The League came to dominate trade in the Baltic Sea region for much of the early modern period, with territory stretching across northern Germany and the southern Baltic coast.
The League’s name of Hanse would come from the Old High German word for a band or troop, and was adopted to describe the bands of merchants traveling between Hanseatic cities. Through the League’s influence, the term Hanse would come to describe any merchant guild or group of traders. The early Hansa operated not as a confederation, but as a loose alliance of independent cities with their own legal systems and armies, unified by the common necessity of protecting their economic interests and diplomatic privileges. With the rise of key cities such as Lübeck within the organization, and the acquisition of numerous territories along the Baltic unbound to any city, the organization undertook a number of reforms in the 14th and 15th centuries which centralized the Hanseatic League in a similar manner to that of the Swiss Confederacy.
Under this organization the Hanseatic League would reach its zenith at the start of the 16th century. The League would sponsor the voyages of Christopher Kolumbus and Nicholas Sommer in 1491, beginning the colonization of the New World, and turning the Hansa into a colonial power. During the Protestant Reformation the League became split religiously, but as a whole formally adhered to the Roman Catholic Church. During the Kerpen War, which saw direct attacks against Hanseatic possessions and the excommunication of Grand Syndic Peter Burkhart by Pope Paschal III, the Hanseatic League promoted the creation of the Northern Papacy in Bremen, while various sects of Protestantism – including the Hansa’s own Starkism – increased in popularity and were later adopted by the Burkharts. The action of Hanseatic electors during the Imperial Elections of 1595-96 contributed to the outbreak of the Forty Years' War and the more localized Hanseatic Civil War, which both devastated and ultimately marked the downfall of the Hansa.
