All the same, and notwithstanding serious economic setbacks in the late Middle Ages, the Hanse was to fight and negotiate, often on all fronts at once, over long periods, and with remarkable resilience and success. . . . It could put armies in the field. . . . And it could deal, on more than equal terms, with sovereign states.1
THE POLITICAL developments of Germany formed the antithesis to that of France. In France the king allied with the burghers, made side payments to the aristocracy and established a considerable measure of centralized and hierarchical control. The German king, by contrast, favored the lords at the expense of the towns. Forced to fend for themselves, the towns formed city-leagues to protect their interests against the lords. The result was that Germany’s future, after the middle of the thirteenth century, was determined by a combination of lordships, independent towns, and city-leagues. Under the nominal authority of the emperor, lords and towns vied for real control.
The Hansa proved to be the most important of these leagues (see Map 6.1). It exerted a unifying force beyond, and against, the local jurisdictions of the lords. This confederation of towns emerged as an alternative institutional solution to the sovereign state and performed many functions that elsewhere were carried out by sovereign monarchy. The league waged war, raised revenue, signed treaties, and regulated economic activity.
I have argued in the preceding chapters that the institutional development of the Late Middle Ages must be explained by the political and social alliances of kings, lords, church, and towns. Kings and towns in France, for example, developed a political alliance based on shared interests and similar ideological perspectives. In Germany political coalitions worked out quite differently despite the fact that German towns had roughly similar interests and perspectives as their French counterparts. In contrast to the French king, the German king, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor, opted for a policy against the towns.2 Instead he sought support from the dukes and ecclesiastical lords, in order to pursue imperial control of Italy, and granted them control over the towns. This strategy proved to be a failure. The German king gradually lost all real authority to the German lords. The ensuing history of Germany is therefore one of weak kings and strong feudal lords. The dukes and counts struggled in turn with towns that sought independence. The explanation of German political development revolves around this axis of lord-town opposition.
Germany thus went through a highly particularized development quite unlike the gradual development of the French sovereign state. The French story is one of centralization and gradual establishment of sovereign authority in a juridical and factual sense. The German story is one of dissipation. It evolved into a confusing pattern of multiple authorities where juridical status and factual independence seldom matched. Although the Holy Roman Empire continued to exist in name until 1806, central authority was not really established until Germany’s unification under Bismarck.3 Power had shifted to the duchies and other lords, and to the cities and city-leagues which sometimes were juridical subjects but factually independent.4 Although it is true that the empire regained some of its lost power during the Hapsburgs of Austria, the empire in fact remained a set of independent principalities. Even Charles V, who had vast resources under his control and who united the Spanish and Austrian holdings, had to pay large sums of money to these lords to obtain their approval.5 The Reformation and Thirty Years War simply reinforced the fragmentation that had started centuries earlier.
The German case, more than any other, dispels any notions of unilinear explanations of state development. Since German development was so starkly different from the development of the sovereign state in France, one cannot argue that states developed solely as responses to changes in the overall environment. Arguments that feudal organization “had to” give way to larger territorial states, because of changes in the character of warfare, or because of shifts in belief systems, fail to explain variation in outcomes. Germany, like France, was exposed to the developments in military technology of that time, and individuals also had access to different sets of ideas which could legitimate authority on more abstract bases, such as Roman law. Indeed, the German emperor was one of the first to pioneer and foster the concept of sovereignty and the role of the monarch as ultimate source of law and jurisdiction. Neither of these two variables, military technology or shifts in ideas, can satisfactorily explain the variation in development between Germany and France.
The central question must therefore be, why did the German case turn out so differently from the French? German towns, like the French, opposed domination by feudal lords and the church. Like the French towns, they would benefit from a central actor who could diminish feudal exactions and the incertitude caused by crosscutting jurisdictions. Given the high transaction and information costs involved in conducting long-distance commerce in a highly particularized environment, one might argue that they would benefit even more from an organization that could reduce such costs and uncertainty. And like the French king, the German king opposed control by Rome. So why did not the German king forge an alliance with the towns and create a sovereign state? The question is all the more pertinent since the discussion of the Investiture Struggle indicated that the imperial strategy to control Italy and the pope came with high costs of its own. We must seek the answer in the particular political coalitions that developed following the economic upswing of the eleventh century.
As trade expanded throughout Europe, German towns profited immensely, particularly those on the Rhine, such as Cologne, and the maritime towns on the North Sea and Baltic, such as Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen. The development of trading towns, such as Regensburg and Nürnberg in the south, came a bit later. The northern towns had access to waterways and were thus in a strong position to engage in long-distance trade.6
These northern towns dealt in high-volume but low added-value goods. Most of these goods were foodstuffs such as fish, primarily herring, and grain from the Baltic regions. From farther east came timber, Scandinavian metals, furs, and honey. More valuable were the textiles shipped from Flanders to the East. As we will see from the discussion of the Hanseatic League, profit margins were modest.
Although trade had a significant impact on Germany, it differed from the impact of trade in Italy. A large number of German towns sprang up, but these were of modest size (see Table 6.1). There were maybe fifty intermediate-size towns and only a few with more than 25,000 inhabitants. (Italy, by contrast, had about thirty towns of more than 25,000 citizens, and commerce allowed its towns to accrue great wealth.)
The first estimate of the towns’ preferences, therefore, does not diverge much from that of the French towns. Since German towns were of intermediate size and wealth—Lübeck and Cologne to some extent being the exceptions— they could not survive on their own. They needed some form of authority to help pool their resources. And indeed, we will see that one of the main objectives of the city-leagues was mutual defense.
Because the towns’ environment consisted of the movement of bulk commodities with relatively low profit margins, the towns could benefit from some centralizing form of organization in that sector as well. Rather than erode already slim profit margins of 5 to 25 percent by competition, towns had more to gain from trying to monopolize trade routes.7 That is in fact what the Hansa attempted. Moreover, a central authority would have been better at reducing transaction and information costs, which were the consequence of multiple feudal tolls, manipulation of coinage, and the variation of exchange rates induced by local particularism. In short, like the French towns, the German towns would benefit from a central authority.8
By looking solely at the particular impact and nature of trade, we can make a first approximation of what the towns might have preferred. But again, deducing preferences is nothing but an approximation. It cannot account for actual political outcomes. Lords, church, and emperor had their own agendas. To see how specific political outcomes occurred, we need to trace these actors’ material interests and conceptual perspectives and see how these matched or conflicted with those of the towns.
TABLE 6.1
Estimated Population of Some of the Major Northern Towns
| Town | Population | Year |
| a) Members of the Hansa | ||
| Bremen | 20,000 | 1400 |
| Bremen | 17,000 | 1450 |
| Cologne | 40-60,000 | 13th-14th century |
| Cologne | 30,000 | 1450 |
| Danzig | 20-30,000 | 1450 |
| Deventer | 12-14,000 | 1300 |
| Deventer | 10,000 | 1450 |
| Hamburg | 16-18,000 | 1450 |
| Kampen | 12-14,000 | 1300 |
| Kampen | 10,000 | 1450 |
| Lübeck | 25,000 | 1400 |
| Lübeck | 25,000 | 1450 |
| Rostock | 13,000 | 1400 |
| Stralsund | 13,000 | 1400 |
| Zwolle | 12-14,000 | 1300 |
| b) Some major towns that were not members | ||
| Augsburg | 10,000 | 1400 |
| Augsburg | 18,300 | 1475 |
| Frankfurt | 10,000 | 1400 |
| Nürnberg | 13,750 | 1363 |
| Nürnberg | 22,800 | 1430 |
Sources: Ennen, The Medieval Town, pp. 187-188; Blockmans, “Princes Conquérants et Bourgeois Calculateurs,” p. 175; Du Boulay, Germany in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 115, 161, 167; Lensen and Heitling, De Geschiedenis van de Hanze, p. 68; Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, p. 38.
The Feudal Strategy of the German Emperor and the Opposition to the Towns
As we saw in Chapter 3, there was an implicit tension between the emperor’s weak domestic basis and the desire for imperial control of Italy. On the one hand, the emperor was confronted by strong dukes and lords who elected the German king, that is, the emperor.9 The initial success of using ecclesiastical lords only worked until the Investiture Struggle. After that, they too became unreliable.
On the other hand, the imperial position required the German king to expend considerable resources to control the Lombard towns of northern Italy and the universalist pretensions of the popes. A weak basis of support in Germany, however, meant that imperial pretensions would often come to naught. Kings somehow had to acquire aristocratic support at home. But the lords had little incentive to support imperial contenders who might mobilize Italian resources against their independence. Consequently they preferred to choose weak imperial pretenders, as they did after Frederick II (1211—1250) in choosing William of Holland.
Within the cauldron of competing interests, the German kings might have pursued the support of the towns as had the Capetians. The towns were certainly amenable to the idea. As early as the eleventh century some towns had sought an alliance with the king against their lords. Worms, for example, evicted its bishop in 1073 and asked for aid from the king.10 Similar events took place in Cologne in 1074 and Goslar in 1107.11 Strasbourg fought its bishop on the field of Hausbergen (1261), and Cologne battled its archbishop again in 1288.12
The resistance of these towns against their feudal overlords—be they clerical or secular—looked remarkably like the resistance of the French towns. The German towns were no different from the French. The burghers’ material interests and preferred social ideals were antithetical to the feudal social order.13 Neither the caste system of a warrior elite nor the condemnation of monetary pursuits by the church fitted the towns’ preferred conceptual framework. Politically the towns wanted a ruler to defend them against feudal encroachment. Economically they wanted central organization to curtail seigneurial taxation, reduce the amount of tolls, and rationalize the legal process.
The German kings were not ignorant of the advantages of a town alliance. Henry IV sought and obtained urban support against the clergy and the aristocracy during the Investiture Conflict. His son, Henry V, however, sought the support of the clergy and aristocracy and fought his father. Later, when he himself acceded to the throne, he tried to reconcile with the burghers.14 Frederick I (Barbarossa) also tentatively pursued an urban strategy (1152— 1190). But he wavered in his policy, sometimes supporting the towns, then again the lords. His experiences with urban independence in northern Italy had made him weary of communes. Indeed, at the Assembly of Roncaglia (1158), he explicitly tried to recoup the regalian rights of coinage and jurisdiction which the towns had usurped. To do so, he was the first German emperor who explicitly turned to Roman law, with its ideas of hierarchy and the king as the foundation of law.15 This was to little avail. The Italian towns united to form a league of Lombard communities and gained the support of the pope. At Legnano they soundly defeated the imperial armies in 1176. Towns retained their rights to self-government and the revenue of tolls and taxes.16 Consequently Frederick Barbarossa became “an opponent of sworn communes and of town leagues, but he was cautious even in the question of urban legal autonomy.”17
Moreover, Frederick Barbarossa, as one of the first kings in the Hohenstaufen Dynasty, also had to take care not to offend the Welf aristocracy, the enemies of the Hohenstaufen who contested their ascendence to the throne.18 The principle of hereditary kingship had been successfully attacked in 1125 and again in 1138.19 In effect this made the elective principle, and hence the position of the lords, stronger. The king’s position in Germany remained precarious, and he could ill afford to antagonize these lords any further.
By the time of the reign of Frederick II (1211-1250), Frederick I’s grandson, the imperial situation had become critical. Frederick II also was opposed by an Italian coalition of the independent communes and the pope. The pope particularly feared encroachment by Frederick II on the papal lands after the Hohenstaufen had also acquired Sicily through a marriage alliance with the Normans. The communes, for their part, continued to fight for complete independence.
Because of the continued strength of the German lords, the emperor opted for concessions to them. Frederick II ceded control over towns in Germany to the lords in 1220 and 1232 in exchange for their support for his imperial campaign. Already in 1213, in the “Golden Bull of Eger,” he had given ecclesiastical lords full control over the towns in their domains. These were officially sanctioned and fortified in the Confoederatio cum principus ecclesiasticis, the “Treaty with the Ecclesiastical Princes” (1220), which were “concessions towards the territorial politics of the higher clergy.”20 Frederick II’s Statutum in Favorem Principum of 1232, the statute in favor of the princes, contained twenty-three clauses, thirteen of which referred to towns and markets.
The king promised (1) to build no more castles or walled towns in princely territories. No new (in other words, royal) markets were to compete with the older markets in the princes’ hands.(2, 3); . . . Royal jurisdiction in the cities, which had been extended to the detriment of the princely courts, was to be limited to the “ban-mile” of the cities(5,18); . . . The cities were not to admit dependents of lords and princes (12), and royal officials in the cities were not to prevent any such persons returning to their lords (23).21
Essentially this meant that Frederick II yielded effective power to bishops and higher aristocracy. “It was the abdication of the German monarchy and the recognition of the princes as the exclusive rulers of their territories and as equal partners with the emperor in the government of the Empire.”22 He thereupon left to pursue his campaigns in Italy and did not return for many years.
Frederick’s son, Henry VII, opposed the policy. He favored a reverse strategy. Rebelling against his father, he sought the support of the towns and attempted to build an administration of ministeriales who were recruited from the commoners and lesser nobility. He favored a domestic strategy and was willing to concede the right of self-government to the Lombard communities. In short, his strategy to build up the royal domain and use the towns against the princes looked remarkably like that of the Capetian kings who were pursuing such a policy at that very time. The princes, however, called in the emperor to uphold the agreements of 1220 and 1232. Henry was defeated in 1235 and imprisoned by Frederick II for the rest of his life.23
Nevertheless, the imperial strategy of the emperor failed. Frederick II gained initial military successes in Italy, but he could not win outright. He was continually opposed by the Lombard League, which was supported by the pope. Although Frederick II managed to reduce individual towns such as Milan, he could not defeat the league’s combined opposition. Indeed, the more successful he was in combating individual towns, the more the usually disjoint Italian towns realized that they had a common enemy. Toward the end of Frederick’s reign, the Italian towns had gained factual independence. Simultaneous with the failure in Italy, the German princes expanded their hold on Germany. By ceding regalian rights to the German lords, Frederick II granted them the means to establish secure sources of revenue and troops. An indicator of the failure of this strategy was the fact that the royal domain, at Frederick’s death, was smaller than the areas controlled by some of the dukes.24 The German choice to seek princely support was also unwise since the larger part of royal revenue in Germany came from the towns. The strategy can therefore only be understood in the larger imperial context. The emperor believed that he could still control both Germany and Italy.
The weakness of the imperial position was exacerbated by the Interregnum (1256-1273), the period without a royal successor. The emperorship became wholly dependent on support by the nobles. The election came into the hands of the College of Electors, consisting of three archbishops and four secular lords.25
The entire process was formalized in the Golden Bull which the emperor signed in 1356. It maintained the imperial title for the German king, but he had to cede factual control over Italy to the nobles and papacy. Italy became a constellation of independent communes and papal lands, beyond German control. This bull also formally recognized the rights of the German College of Electors. Although the election of emperors was an old practice, it had historically—since the Ottonians—meant the affirmation of the emperor’s choice of successor. Since the Investiture Conflict, however, it had increasingly become a real elective procedure. The Golden Bull thus formalized the power that the lords had drawn to themselves over the course of several centuries. The election came to rest in the hands of the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne and four secular lords—the Count Palatine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia. Two powerful dukes, the dukes of Austria and Bavaria, were not part of the college.26
The bull also forbade the formation of city-leagues, symbolizing to the towns what had de facto been the case for more than a century since Frederick II.27 The towns were left to fend for themselves, without a central authority to unite them against lordly encroachment. The lords ruled Germany. The electors were recognized as independent rulers in their principalities, with regalian rights.28 Their territories were indivisible, and hence the procedure established territorial integrity. Soon similar rights were taken over by many other lords. The bull was essentially a “Magna Carta of German particularism.”29
Why did the German kings pursue an imperial strategy rather than concentrate on Germany and establish a sovereign, territorial state there? Could the fragmentation of the German kingdom have been prevented by someone less ambitious than Frederick II? The argument that his rule specifically constituted a turning point can be generalized. No emperor allied with the towns to the extent that the French king did. “Co-operation between the emperor and the cities might have laid the foundations of a modern German monarchy. In England and France the cities contributed immeasurably to the growth of modern national monarchies . . . the princes recognized the danger and forced the emperors into a course of action inimical to the cities.”30 Despite the risks of an imperial policy, there were good reasons to pursue it rather than a strictly domestic one.
First, control of empire meant authority over Burgundy and northern Italy and later also Sicily.31 These areas were attractive sources of revenue. The economic upswing from the tenth century onward had produced vibrant towns there. Frederick Barbarossa’s campaign in northern Italy and the ensuing negotiations at Roncaglia were explicit attempts to recapture many of the regalian rights, and hence revenue, which had been appropriated by the Lombard communes. By some estimates the revenue for the German king in Italy yielded about 84,000 pounds, whereas Louis VII’s revenue in France was approximately 60,000.32 Sicily, too, yielded considerable revenues at that time. Some chroniclers suggested, but we have no exact figures, that the revenue of Palermo equaled that of the English kingdom.33 Sicily was an important grain producer in the Mediterranean, and the Normans had established an effective administrative machinery there.
Furthermore, the universalist strategy of the papacy and particularly its attempts to control ecclesiastical lordships in Germany required the emperor to respond in a similar fashion. That is, given the strong position of ecclesiastical lords in Germany, the emperor could not surrender absolute authority to the pope without a serious loss of domestic resources and position.34
Finally, the emperorship conveyed an important ideological message. Since the middle of the tenth century, the German kings had claimed to rebuild the Roman Empire—a holy empire at that. They ruled as Caesars with the added support of a universalist religious doctrine. Frederick II thus claimed a Caesaro-Papalist standing. He called his birthplace Bethlehem, kept a harem, and his supporters addressed him as the “Messiah.”35 The idea of a peaceful, unified Christian Europe formed the logical equivalent of the perception that the Pax Romana had been beneficial. Hence a German Empire was much preferable to the frequent violence of the feudal era. Although the practical implementation left much to be desired, the social idea still seemed very attractive to many. How could the German kings reverse their policies and claim that authority was now to be limited by territorial parameters? How could the emperors, who for centuries had pursued control over the areas of the old Roman Empire, now claim that they only had jurisdiction within recognized boundaries, and in turn recognize others as equals? It would constitute a reversal of their logic of organization. The conceptual framework of imperial rule was tied to universalist and religious ideas. It was not simply another secular form of rule; it had a particular ideological standing from which the German king could not divorce himself without great cost.36
Towns versus Lords
The Golden Bull of 1356 formalized the long process of erosion of royal power. Royal policy had foundered on the strength of the lords, the conflict with Rome, and the failure to adopt a consistent town policy. One can say that from 1250 onward, material power in Germany rested with the lords and the towns.
The growth in power and independence of the dukes, counts, and margraves was further enhanced by the frontier movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The cultivation and population of areas to the east created new lordships and added areas to already existing ones. These areas, moreover, had never been under royal control. Many new towns were founded. This occurred particularly to the east beyond the Elbe, an area that had no Roman influences.37 Thus the duke of Saxony founded Lübeck, which was later to become virtually independent and the critical actor in the Hansa. Most of the Baltic towns also originated in this period.
This frontier area consisted largely of non-Christians, so the settlement of new towns and new monasteries was also encouraged by the church. Rome favored the expansion by new monastic and semimonastic orders which answered directly to Rome. The Cistercian order built new abbeys in what is today Hungary and Poland.38 It was also aided by orders of knights who had taken vows of association and who had fought in the Middle East. The Teutonic Order of crusading knights was thus redirected to crusade against the Baltic people. Its main center was moved from Acre to Venice, and then finally Marienburg—in the north of contemporary Poland.39 They forced conversion on the Prussian and other peoples and engaged in wholesale expulsion and extermination, after which those areas were resettled by colonists from the west German ecclesiastical lords similarly recognized opportunities in this expansion and created new bishoprics. In short, Rome, secular lords, and the German clergy all had something to gain from the eastward frontier movement. They all sought to establish villages and towns which would provide revenue, converts, and subjects.
However, like towns in Flanders, Italy, and France, the German towns opposed such overlordship.40 They sought to expand their freedom, either by paying for chartered liberties or by violent resistance. Even before the eastward expansion, towns had rebelled against their lords in their quest for independence: “residents of the market settlement banded together, swearing an oath, to win recognition, rights, and eventually independence from the bishop, abbot or prince.”41
As I have said earlier in this chapter, clerical lords in particular were the target of urban resentment. Arguing that they had common enemies, the towns supported the emperor against German ecclesiastical lords during the Investiture Struggle. Thus the citizens of Mainz drove their archbishop out of town and wrote Henry IV: “If God grants us victory we shall both be secure, you on your throne and we in our town.”42
Because of the variety of lordships and the particularity of urban bargaining with their lords, a patchwork of different urban developments took place. Each town had a variant set of liberties which it had obtained in piecemeal bargaining, and consequently one must be cautious to generalize indiscriminately. Every town had different laws and ordinances. In general, however, one can distinguish juridically three types of towns: imperial towns, free towns, and territorial towns.43 One should keep in mind that this differentiation was often blurred in practice. In many instances towns were virtually indistinguishable. Even the royal chancery would occasionally address important towns as imperial towns, although they actually were not.44
Simultaneous with the growth of urban independence, many lords started to accumulate powers that traditionally had been powers of monarchical rule. They minted their own coins and put their own facsimile on the coins in emulation of the Byzantine practice. They passed laws and claimed final jurisdiction.45 But although these princes increasingly appropriated some of the royal prerogatives, they initially did not become small sovereign states, and the towns did not ally with these lords.
There are several reasons why towns opposed their lords and sought to obtain their goals by a unique alternative: the city-league. First, these lordships only started to establish themselves as territorial lordships in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.46 Towns, however, had started to develop in the twelfth century. Indeed, the Hanseatic League, as a federation of towns, already existed de facto in 1292. In other words, most of these lordships were feudal in nature when towns were expanding and sought to regulate their economic environment. The towns thus faced the problem of multiple overlordship and uncertainty. German towns opposed these lords for the very reasons that the French towns opposed their secular and ecclesiastical overlords. They remained feudal lords rather than sovereign authorities. The particularistic pattern of feudal lordships complicated long-distance commerce immensely. The grievances of merchants regarding the numerous tolls on the Rhine— which the English merchants who were accustomed to more centralized authority called the “German madness”—are a case in point.47 Towns that transacted business across these feudal units were faced with a variety of different legal codes, local tolls, differences in weights and measures, variation in coinage, and sometimes outright robbery, all to the detriment of the burghers’ business.48
Second, the towns had little affinity with the social ideals of lords and clergy. We have already seen at several junctures how clerical overlordship was considered particularly odious. With its prohibitions on usury, its denigration of monetary practices, and its overall low evaluation of mercantile activities, the church was an obstacle to the burghers’ practices. The differences between the belief systems of the bourgeois and those of feudalism and the church, which I discussed in Chapter 4, hold as true for Germany as they did for France. One of those differences revolved around the feudal legal system and the mercantile preference for a more standardized and rational legal environment. Consequently, the German emperor had tried to limit aristocratic prerogatives, in an attempt to attract Flemish merchants, by ordering that traders not be subject to the ordeal, the common procedure in debt cases.49
Third, many of the towns to the east were in fact founded by business groups from the older German towns.50 Although lords might nominally have been the charterers of the new towns, in fact the actual creation, investment, and risks were left up to the entrepreneurs from the westerly towns. Factual control over these new towns was thus from the beginning in the hands of the business entrepreneurs who had run the risks and provided the capital. “In any case— the most important new towns of the twelfth and also of the early thirteenth centuries were created in the main by enterprising burghers of the Old German towns; not until the thirteenth century were agricultural towns founded by local lords, which frequently were of no commercial importance.”51 One can even retrace the structure of the town council (ranging from twelve to twenty-four members) to the corporate arrangements that these entrepreneurs had made prior to establishing new towns. These towns had little incentive to share the benefits of their new trading centers with lords who had taken little monetary risk themselves.
Finally, it is important to remember that towns primarily desired full independence from the old feudal order. In France the towns allied with the king who was useful against the lords. The French king provided certitude in the tax environment, career opportunities, and a set of ideas with which the burghers could identify. Although the king was initially perhaps not the most powerful actor, he was more attractive than alternative providers of protection because he could offer these other benefits. In return, the towns proved to be an important source of revenue and personnel. The political cost of that arrangement was that the king kept the towns divided. The national assembly meant little. French towns sacrificed full independence because sovereign kingship provided them with many benefits. The German towns, by contrast, had no such incentive to sacrifice their liberties.
As trade around the North Sea and Baltic started to develop, merchants organized themselves in trading groups such as the Gotland association. Gotland was an island off the coast of Sweden where merchants would congregate to trade with the areas of the eastern Baltic. This community of traders, the universi mercatores, would sail together in convoy and seek joint representation in foreign countries. Sailing together in convoy provided for better defense against deprivations by pirates and lords. By acting together overseas, they found they could obtain better privileges. They elected an alderman and swore mutual aid. In many ways similar to a guild, the associations provided for burial should a merchant die overseas, they acted as information centers regarding alien business practices, and they provided a social meeting place for businessmen.52 From them originates the first (preserved) treaty of the Hansa with a foreign prince in 1189.53 Similar associations of traders were generally all called hanses, meaning a group of merchants acting together. There were thus hanses from Bruges, Cologne, Deventer, and other trading cities. Their towns of origin, however, were not formally involved. These were private associations.
As towns gained more independence from their lords, they developed their own political institutions. They formed associations similar to the Italian communes. The citizens swore oaths of mutual assistance and started to appropriate and purchase rights and liberties from their overlords. The burghers elected councils which had juridical power within the town. These councils also represented the burghers’ interests vis-à-vis other towns. Sometimes such councils decided to act together to pursue common interests and fight common foes. With the emergence of the independent town, we thus simultaneously see the first beginnings of city-leagues.
Burghers formed these leagues with the explicit purpose of defending towns against encroachment by the nobility. Militarily they promised each other mutual aid against the common enemy.54 They assessed troop contingents which each town had to provide. Economically they sought to reduce the tolls that lords had imposed. This was one of the objectives of the Swabian-Rhenisch League of 1385. They also sought to regulate weights, measures, and coinage.55 This was an important objective given that in the twelfth century coinage privileges resided not only in the royal mints but also in the hands of 106 ecclesiastical and 81 secular lords.56 Juridically the leagues defended the towns’ rights of self-governance.
There were a considerable number of such leagues.57 And they varied greatly in composition and objectives. In general, however, one can say that “the cities relied against princely encroachments on leagues for mutual defense.”58 The Saxon League, for example, was formed for the purpose of mutual aid against demands by secular and ecclesiastical lords. This league fluctuated in its membership but over the years included about eighteen towns. Interestingly, the towns also had a provision for mutual aid in case of internal disturbance.59 If a town’s patriciate were ousted by radical elements, members from other towns were obliged to aid the deposed council.60
The Swabian-Rhenisch League proved in 1385 that such leagues could muster considerable military might. This league consisted of about eighty-nine towns and could field an army of 10,000. It “held far more power than any prince.”61 Only because of a divergence in interests between towns and a military alliance of several lords was the league overcome in battle at Döffingen in 1388. Prior to that, the league had even successfully fought the emperor Charles IV62
Leagues gradually started to replace the personal associations of merchants. In effect these towns were run by the mercantile patriciate who now used the towns’ resources to obtain their goals. The Gotland association thus became the basis of the Hanseatic League. The Hansa in its heyday included almost two hundred towns. It opposed and deposed kings and monopolized trade in the Baltic and the North Sea.
The Nature of Trade
It is not exactly clear when the Gotland association changed into an association of towns rather than individual merchants. By 1298, however, merchants no longer operated as individual traders but were organized under the representation of their towns of origin. The merchant association was replaced by the league of towns on the Baltic and the North Sea. Merchants were forbidden to operate through private organizations.
Initially the Hansa, like the Gotland association, focused primarily on trade between the German and Dutch towns in the west with the towns on the Baltic.64 Gradually, with the expansion of urbanization farther eastward, the number of members increased. The Hanseatic merchandise included timber, metal, furs, wax, grain, and fish. Hanseatic trade was thus typified by trade in bulk goods with relatively low profit margins. Mediterranean trade, by contrast, consisted more of luxury goods.65 Because of the expansion of commerce, the regions around the North Sea and the Baltic proceeded to engage in further division of labor and specialized production.
The calculation of profit margins is a highly complex historical enterprise. But it is worth discussing in some detail because it demonstrates the high transaction and information costs that these entrepreneurs had to overcome to conduct commerce. Analysis of business records suggests a variety of numbers. For example, a study of the records of the Vechinchusen family (which formed a variety of business ventures with others in the early fifteenth century) suggests profit margins of roughly 7 to 18 percent.66 But other historians suggest more conservative estimates or much higher ones. There are a variety of reasons for this. First, business was highly uncertain. Although profits were possible, we also know that the Vechinchusen group at one point incurred a loss of 55 percent. Moreover, trade routes yielded considerable variation. We now know that on average the west-east trade yielded almost twice the profit margin of the east-west trade. There was also great variation in goods. Cloth or herring could sometimes yield high profits, but that might depend on extraordinary market conditions. Calculation of profit was thus a complex matter for the Hanseatic businessman. Prior to established accounting and recording methods, merchants used a variety of techniques to keep track of their expenses and income.67 Everything was further complicated by the lack of established exchange procedures, the great variation in coinage, and the lack of standardized measures. For example, if we study the records of Johann Töhner (1345), the profit margin changes dramatically with the exchange rate used. Merchants noted everything in local currency. But was the Rostock mark equal to eleven or twelve great pounds?68 Measures, furthermore, tended to decrease in size the farther one got from the point of origin. The el might be about 57.5 cm in Lübeck but only 53.7 cm in Riga.69 (This was one way to get around clerical disapproval of prices that were not just. The prices remained the same between point of purchase and point of sale, but the quantity supplied varied.) In short, merchants engaging in commerce had to be as informed as possible of particular conditions, exchange rates, and measurements. One of the tasks of the league was thus to facilitate the exchange of information between merchants.
As stated, the Hansa resembled the medieval guild.70 Like the guild, it sought to restrict entry of competition and to control the market. And like the guild, the Hansa tried to aid its members in the pursuit of their common economic interests by lowering information costs. One of the earliest surviving documents of such activity is the public register. The public Book of Debts in Hamburg, for example, recorded debts and contracts and attached a municipal guarantee of their authenticity.71
The Hansa further sought to gain privileges for its members in their trade overseas, while denying privileges to nonmembers. It thus received privileges from the English Crown to trade in London. The league initially gained exemptions from customs duties, and later it also received legal protection and exemption from all taxes. Members obtained similar privileges in Flanders.72 But conversely, the Hansa forbade nonmembers to enter Hanseatic ports.73 The objective of such policies was the pursuit of monopoly rent for its merchants. During its heyday, the Hansa monopolized all Baltic trade and much of the trade in the North Sea. Its ships sailed even to Portugal and Spain and on rare occasions as far as Latin America.74 Its main line of operation, however, was the east-west commerce of the northern seas.
Nevertheless, one should not see the Hansa as merely an economic association. Like states, it waged wars, and on occasion it could make or break kings. It could participate in international treaties and send emissaries. Some scholars have viewed it as a major unifying force in northern Europe.75
Many Hansa towns, like hundreds of other towns and villages, were established during the great eastern expansion of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Lübeck was founded by the Count of Holstein in 1143. It was then taken over by Henry the Lion, the duke of Saxony, in 1159. Lübeck in turn formed settlements farther east.76 The knights of the Teutonic Order also founded hundreds of Prussian towns and villages. And yet farther east, the Brethren of the Sword colonized and christianized Lithuania and Estonia.77
What held for many German towns also held true for the Livonian, Prussian, and Wendish towns. Many sought increasing independence from their lords. The strife between lords and the king allowed the towns to gain independence by formal and informal means. Lübeck became an imperial city in 1226.78 This meant it had no territorial overlord and owed allegiance only to the emperor.79 Decreasing power of centralized monarchy implied increasing autonomy for such towns. Most towns remained technically subject to lords but gradually purchased, or were granted, considerable rights of self-determination.
As said, at first the merchants of the Baltic towns regulated their own interactions. They formed organizations such as the Gotland Association to protect their interests and to negotiate with other states. The merchants of the Baltic thus competed with those of Cologne who had already established a bridgehead in London by 1130. Later, merchants of Hamburg and Lübeck also acquired privileges there, similar to those of the Rhenisch traders, and from 1266 they were known by the word hansa to denote a group of merchants.80 By 1281 the Rhenisch and Baltic towns reconciled and formed a single hansa.
Gradually, however, the town councils took these tasks over from the merchants, as the towns became factually independent from lords and kings. Some towns on the Baltic thus formed leagues just as other towns had done earlier. The Wend towns—Lübeck, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, and Wismar— formed a league in 1284. In 1298 representation of merchant interests through the Gotland association was formally forbidden.81 It would still take half a century, however, before the first general council of the Hansa towns met in 1356. That year is usually taken to be the founding of the Hanseatic League. The various hansa (merchant associations) were thus over time replaced by the Hansa, denoting the association of towns.
Through Hanseatic institutions, members sought to regulate the interactions between towns within the league, and between the league and other actors. Internally, member towns exercised their own jurisdiction. That is, in matters pertaining only to that town, the town council had final jurisdiction.
The factual independence of towns, however, varied.82 On one end of the spectrum we find towns such as Lübeck or Hamburg which, although surrounded by the lands of territorial lords, were in fact independent. In general the Hanseatic towns opposed any feudal or monarchical encroachment. Other Hanseatic towns had considerable independence but were allied with feudal lords. This was specifically the case in the alliance of Hansa and the knights of the Teutonic Order. The Prussian towns were directly under the order’s territorial control but were granted considerable latitude. In return, before 1406, one-third, and later two-thirds, of customs duties levied in Prussia (the Pfundzoll) went to the order.83
Finally there were towns where the Hansa had an establishment, or even Kontor, as in London, which was subject to direct territorial overlordship.84 Thus London was not a Hanseatic town. The Hansa, however, had a Kontor there and a staple market, the Stahlhof. Although the Hansa had jurisdiction within the area of the Kontor, this was not true for London as a whole.85
In short, some towns that were Hanseatic members were also subject to territorial overlords. They did not escape the system of crosscutting jurisdictions which had permeated the feudal era. Other towns owed only nominal allegiance to territorial overlords. These towns established their own juridical and political structures and directed the Hansa’s military and economic policy vis-à-vis non-Hansa political organizations.
The most important organ of the Hansa was the Hansetag, or Diet. This was the meeting where all towns were supposed to appear or send delegates to represent them. Nonappearance could result in exclusion from the league.86 The Hansetag met with varying frequency. At most it met once a year, but usually it met once every several years. The towns that called the Hansetag together were usually Lübeck and the other Wend towns. The Hansa did not have its own officials. Instead town councils, such as Lübecks, operated on its behalf.87 The leading towns were also responsible for keeping records of such meetings and maintaining them for future reference. On some occasions the current Hansetag specified the date of the next meeting.
The Hansetage made decisions that affected all towns. The towns voted on membership, a wide range of economic matters, external representation of the Hansa, and military issues.88 Each town had one vote. To enforce its decisions, the Hansa could levy particular fees on individual towns. Alternatively it could exclude towns from specific benefits. The most severe instrument was expulsion from the league. Even Lübeck, the dominant town of the Hansa, was at one point threatened with such exclusion.
Representation on the Hansetag was an indicator of one’s position in the Hansa. The most important towns were virtually always present. Lesser towns or towns that were only marginally involved with Hanseatic business let themselves be represented by other towns. Consequently it is not fully clear who could be considered a member of the Hanseatic League. At its core one might count seventy-seven members. These were members who usually partook in general decision making. Another one hundred towns might have considered themselves associates.89 Depending on the frequency of participation in Hansa affairs, the Hansa might have included as many as two hundred towns.
The problem for the Hansa was, of course, to get all members to act collectively on affairs that might not pertain to all of them. One solution was to allow decision making on a regional level. Thus many decisions were made by the regional Tage where groups of towns came together. These were towns that shared geographic proximity and often similar interests. As with the membership issue, there is some disagreement regarding the relevant regional groups.90 These regional groups were then aggregated for representation in the general Hansetag. There were three such groups, called Drietel: the Wendish and Saxon towns formed the first, the Westphalian and Prussian towns the second, and the Livonian towns and Visby the third. Each of these groups had its own treasury and elected aldermen.91 At other times regional organizations were structured around quarters, that is, four groups of regional associations. In such an arrangement, the Cologne quarter, for example, consisted of the Dutch towns of the Southern Sea (Zuiderzee) and the Prussian and Westphalian towns.92
Decision making within the Hansa was further decentralized by granting considerable latitude to the Kontors. These were the main trading offices of the Hansa. There were four: Novgorod, Bergen, Bruges, and London. The Kontors were run by officials who were elected by the merchants. These officials had juridical and taxing power and could represent the Hansa overseas.93 The governing body of each Kontor was subdivided in thirds or fourths. Each of these subdivisions represented a regional town group.94
Another form of hierarchical control, aside from supervision by the main Hansetag, was the superior placement of some towns over others. Thus, smaller Hanseatic towns, or towns where the Hansa at least had a settlement, were subject to control by a larger sister city.95
The Hanseatics were also aware that close ties between individuals diminished freeriding and enabled towns to coordinate their activities more satisfactorily.96 There were stringent restrictions on marriage with non-Hanseatics, both for inhabitants of the Hanse towns as well as for their merchants abroad. Non-Hanseatics could not acquire citizenship in Hanse towns. The penalty of entering into a business venture with a non-Hanseatic was the loss of two fingers.97 As a consequence of the closed nature of business and the use of family ties, one finds a considerable number of similar last names among the various town oligarchies throughout the Hansa.
Finally, the drawbacks of the confederative structure were mitigated by the predominance of a few towns. Lübeck, the other Wend towns, and later Hamburg and Bremen were so preponderant that they could organize many of the other towns almost in an ad hoc manner. The regional groups thus usually had several predominant towns to keep the others in line.98 Lübeck, for example, had a critical geographical position because it controlled the land passage between it and Hamburg. It further had about one-third of the total shipping capacity of the Hansa at its disposal. Consequently, when the Hansa met in 1418 to re-evaluate its institutional machinery, Lübeck became its formal leader.99
The Hanseatic League was undoubtedly the most powerful of the city-leagues and is an interesting case because it suggests an alternative logic of organization to that of the sovereign state. It was an identifiable political unit which not only connected east-west maritime trade but also made inroads into the European continent on the north-south dimension.100 It is wrong to see the Hansa as merely a loosely bound interest group. As Wernicke and Dollinger have pointed out, the weight of contemporary evidence belies that position. Wernicke and Dollinger argue that the Hansa had the ability to send emissaries, sign treaties, collect revenue, and enforce Hansetag decisions.101 Lensen and Heitling concede that although the Hansa was a confederation that did not have a founding constitution, it could raise an army, conduct foreign policy, decree laws, engage in social regulation, and collect revenue.102
The political institutions I discussed above demonstrate that the Hansa had a variety of fora where decision making was formulated. Although it is true that the Hansetag met on an irregular basis, this practice was not so different from early state administration. There, too, the ad hoc character of government was more rule than exception.
It will also not do to argue that the Hansa had no well-established sources of revenue and hence cannot be construed as a true political organization. Although the Hansa did not have an established system of direct taxes, it did have a variety of other means to obtain revenue. It levied general fees for specific purposes, such as the arming of the fleet in 1407.103 It also obtained revenue through Kontor fees. Another important source of income were the tolls levied on the ships entering and leaving harbors. These were the Pfundzolls, and they were particularly levied in times of war.104 In 1557 the Hansa established yearly dues and individual town assessments. Part of the revenues could be earmarked for specific Hansa expenses. When a particular town had incurred expenses, for example, by fitting out a certain number of ships for war, then the Hansa permitted it to levy specific tolls to recap its outlay. It developed a constitution with a precise enumeration of duties, and there was even discussion of creating institutional arrangements similar to those of the Dutch states.105
In an external sense, that is, vis-à-vis other actors, the Hansa behaved in many ways like any state. It had military capability and fought wars with Sweden (1567-1570, 1630s), England (1470-1474), Holland (1438-1441), and Denmark (1370, 1426-1435, 1616). After the Peace of Stralsund (1370), in which it defeated Denmark, it controlled the royal succession and took control over the castles that controlled the Sound.106 It also equipped warships to deal with pirates, of which the Vitalienbruder were the most prominent and required concerted naval effort to control. Towns were individually assessed to provide troops and so-called peace-ships. Each ship had to have a certain number of lances, bowmen, and crew.107
The most used method of coercion, however, was the economic blockade. Since the Hansa had a virtual monopoly on many bulk goods, they could bring recalcitrant towns, or lords who refused to grant concessions, to their knees. The various blockades of Bruges, directed against the Count of Flanders, and those of Norway directed against the king, were but two successes.108 Such blockades could take the form of forbidding provision of essential supplies. Bergen, for example, was cut off from food supplies until it yielded. But blockade also meant the loss of a consumption market. A threat not to buy from that location was every bit as effective as one curtailing supply.
Like independent monarchs, the Hansa signed treaties which bound its members.109 Heads of the Kontors could be empowered to negotiate on the part of the Hansa, or the various towns concerned could jointly send an embassy. Later special delegates, the syndics (syndikus), were given authority to represent the league. The syndikus made its appearance particularly in the later part of the sixteenth century.
The towns of the Hansa also demonstrated many cultural similarities, such as language. Low German was the language understood and spoken in towns from Holland to Novgorod.110 One might even argue that the Hansa evinced more homogeneity than states such as France which only managed to overcome some language barriers by the nineteenth century. This, in short, strengthens the argument that there is no a priori reason why the Hansa should not be perceived as a viable way of organizing economic and political activity in the absence of a central authority.
It is true that the individual towns maintained considerable autonomy and pursued their own specific interests. For example, some of the more important towns acquired considerable territories. This was partially due to deliberate town policy. They strove to acquire territory with strategic value to control incursions by lords and to gain cheap supplies. This was also partially due to investment by affluent merchants in the surrounding countryside. Thus Lübeck had about 240 villages and Hamburg almost 100 under their control.111
It is also true that the members of the Hansa exercised autonomous jurisdiction within their own cities. As a result there were a variety of legal codes throughout the league. Merchants, however, tried to deal with this legal variation by accepting merchant law side by side with urban law. The law between merchants was administered by the commercial courts of the towns. Interurban legal questions were dealt with by the Hansa. Many towns also adopted the laws of their mother towns, although this was not done in a very systematic way.112 Wernicke argues that through reciprocity between towns, bilateral treaties, and intervention by the Hansa, “the Hansa towns created a relatively coherent legal system.”113
It would therefore be incorrect to assume that the individual town was the actual political unit with which we should be concerned.114 This was not the development of territorial city-states as in Italy. The town itself was not the final authority in many affairs. Where inter-Hanseatic problems arose, the relevant forum was the regional Tag. Larger issues were brought before the general Hansetag. In short, the town’s jurisdiction was independent as far as its demarcation from territorial lords was concerned. When issues pertaining to other Hansa towns were at stake, the league had final say. A simple majority sufficed to make decisions in the Hansetag even for those not present.
Medieval towns favored different principles of rule. The walls of the towns not only served defensive purposes but physically demarcated the towns from different orders. The towns were, in Postan’s words, islands of urban law in a feudal sea.115 They introduced new concepts such as freedom for their citizens, equality before the law, the right to make law, and new regulations on property and investment. Most importantly, they introduced a concept of territorial law rather than personal law. “The development of autonomy occurred simultaneously with the transition from the personal to the territorial principle in law. No longer were old relationships of a personal nature to decide the legal standing of the individual, but the judicial area of the place he was living in.”116
But townsfolk, of course, did not remain behind their walls. Trade between the towns required them to regulate their interactions. Germany, however, lacked political entrepreneurs such as the French kings who established the beginnings of sovereign rule against rival principles of order. Against the particularistic bonds of feudalism and the universalist claims of church and empire, the French monarchs claimed their authority to be territorial, confined by recognized borders, and supreme to any authority within those borders. They represented their subjects externally and established internal hierarchy.
In Germany the reverse took place. The kings perceived their interests to lie with a universalist order, and more specifically with the control of Italy and the pope. They attempted to follow through on their imperial claims by conceding control over the towns to the feudal lords. No alliance of burghers and king materialized, and in its absence the possibility of a sovereign state evaporated.
Towns responded by forming city-leagues, which could represent the towns, organize them for war, and bring some regularity to trade. The Hanseatic League performed just such functions. Preferably, the league would extend political control over its entire sphere of economic interaction. In a sense its logic resembled that of an empire; “imperial expansion tends to incorporate all significant economic needs within the domain itself.”117 It lacked a clear hierarchical authority and formal territorial borders. It attempted to construct political institutions to organize its long-distance commerce, wherever that went. Ultimately, however, that system of rule was destined to come into conflict with the logic of a state system.