Amy Rivers, age 17, of Barre, Vt., for her question:
WHAT WAS THE HANSA LEAGUE?
Hansa League is the name of a trade association of cities and leading merchants that was extremely powerful for almost 400 years in Europe from about 1260 until about 1630. The organization is also sometimes called the Hanseatic League.
The member cities were all in Northern Europe and the organizers of the Hansa League wanted to protect the trade of their members from pirates and robbers, keep the prices of their goods up, defend the rights that they had won over the years and also to exclude competitors.
A start came when the city of Lubeck made a treaty with Hamburg and got control of trade in both the Baltic and North seas. Slowly other cities from northern Germany, the Low Countries, and the Baltic region joined the pact and by the end of the 14th Century the Hansa League members were masters of commerce in the entire territory.
Cities in the group had also won independence from their feudal overlords. About 90 free cities came to join the league, including all of the important towns between Lithuania and Belgium.
Cities in the league were organized into four groups, with their capitals located at Lubeck, Cologne, Brunswick and Danzig. Each of the four units had its own ships and soldiers and each was ready to fight to keep all privileges granted by foreign rulers and to demand more privileges.
However, the Hansa League refused to giant to foreign traders the same privileges in the Hansa towns that they themselves enjoyed in the foreign towns. This led them into continual disputes with Russia, England and Scandinavia.
It wasn't long until the English Parliament was regularly withdrawing privileges from the Hansa League. And soon the English forces started capturing Hansa vessels. Finally, in 1598, the English banished all Hansa merchants from London. Hansa quickly gave the English traders equal rights.
After the 15th Century the Hansa League quickly became less important than it had been. The discovery of America and a readjustment of European trade were the main factors for making the organization less important. Many member cities started breaking away.
By 1630, only Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg remained as members, and they continued for another 39 years. They then separated but kept the traditional designation of Hansa towns until the revocation of these privileges in 1934 by Adolf Hitler's Nazi government.
Historians agree that the activities of the Hansa towns during the run of the league definitely had many benefits for Northern Europe. As a result of the cooperative activities, many new centers of trade were established. Also, a uniform system of weights and measures came into being The league's successful run also aided agriculture and industry by the construction of canals and roads through the entire region.