The Hanseatic League. The first trade and economic union in the history of Europe

In modern Germany there is a special sign of historical difference, evidence that the seven cities of this state are the keepers of traditions of a long-term, voluntary and mutually beneficial coalition. This sign is the Latin letter H. It means that the cities in which the car plates begin with this letter were part of the Hanseatic League. The letters HB on car plates should be read as Hansestadt Bremen - "Hanseatic city of Bremen", HL - "Hanseatic city of Lübeck". The letter H is also present on the numbers of car cities Hamburg, Greifswald, Stralsund, Rostock and Wismar, playing a key role in the medieval Hansa.

The Hansa is a commonwealth in which free German cities united in the XIII-XVII centuries to protect merchants and trade from the power of feudal lords, as well as to jointly confront pirates. The union included cities in which burghers lived - free citizens, unlike the subjects of kings and feudal lords, they were subject to the norms of "urban law" (Luebeck, Magdeburg). In the Hanseatic League, around 200 cities, including Berlin and Dorpat (Tartu), Danzig (Gdansk) and Cologne, Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad) and Riga, were included in various periods of their existence. For the development of rules and laws binding on all merchants in Lübeck, which became the main center of maritime trade in the North and Baltic Sea basin , the congress of the Union members was regularly convened. In a number of European cities that are not members of the Hansa, there were "offices" - branches and representative offices of the Hansa, protected by privileges from encroachments of local princes and municipalities. The largest "offices" were in London, Bruges, Bergen and Novgorod. As a rule, the "German yards" had their own piers and warehouses, and were also exempted from most of the fees and taxes.

According to some modern historians, the event that initiated the establishment of the trade union should be considered the foundation of Lübeck in 1159. The Hanseatic League was a rare example of unification in which all parties sought a common goal - the development of trade relations. Thanks to German merchants to the south and west of the continent, goods from Eastern and Northern Europe came in: battle wood, furs, honey, wax, rye. Koggi (sailboats), loaded with salt, cloth and wine, went in the opposite direction. In the 15th century, the Hanseatic League began to be defeated after being defeated by national states that were reviving in the zone of its economic interests: England, the Netherlands, the Moscow state, Denmark and Poland. The rulers of the countries that were gaining strength did not want to lose revenues from exports, so they eliminated the Hanseatic trading yards. Nevertheless, the Hanse existed until the 17th century. The most persistent participants in the virtually disintegrated coalition were Lübeck - a symbol of the power of German merchants, Bremen and Hamburg. These cities in 1630 concluded a tripartite union. The Hanseatic Trade Union disintegrated after 1669. It was then that the last congress took place in Lübeck, which became the final event in the history of the Hanseatic League.

The analysis of the experience of the first in the history of Europe trade and economic association, its achievements and miscalculations is interesting both for historians and for modern entrepreneurs and politicians whose minds are engaged in solving problems of pan-European integration.