The Hanseatic League

A treaty between Lübeck and Hamburg for the protection of the roads begins a league that dozens of towns from Bruges to Novgorod will join in time. The Hansa has no king and no standing army: decisions are taken at assemblies, and its strength lies in common rules, in its warehouse-counting houses abroad, and in the power to declare a trade boycott against a rival. Grain, timber, wax, furs, salt and dried fish move by sea, the merchants sailing capacious cogs. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the league weakens under the pressure of strengthening states and the new ocean routes.