From Works in Progress, March 13, 2025:
The Hanseatic League united merchants to bargain with kings, blockade cities, and even win wars. But when technology changed, defections began and the coalition fell apart.
Today, we typically think of coalitions in the context of modern electoral politics. So it might be surprising that one of the greatest case studies in the history of coalitions is a community of medieval German merchants known as the Hansa.
Starting as individual traveling traders, the Hansa built up coalitions for collective bargaining, collective action, and collective security. Through this process, they formed Northern Europe’s first ever long-distance trade network.
Without corporate structures, they built supply chains that distributed goods between Northern Europe’s major ports, with capillaries that spread into each city’s hinterlands. Without formal territory, their laws governed trading hubs spanning thousands of miles, from London all the way to Western Russia. And, despite being composed of hundreds of member cities, the Hanseatic League had no head of state. Yet the Hansa still managed to sign treaty after treaty with foreign rulers and, a few times, even fought (and won!) wars.
The Hanseatic system lasted for nearly 500 years. Like any governing system, it struggled with division, factionalism, and defection – and eventually, it would succumb to these forces. While Hansa alliances proved impermanent, their impact was enduring. They made Northern Europe’s trade routes secure and grew European state capacity to support commerce.
The birth of long distance trade
Europe during the Dark Ages was in a state of dire subsistence. Europe’s population declined for several centuries after the collapse of the Roman system due to low crop yields. Historians and archaeologists have not yet reached a consensus on the causes, but there are a few suspects. The collapse of Roman state capacity made it harder to collect taxes, which meant that irrigation infrastructure like aqueducts fell into disrepair, and the yields of the surrounding farms fell with them. A volcanic eruption in 536, likely in Iceland or North America, triggered the Late Antique Ice Age, which chilled the climate of the northern hemisphere for approximately 200 years.
While the causal story is hazy, its impact on European life is painfully clear. The Roman system of smallholder farms collapsed, which dragged previously independent farmers into serfdom on large manors controlled by landowners. Without significant agricultural surpluses, Europe could no longer support a large population of craftsmen and artisans. As the artisan class vanished, so too did urban markets, and even money. Copper and silver coins, which Romans had used in day-to-day transactions, fully disappeared. Some kingdoms still minted gold coins, but these were primarily stores of value to pay administrative fees and rarely used in trade. Europe’s population by the 600s, reduced to subsistence, serfdom, and barter, was just 14–18 million people. But shortly after hitting rock bottom, its fortunes began to reverse.
Starting in the 800s, the flow of goods and people – especially in Northern Europe – began to pick up tempo. Temperatures recovered during what is known as the Medieval Warm Period (900–1300) which improved agricultural yields by making more regions arable for longer stretches of the year. Simultaneously, medieval farmers advanced their agricultural processes in a period that archaeologist Helena Hamerow describes as a Medieval Agricultural Revolution. Northern European farmers adopted the moldboard plow, an oxen-driven heavy plow that significantly increased the amount of highly arable land available for farming by making it possible to plow nutrient-rich but badly drained river silt....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
First up, a bit of backstory, November 24, 2017:
A Tale of Two Cities: Hamburg and Lübeck—Lessons in Trade, Geography and Urbanism