Hanse Presentation: Group Lubeck

          The Hanse has one distinct important historical marker: the salt road. The members (countries) that were apart of the Hanseatic League led a different life from that of the citizens under noble sovereignty. They possessed their own parliament with laws such as the "Law of Lubeck" that protected the league, merchants, and citizens. These laws were followed even though these countries were not one single uniform government. Many of these nations also lacked a government other than that of the league. The participating cities took precautions to protect the merchants by building lighthouses for the seas, trained pilots, and made sure that merchants always traveled in pairs for better protection from pirates, robbers, and bandits. The most famous trade route was the "Salt Road" which went from Lubeck to Hamburg. There were several others though as the league covered 170 different cities, and countries. A major part of the trades were done over seas, and because of this they had to build efficient ships that could withstand the threat of pirates, and transport lots of goods at a time. These ships, Baltic Cog, had flat bottoms which made it possible for them to sail in shallow waters, and center mounted rudders (which was an advanced technology), had a fitted removable keel which allowed for repairs to be made easier, it could also hold lots of cargo (50-200 lasts) - this was more than the vikings ships could hold which ranged from about 20 lasts. Each city, under Hanse laws, had their own aid, protection, and army. The merchants never signed or made contracts, therefore they only went off of verbal agreements, they kept to their word earning terms like "truth" and "trust". The fall of the hHanseatic League began in 1361, but the king of Denmark. He had decided to control the areas he had once given the Hanse cities privileges to fish in. The Hanse became upset headed to the Scania coastline. The Hanse fleet was caught by the Danish fleet at sea and were forced to surrender. The Hanse had to give the revenue from the fishers to the king. The king eventually ran out of support, and had no other way but to sign a treaty that gave the Hanseatic League merchants full rights.


Contributors:

Katherine Bingen, Jeff Foster, Slade Simpson, Brandi Vistad, Chanae Peterson, Brian Madsen, and Parker Nicastri.