Episode 1 - Gotlandfahrer
A history of the Hanseatic League normally begins with the story of the foundation, destruction and refoundation of Lübeck. This series will not do that. For once, we already had a whole episode of the Foundation of Lübeck. If you want to check it out, look for episode 105 of the History of the Germans Podcast.
But more importantly, the foundation of Lübeck, is still just the foundation of a city. Do not get me wrong, Lübeck is a stunning city and its Rathaus and the magnificent churches, including the astounding Marienkirche tell us about the wealth and the civic pride of its inhabitants. But then, Burges is an even more astounding merchant city, as are Antwerp, Amsterdam, not to speak of Florence or Venice.
What I mean is that if Lübeck, Bremen, Hamburg, Gdansk and Riga had just been successful trading cities in the Middle Ages, the cities of Bergen, Novgorod and King’s Lynn would not still remind everyone of their old business relationship.
It isn’t the size and beauty of its cities that that makes the Hanseatic League special, it is the way they co-operated. And that does not begin with the foundation of Lübeck, but with something that happened shortly after the foundation of Lübeck, in 1161.
Key Takeaways:
- The Hanseatic League's significance lies in cooperation among cities, not merely their beauty.
- The concept of mutual trust was crucial for the success of the Hanseatic merchants.
- Gotlanders were vital to the trade network, providing safe passage and local knowledge.
- The establishment of trading yards in Novgorod fostered a unique German-Scandinavian partnership.
- Merchants in the 12th century were part trader, part adventurer, navigating dangerous waters.
- The Treaty of Adlenburg marked a pivotal moment in fostering trade relations.
Chapters:
- 00:07 - Introduction to the Hanseatic League
- 00:16 - The Significance of King's Lynn
- 00:26 - The Hanseatic Heritage in Germany and Beyond
- 04:37 - The Nature of 12th Century Merchants
- 09:50 - The Treaty of Adlenburg and Merchant Safety
- 08:12 - The Role of Gotland in Trade
- 25:42 - The Establishment of the Kontor in Novgorod
- 34:21 - Mutual Trust and Economic Success
- 35:00 - Conclusion and Upcoming Topics
The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by https://www.windrep.org/Michel_Rondeau (Michel Rondeau)
As always:
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode one of the Hanseatic League podcast, which is also episode 108 of the History of the Germans podcast.
Speaker A:If I put the word Hanseatic into Google search, I get as result number four, Hanseatic King's Lynn.
Speaker A:Visit West Norfolk.
Speaker A:Now I can say with absolute confidence that it is not a single German individual, place or organization that a small town in England would chose not just to associate with, but to incorporate itself into its history, save for the Hanseatic League.
Speaker A:The English may play Zadok the priest at the coronation, but that is because both Handel and Prince Charles are considered English with German roots.
Speaker A:King's Lynn calling itself a Hanseatic city is a different thing, and it happens in many other places.
Speaker A:Bergen is proud of his Hanseatic past as his Visby and Gotland and the Dutch former members of the League.
Speaker A:The love of all things Hanseatic goes so far that it even overrides the German's fascination with all things car related.
Speaker A:As you may know, the German system of number plates is strictly hierarchical, as so many other things.
Speaker A:The first one, two or three letters indicate the place where the vehicle is registered at the time.
Speaker A:The more letters, the smaller the town or county of registration.
Speaker A:So, for instance, WES stands for Wesel and STD for Stade, two of the smaller members of the Hanseatic League.
Speaker A:The two letter cities are bigger and plentiful.
Speaker A:LG for instance, stands for Luneburg and BS for Brunswick.
Speaker A:And only the largest cities get to proudly display just one single letter.
Speaker A:For instance, K for Cologne, B for Berlin and F for Frankfurt.
Speaker A:But what about Germany's second largest city, the free and Hanseatic city of Hamburg?
Speaker A:Does your honorable Hamburg merchant drive round in a car ostentatiously displaying a proud single H?
Speaker A:Well, no, of course he doesn't.
Speaker A:His number plate is HH standing for Hanse Hamburg, leaving the single H to the Inland Hanoverians and other Hanseatic cities like Bremen, Lubeck, Wismar, Rostock Greifswald and Stralsund also proudly carry an additional H on their number plate, a subtle reminder to everyone that their hometowns are different and, dare one say, superior to other cities.
Speaker A: eesmax and ceased to exist in: Speaker A:That is what we will try to figure out in this podcast series.
Speaker A:But before we start, let me tell you that all podcasts within the History of the Germans podcast network are advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons, and you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges on the price of a latte per month.
Speaker A:All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com youm find all the links in the show notes and thanks a lot to Corrie M, Daniel R, Christopher W.
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Speaker A:Who have already signed up.
Speaker A:A history of the Hanseatic League normally begins with the story of the foundation, the destruction and Refoundation of Lubeck.
Speaker A:This series will not do that.
Speaker A:There's already a whole episode on the foundation of Lubeck in the main podcast the History of the Germans.
Speaker A:If you want to listen to it, go to episode 105 over there.
Speaker A:Despite its rather tumultuous origin story, the foundation of Lubeck is still just the foundation of a city.
Speaker A:Do not get me wrong, Lubeck is a stunning city, and its rathaus and the magnificent churches, including the astounding Marienkirche, tell us about the wealth and civic pride of its inhabitants.
Speaker A:But then, Bruges is an even more astounding merchant city, as are Antwerp, Amsterdam, and, not to speak of Florence and Venice.
Speaker A:What I mean is that if Lubeck, Bremen, Hamburg, Gdansk and Riga had just been successful trading cities in the Middle Ages, the city of King's Lynn would not remind everyone of their old business relationship.
Speaker A:It isn't the size and beauty of its cities that makes the Hanseatic League, it is the way they cooperate it.
Speaker A: appened shortly afterwards in: Speaker A:Being a merchant in the 12th century isn't a job for sissies.
Speaker A:These traders aren't spindly, bespectacled men passing their days making long entries in their accounting books or piling up gold coins in the counting house.
Speaker A:Merchants in the 12th century are part traders, part adventurers and part pirate.
Speaker A:And at that stage most of them cannot ride but are a dab hand with a sword.
Speaker A:Their life is incredibly dangerous if the risks associated with sailing the Baltic seas at the outer edge of the seasons isn't going to get you.
Speaker A:The locals may take a sudden dislike to you, robbers may steal your wares, or some greedy local ruler may decide it's time to levy some new tolls or some tows.
Speaker A:When the Emperor Frederick II wanted to curb violence, he banned everyone, including his nobles, from going about town with swords and knives.
Speaker A:The only civilians exempt from the rule were the merchants, because they really need the weapons and these guys were hard as nails.
Speaker A:Only a bunch of merchants can come up with the concept of the carroccio, the ox driven war cart the Italian communes used as a rallying point during their battles.
Speaker A:These machines were far too heavy and too ungainly to flee the battlefield, forcing the merchant citizen warriors to fight until the very bitter end, whilst their knightly opponents ran away as soon as the bannermen had fallen or turned tail.
Speaker A:Travelling within one of the more settled political entities, like say, Sicily or the Contado of one of the major Italian city republics, was already a challenge.
Speaker A: al ducal power disappeared in: Speaker A:Now going across the Baltic, where the largest power, Denmark, was caught up in an almost incessant civil war, where large parts of the coast were still occupied by pagans with little sympathy for western merchants, and where your target is Novgorod, whose ruler is only loosely connected to the western monarchs, that is way up the maybe not such a good idea scale.
Speaker A:Plus the distinction between honorable merchant and freebooter was rather fluid.
Speaker A:Imagine you're a merchant and you have set out to buy cloth and currants at the great fairs of champagne, but the winds were distinctly not in your favor, or something broke on your boat.
Speaker A:I can tell you stories about that.
Speaker A:So you get there late, or you know that you will be late, all the good stuff will be gone.
Speaker A:And if you come home empty handed, you face ruin.
Speaker A:So what do you do?
Speaker A:You place your ship at the mouth of the Rhine or the Schelde rivers and wait for the next colleague who comes up, board his ship, take his goods and be off.
Speaker A:The only other alternative is, well, you press onto somewhere.
Speaker A:Nobody from your corner of the world had yet gone, and if very lucky, you come back yourself and you bring back some fabulous new products everyone will pay top dollar for.
Speaker A:There were some people who were up to this task, and that were the inhabitants of Gotland.
Speaker A:Gotland is that large Swedish island halfway up the Baltic, and according to many, the original home of the Goths.
Speaker A:Gotlanders were a tough people and had been trading across the Baltic since time immemorial.
Speaker A:By the 12th century, their ships had gained almost a monopoly on the transport of wax and furs from the far north of the Baltic to Schleswig and from there to Western Europe.
Speaker A:The Gotlanders were merchants in the style of the Vikings, or more precisely, there were Vikings.
Speaker A:That meant they spent Most of the year, as farmers, with the seafaring activity more of a side hustle, they lived on their farms and during the season took their Viking ships, called knaris, up to the great trading city of Novgorod, picked up what they needed, and then returned either home or somewhere where there was a market for it.
Speaker A:Now, where a merchant would go with his wares depended on two things.
Speaker A:Firstly, whether there would be willing buyers prepared to compensate you for your troubles, and secondly, whether you are likely to make it out of there with all your cash and all your limbs.
Speaker A:Henry, the line Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, who had just wrestled the side of Lubeck from the Counts of Holstein, seems to have understood this very well.
Speaker A:If he wanted this new settlement to grow and produce lots of fine gold for him, he needed for the Goatlanders to come there, and for that he needed to create both a source of demand for goods and a guarantee for the safety of these foreign traders.
Speaker A:The former was created relatively easily.
Speaker A:South of Lubeck lay his great Duchy of Saxony and beyond it, the rest of the Holy Roman Empire.
Speaker A:All that he needed was people willing to use this new route.
Speaker A:But as he was the Duke of Saxony, his power stretched all the way to Westphalia and the two great trading cities there, Zoest and Dortmund.
Speaker A:He invited merchants from there to trade in Lubeck, and if they wanted to settle there, now he needs the second leg to that trade, the Gotlanders.
Speaker A:And it seems things there had gone badly pear shaped.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:We reestablished the ancient unity in concord and also how we resolved the many evils, namely the hatred, enmity and murders that arose from the discord of the two peoples, with the helping grace of the Holy Spirit in an eternal stability of peace, and afterwards kindly accepted the Goatlanders into the grace of our reconciliation.
Speaker A:Clearly things had gone very badly.
Speaker A:Hatred, enmity and murder are not the kind of things you want to experience in a trading city.
Speaker A:And so Henry goes and personally guarantees their safety.
Speaker A:He writes, the Goatlanders should have a firm peace throughout the entire dominion of our power, so that they should obtain full justice and amendment from our judicial power, whatever the loss of their property or injuries suffered within the borders of our rule, with the added benefit that they should be exempt from tolls in all our cities.
Speaker A:He then lists all the various ways he is going to punish any of his subjects should they harm any of the Goatlanders.
Speaker A:So far, so good.
Speaker A:He's now solved the problem of getting the Goatlanders to come.
Speaker A:But that does not yet get him what he really, really wants.
Speaker A:Because since he's just freed the Goatlanders traders from paying taxes and tolls, he now needs his own merchants to undertake lucrative journeys to faraway lands.
Speaker A:Merchants that he can ask to line his pockets.
Speaker A:And so he puts in another last clause that reads rather innocuously as follows, and last of the same benefits and rights, namely this treaty that we have decreed for our merchants, we stipulate faithfully in perpetuity also for all Goatlanders, and should maintain it inviolably as long as they in grateful reciprocity grant the same to us, visiting us and our land more frequently in our port in Lubeck more often.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:So it basically says all this protection applies only if you grant the same level of protection to our merchants when they visit Gotland.
Speaker A:And a Please come often.
Speaker A: s only added later, namely in: Speaker A: maybe that's true, because in: Speaker A:They could continue to trade via Schleswig.
Speaker A:It was a bit slower, but not really a problem.
Speaker A:But even if it was not written down explicitly, the Gotlanders knew that if they wanted to trade through Lubeck and get their Bismarcks quicker down to the great monasteries of Westphalia, it would not be helpful slaughtering German merchants arriving on Gotland and nicking their stuff.
Speaker A:So Gotlanders and German merchants enjoyed safety and support in each other's ports.
Speaker A:As time went by, not only did Gotlanders come to Luberg, but merchants from the Holy Roman Empire also came to Gotland.
Speaker A:They founded something they called the Society of Germans, who frequently sailed to the Gotland.
Speaker A:The first and most prevalent reason that merchants pulled together was safety.
Speaker A:If they traveled in a convoy, pirates and even hostile states would find it more difficult to capture and rob them.
Speaker A:It is a system that is as old as trade.
Speaker A:Every caravan trundling along the Silk Road is based on this Logic.
Speaker A:The members of the convoy or caravan pledge each other's support in case of an attack.
Speaker A:And since the Gotlandfara went several times a year on the same route, the structure was more institutionalized and the mutual assurances were likely given in the form of elaborate oaths.
Speaker A:These arrangements are, however, only useful when they can be enforced.
Speaker A:There is no point to having a member of the Society who takes flight as soon as the pirate fleet appears over the horizon, leaving his fellow merchants to fight the battle on.
Speaker A:What can also not be tolerated is that the member brings the Society into distribute by cheating his negotiation partners or making himself a nuisance on Gotland.
Speaker A:So the Society likely had rules of behavior and means to enforce them.
Speaker A:The Treaty of Adlenburg has a side letter where Henry the Lion appoints a certain Alderich as his bailiff and representative and gives him the right to adjudicate between the members of the guild.
Speaker A:Alderich is likely an alderman that the merchants had themselves elected, and who now possessed the right to sit in judgment over his fellow society members even allowed to order physical punishments in the duke's name.
Speaker A:As the organization consolidates further, they become a legal entity.
Speaker A: We know that in: Speaker A:In many aspects, the Society of Gutlandfahrer resembled the Italian communes in the Middle Ages.
Speaker A:In Italy too, the roads were dangerous and the merchants were ganging up to protecting themselves.
Speaker A:As their system of mutual support became more and more institutionalized, these communes gradually took over the management of the cities where they were based.
Speaker A:In.
Speaker A:In the end, the term commune went from meaning a group of merchants to meaning the citizens of a specific town.
Speaker A:But that is where the Gotlandfarer and its successor organizations differed from the Italian communes in most other societies, guilds or other merchant organizations of the Middle Ages, the Gotland Fara were not exclusively from Lubricant.
Speaker A:The society was open to all merchants from the Holy Roman Empire.
Speaker A:Why they were so open, it's quite easy to understand.
Speaker A:The city of Luberg was only a few years old, and many of its inhabitants had come from elsewhere.
Speaker A:Moreover, the capital needed to fund the building of ships and the purchase of goods to trade had to come from somewhere, certainly not from Luberg, which was still in ruins from the fire.
Speaker A:It came from established trading cities like, for instance, again Dortmund and Zost in Westphalia.
Speaker A:In Italy, the great cities like Milan, Cremona, Pavia, Venice and Genoa already had a sizable population when long distance trading started out in earnest.
Speaker A:So they did not have to be open to new members.
Speaker A:But out here on the Baltic shore, everything was new and everything was in flux.
Speaker A:The Gotland Fire Society did not enforce restrictions based on whether an applicant was a citizen of Luberg.
Speaker A:Anyone could join after having been properly scrutinized.
Speaker A:In fact, even though the society was explicitly called a society of Germans, they did admit Gotlanders to their ranks.
Speaker A:Seemingly, the initial quarrels and murders had been quickly forgotten.
Speaker A:The German merchants settled on Gotland in the city of Visby.
Speaker A:For a time there were two cities with separate councils in seals, one for the Gotlanders and one for the German merchants.
Speaker A:But they soon merged.
Speaker A:But the council of the unified city of Visby was still elected separately by each of the communities.
Speaker A:The Gotlander merchants had initially lived on their farms all across the island, but now Visby had become the center.
Speaker A:The city grew rapidly and in the middle of the 13th century had acquired 11,200ft of city walls enclosing 90 hectares.
Speaker A:Inside were at least 18 churches, more than in any other Swedish medieval city.
Speaker A:The biggest of these churches was the Church of St.
Speaker A:Mary of the Germans.
Speaker A:What made Visby rich was the trade with Novgorod, a city lying about 200 km southeast of modern day St.
Speaker A:Petersburg.
Speaker A:Novgorod was the entry point into the markets of this vast landmass that is today Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and beyond.
Speaker A:The main exports from Novgorod were fir and beeswax.
Speaker A:Now, beeswax is in very high demand in the west, mainly because the monks and bishops chapters needed it to light their churches during their nightly prayers.
Speaker A:Interestingly, the honey that came from the same source as the beeswax was not sent westwards, but south to Constantinople and then down the Silk Road.
Speaker A:The bees had fed on the vast forest of pine, spruce and fir that cover large parts of Russia.
Speaker A:The honey they produce is hence dark and viscous features much valued in the Orient.
Speaker A:The honey went along the great river systems down to Constantinople, and from there east along the Silk Route as far as Baghdad and China.
Speaker A:This export was seemingly so lucrative that Novgorod would replace its own honey with imported honey from the Baltic that was usually much lighter.
Speaker A:It still astounds me that relative commodities like honey and beeswax could be transported over thousands of miles to their end users in the 12th century, when roads were terrible or non existent and there were constant dangers from robbers and local rulers.
Speaker A:This is the same time when the journeys to the Holy Land were always preceded by the making of wills and generous donations to the church.
Speaker A:And still many of the pilgrims did not survive the trip.
Speaker A:Now taking Such a long journey, not for the guaranteed ticket to paradise, but just for the markup on a half ton of honey.
Speaker A:Doing it not once in life, but annually, takes a particular kind of person.
Speaker A:The traders who took the honey down to Constantinople came back with spices, silks and other luxuries from the east, which they would then sell to the German and Gotland traders who took them westwards.
Speaker A:So when King Henry II had his mutton generously peppered and the lovely Eleanor clad in the finest silks, that pepper and that silk was as likely to have come via Kiev, Smolensk and Gotland as via Venice and Bruges.
Speaker A:Fur was also always popular, partly as a luxury, but also as a day to day necessity.
Speaker A:In winter, the furs came down from even further north of Novgorod, as hunters traveled up to Karelia, the White Sea and even the Barents Sea to hunt the most beautiful pelted quarry.
Speaker A:The most valuable was the Sable, where 100 pelts sold at 82 ducats.
Speaker A:In Venice, Martens came in at 30 ducats, Beaver and Ermine much cheaper at 12 to 14 ducats, and then it gets even cheaper with the lynx at five and a half ducats, otters and weasels at five, and then the different types of squirrels, usually three to four ducats.
Speaker A:The most desirable of the squirrels was the grey arctic ground squirrel, whose coat could go up to seven ducats.
Speaker A: e they were introduced in the: Speaker A:Now, on the other side of the trade, Novgorod's first main importance, apart from the honey, was cloth.
Speaker A:Cloth was always in demand.
Speaker A:The great cloth cities of Flanders, Bruges, Ghent and Epis, so forth, wove English wool into the Middle Ages.
Speaker A:Most popular, traded good.
Speaker A:And there was also linen coming up from Westphalia.
Speaker A:And the second equally important import was salt, needed to preserve food.
Speaker A:Fish as well as meat caught in the summer needed to be preserved so that there was something to eat in the winter when the rivers were frozen and the fields and woods empty of fruit.
Speaker A:And salt may be the reason for what happens next.
Speaker A:Because the Baltic Sea is not very salty, to be Precise, Saturnation is just 7 grams per liter of water, compared to 35 grams in the major oceans.
Speaker A:That makes it one of the nicest places to spend a beach holiday, but one of the worst places to generate salt from evaporation.
Speaker A:To make things worse, underground salt deposits in Europe occur mainly in a strip going from Southern Poland, across northern Germany, Denmark and into the North Sea.
Speaker A:Crucially, there are no mineable salt deposits in the Baltic north of Denmark, specifically not on Gotland.
Speaker A:And that looks to me as the main reason the Gotlanders started to make common cause with the merchants coming in via Lubeck.
Speaker A:The Gotlanders knew the way to Novgorod and its lovely beesmacs and furs.
Speaker A:The Germans could provide the salt so desperately needed up north.
Speaker A:There were the large salt mines in Luneburg and Odeslo, both not far from Lubeck.
Speaker A:So the Goldlanders allowed the German merchants to sail on their vessels all the way to the top of Finland.
Speaker A:Later the Germans would fit out their own ships, mostly the more modern cogs, and sail there on their own transports for the journey.
Speaker A:They did not create a new society of Germans who frequently traveled to Novgorod.
Speaker A:The Gotland farrer society in its form as a legal entity was a one time affair.
Speaker A:From now on, what we will later call the Hanseatic League will be a much looser entity, much harder to grasp, with limited statues and institutions.
Speaker A:But there will still altogether travel in a convoy, and for good reason.
Speaker A:As I mentioned before, Novgorod lies almost 200 km inland.
Speaker A:The merchants from Gotland l and later from many cities along the Baltic coast would sail up in separate convoys and then congregate on the island of Kotlin or Kronstadt, just off the coast of what is today St.
Speaker A:Petersburg.
Speaker A:Kronstadt would later become the headquarter of the Russian Baltic fleet.
Speaker A:But since St.
Speaker A:Petersburg would not be built for another 500 years, Kronstadt was just a port where goods could be moved onto lighter vessels to sail up the Neva River.
Speaker A:Once the fleet had gathered, they would elect two aldermen for the term of this trading expedition.
Speaker A:One was the alderman of the yard, who was overall responsible, and then The Alderman of St Peter who managed transport and was in charge of security.
Speaker A:They proceeded along the Neva river, the river that flows past St.
Speaker A:Petersburg as it makes its way from the Ladoga Sea to the Baltic.
Speaker A:Along the shore waited Karelian and Swedish raiders trying to steal their goods.
Speaker A:Once through the Neva river, the traders reached the town of Ladoga at the mouth of the Volkhov River.
Speaker A:Here again the goods had to be moved to new transports as there were impassable rapids to cap it all off.
Speaker A:Then they had to travel another 200 km on the Volkhov river until they finally, finally reached Novgorod.
Speaker A:Novgorod was by then one of Eastern Europe's largest cities.
Speaker A:When the Kievan Rus began to disintegrate in the 12th century, the princes of Novgorod became the dominant force in what is today Russia.
Speaker A:The city itself was, however, almost independent, its politics led by local noblemen, boyars who lived in the city, usually inside fortified compounds.
Speaker A:But merchants and artisans also had their say.
Speaker A:The population in the 14th century reached 15 to 20,000, very much on par with the largest cities of the Hanseatic League and not far short of Cologne, with 25,000.
Speaker A:The Gotlanders had been trading with Novgorod for probably centuries and had acquired their own fortified compound inside the city, called the St.
Speaker A:Olav Yard, after Saint Olav, King of Sweden.
Speaker A:There they hosted their new German friends and neighbors.
Speaker A:These trading yards were effectively small fortresses.
Speaker A:The merchants were well aware that they were in enemy territory and that the locals could at any time come and burn down their establishment.
Speaker A:It had strong walls, much stronger than the walls of the local aristocratic compounds, and even featured a watchtower.
Speaker A:And as the trade with Novgorod grew, the merchants of the Holy Roman Empire established their own yard.
Speaker A:The yard of St.
Speaker A:Peter in Novgorod.
Speaker A:It centered around a church which was used not just for worship, but also as a storeroom for the trading goods.
Speaker A:Each night, two men, who must not be related nor working for the same merchant company, were locked up inside the church to guard the goods.
Speaker A:The alderman's main job was to ensure the community stayed safe.
Speaker A:That meant posting guards and maintaining good relationships with the city authority, which I'm sure included the occasional bribe.
Speaker A:But even more importantly, he had to ensure discipline amongst his fellow merchants so as not to provoke their hosts.
Speaker A:Misbehavior such as brawling with locals and chasing girls, were strictly forbidden, but it also involved making sure that the merchants maintained good standards of probity.
Speaker A:Wax was the good most prone to fraud.
Speaker A:Sellers and traders would often mix in some other fats made from acorns, peas or resins.
Speaker A:Neither the seller nor the traders were prepared to guarantee the quality of the product, and complaints were quite common.
Speaker A:The yard therefore maintained various forms of quality control mechanisms, including a wax examiner to ensure good sport and salt when meeting minimum standards.
Speaker A:For quite some time, the community of merchants in Novgorod bore collective responsibility for the debts of any of its members, and each merchant was limited to buy and sell no more than the equivalent of a thousand mark.
Speaker A:That was a demand from the Novgorod authorities, who wanted to avoid becoming dependent on one or few importers for their crucial supplies, but still had the recourse to a large capital base.
Speaker A:Though meant as a restriction, it also worked for the foreign traders because the constraints limited the volume of imports and kept prices high, making the arduous journey to Novgorod lucrative even for medium sized merchants.
Speaker A:Another provision the authorities in Novgorod insisted upon was that no trader stays in the city all year round.
Speaker A:That forced the merchants to break up into two groups.
Speaker A:There were the winter merchants who came down in early autumn, just before the rivers were freezing over, and stayed until the spring.
Speaker A:Staying over the winter allowed them to acquire the best furs that were mostly hunted in the snow, when the prey was easier to spot.
Speaker A:And just as they left, a summer contingent would arrive, bringing fresh supplies of salt and cloth and buying beeswax and oriental luxuries.
Speaker A:Because the winter and summer merchants were completely separate, they also had separate financial arrangements.
Speaker A:When, say, the winter merchants returned in spring, they took with them their strongbox and contained the money collected for the maintenance of the St Peter yard and the expenses such as bribes, etc.
Speaker A:This strongbox was then deposited in the Church of St Mary in Visby until the fleet would gather again in early autumn and go to Novgorod again.
Speaker A:The strongbox only opened when four keys were present.
Speaker A:And these keys were held by the representatives of Lubeck, obviously, but also of Visby, the main settlement in Gotland, Sost, near Munster in Westphalia and Dortmund.
Speaker A:Yes, Dortmund today best known as a major city in the Ruhr and a world power in football.
Speaker A:But Dortmund was also one of the founding members of the Hanseatic League and one of its leaders.
Speaker A:So here we are back in Visby, the society of Germans who frequently travel to Gotland.
Speaker A:The Gotlandfarer and the subsequent organization of the St.
Speaker A:Peter's yard in Novgorod are the earliest forms of the Hanseatic League.
Speaker A:They bear many of the hallmarks of the thing that will gradually emerge.
Speaker A:It is first and foremost an association of long distance traders who've got together to protect themselves against the innumerate dangers they experience on their journeys.
Speaker A:But other than the Italian medieval communes or the great cloth merchants of Flanders, access to their association or guild wasn't limited to men from a particular place.
Speaker A:It was open to all traders from the Holy Roman Empire.
Speaker A:We have records of traders from the tiny townlet of Medebach in the Saurland.
Speaker A:To translate that for our U.S.
Speaker A:audience, there would be Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Speaker A:These guys could travel all the way from the back and beyond in Westphalia to the Arctic Circle and return all under the protective shield and using the trading privileges of the German merchants in the St.
Speaker A:Peter's yard in Novgorod.
Speaker A:And we get another crucial element, the commercial discipline and branding.
Speaker A:If you came to Novgorod on your own, assuming you made it at all.
Speaker A:It would have been very difficult for you to sell your wares at a good price.
Speaker A:Your clients will ask, is there cloth you sell really?
Speaker A:The high quality material from Bruges or not?
Speaker A:The cheap stuff from Ypres, the salt, could it be mixed with something?
Speaker A:Where do I go when I have a complaint and you've gone home?
Speaker A:The members of the St.
Speaker A:Peter's yard maintained, or at least pretended to maintain, strict discipline amongst their ranks.
Speaker A:And if one of their customers had found themselves cheated by one of their merchants, they knew at least where to go for redress.
Speaker A:This created what we would today call a brand.
Speaker A:Merchants who came in with that fleet became seen as trustworthy.
Speaker A:They may be a touch more expensive, but you get what you were hoping to get.
Speaker A:Moreover, the discipline inside the yard created a network of trust between the merchants.
Speaker A:As they had travelled together through the Neva river and up the Volkhov, they had selected two amongst their members to be their aldermen.
Speaker A:And these men had proven to be unbiased, even though they may not have come from the same merchant's hometown.
Speaker A:The they saw fellow merchants who cheated or brawled, being punished or even expelled, making you believe that all of those still inside the yard must be honorable.
Speaker A:And as you spend the long nights of the Arctic winter playing cards or chess with your fellow travelers, standing guard inside the church with another trader, what are you going to talk about?
Speaker A:Well, the same stuff we talk about business, politics and kids.
Speaker A:So why not get together for the next deal?
Speaker A:Maybe we can bring your son and my daughter together to see whether they like each other.
Speaker A:And maybe your boy would like to come as an apprentice to Stralsund, one of the most valuable economic commodities, begins to emerge trust.
Speaker A:And also gradually, merchants began to believe that their system of justice they had created with the elected aldermen who kept order, was to be trusted.
Speaker A: somebody else was alderman in: Speaker A:So, quite a lot later, the English King Edward IV demanded that the Hanseatic merchants declare what they are, a society, a co operative or a corporation.
Speaker A:And they answered that there were none of those things.
Speaker A:They are a firm association of cities and merchants who cooperate to their mutual benefit.
Speaker A:They simply.
Speaker A:But they do not fit any medieval Roman law category.
Speaker A:But we do know exactly what they are.
Speaker A:They are a network, a trust based network.
Speaker A:They have more in common with ebay, etsy, Airbnb, booking.com or Amazon than the European Union or NAFTA.
Speaker A:Like any of these Internet platforms, the members trade goods based on trust in each other.
Speaker A:Like we know that an Airbnb with many and consistently good reviews is going to be a decent place to stay.
Speaker A:A medieval merchant in the Hansa would know that ordering his goods from such and such an Strahlsund will result in timely delivery in reasonable quality.
Speaker A:The job of the network is to ensure the minimum quality standards by expelling merchants who consistently fall short and to provide an equal playing field with reliable processes for complaints and refunds.
Speaker A:I know the comparison is obviously not quite right because the Hanseatic League itself did not make astronomic profits from providing this network.
Speaker A:But the fundamental components are the same.
Speaker A:It's a system of mutual trust and the confidence in the process that is the rule of law.
Speaker A:That is my current theory why the Hanseatic League was so successful.
Speaker A:Mutual trust and the rule of law are some of the strongest engines of economic growth.
Speaker A:Let's see throughout this series whether the theory holds.
Speaker A:When you see modern day companies branding themselves as Hans Jardische, Krankenkasse, Hans Jardischer, Lloyd, Hans Jrdischer, Weincontur, Hans Jardischer Whatever, they try to tap into that notion that a Hanseatic merchant is a man or woman one can trust, and maybe even King's Lynn hopes to gain a little bit of that cache.
Speaker A:When they call themselves a Hanseatic city, it is in the end, just good business.
Speaker A:And next week we'll talk about how this good business keeps growing.
Speaker A:We will look at how a string of cities along the Baltic coast come into being.
Speaker A:What they trade, who lives there and why.
Speaker A:Some flourish and others disappear quite quickly.
Speaker A:And maybe we can also cover the western leg of the trade.
Speaker A:After all, trade is all about linking two or more places, and the places where the goods from the Baltic go are the Empire, England and Flanders.
Speaker A:I hope you're going to join us again.
Speaker A:And now before I go, let me explain to you how this show works.
Speaker A:You're currently listening to a podcast about the Hanseatic League.
Speaker A:All these episodes you get here are also available on the main feed under the History of the Germans podcast.
Speaker A:So this episode, for instance, is episode 108 of this main podcast.
Speaker A:So if you enjoy this show and you want to hear more about German history, go to the History of the Germans podcast.
Speaker A: n of Frederick ii in episodes: Speaker A:Now, as you have also heard at the beginning, the History of the Germans and all its offshoots are funded entirely by the generosity of our patrons.
Speaker A:So if you feel it is worth supporting this effort, go to patreon.com historyofthegermans or to my website historyofthegermans.com support and make either a one time donation or sign up for the monthly or yearly contributions.
Speaker A:If you do the latter, you get access to occasional bonus episodes, but mostly you're supporting the show.
Speaker A:Now, if Patreon isn't for you, you can also support the show by helping raising its profile.
Speaker A:The best way is to tell your friends, family, strangers in the street, simply everyone that you love the show.
Speaker A:You can do that face to face or on social media.
Speaker A:And if you want to link to my content, I'm on Twitter undermanshistory and on Facebook under otgpod.
Speaker A:All the links are also in the show notes and last but not least, the bibliography.
Speaker A:For this episode I relied heavily on Philipp Dollinger, Die Hanse Die Hanse Lebenswerklichkeit und Mutos created by Jurgen Bracker Volker Hen und die Rainer Postel.
Speaker A:Special thanks for the translation of the AATLENBURG Privilege to Dr.
Speaker A:Jenny Banham and even more special thanks to Dr.
Speaker A:Justina Woops Montrovic, whose research I found absolutely eye opening.
