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"The Companion to the Hanseatic League discusses the importance of the Hanseatic League for the social and economic history of pre-modern northern Europe. Established already as early as the twelfth century, the towns that formed the Hanseatic League created an important network of commerce throughout the Baltic and North Sea area. From Russia in the east, to England and France in the west, the cities of the Hanseatic League created a vast northern maritime trade network. The aim of this volume is to present a 'state' of the field English-language volume by some of the most respected Hanse scholars. Contributors are Mike Burkhardt, Ulf Christian Ewert, Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, Donald J. Harreld, Carsten Jahnke, Michael North, Jürgen Sarnowsky and Stephan Selzer"--Provided by publisher

The Companion to the Hanseatic League discusses the importance of the Hanseatic League for the social and economic history of pre-modern northern Europe. Established already as early as the twelfth century, the towns that formed the Hanseatic League created an important network of commerce throughout the Baltic and North Sea area. From Russia in the east, to England and France in the west, the cities of the Hanseatic League created a vast northern maritime trade network. The aim of this volume is to present a "state" of the field English-language volume by some of the most respected Hanse scholars. Contributors are Mike Burkhardt, Ulf Christian Ewert, Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, Donald J. Harreld, Carsten Jahnke, Michael North, Jürgen Sarnowsky and Stephan Selzer

The Hanseatic League was a commercial federation of guilds and cities in the Baltic region that dominated trade in northern Europe during the later Middle Ages. At its peak, it linked traders and market towns from England to Russia and most ports in between.  It worked to remove trade barriers and provide security to its members. Employing an analytically structured approach, this study analyzes secondary sources to investigate the relationships between the members of the Hanse as well as the primary motivations driving the formation of the Hanseatic League. When this is analyzed as a federation style of interorganizational relationship, the five defining key contingencies become apparent: (1) power asymmetries in the High Middle Ages existed for the merchants with the balance of power in favor of monarchs; (2) individual guilds found it beneficial to establish ongoing relationships with other guilds; (3) economies of scope and scale allowed for efficiencies that would lead to trade dominance; (4) merchants sought more stable and predictable open access to markets across northern Europe; and (5) with the decline of feudalism, guilds sought to increase the acceptance and privilege of their community.  The Hanseatic League’s formation was also based on a sixth key factor: security for its members.

SummaryI explore the medieval phenomenon of theHanseaticLeague. I use the concept offunctional overlapping competing jurisdictions(FOCJ) discussed byFrey andEichenberger (1996,1999,2000) as framework for my analysis of the medieval association of northernEuropean traders and cities. I show that theHanseaticLeague came close to representing an example of aFOCJ. But I find that in contrast to theFOCJoutlined byFrey andEichenberger the polycentricHanseaticLeague as an inter‐regional structure lacked the characteristic of a jurisdiction. It was not a political authority with the power to tax and regulate its members. The arrangements between the members of theHanseaticLeague therefore had to be self‐enforcing. Building on my investigation of theHanseaticLeague, I further provide a general discussion of the costs and benefits of a central political authority in a system of functional overlapping competing units.

Der Artikel beschäftigt sich mit der Rolle der neu formierten "Hanseatischen Liga" – einem Zusammenschluss aus acht nord(-ost)europäischen EU-Staaten – und deren Positionierung innerhalb aktueller Reformdebatten der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion. Es wird argumentiert, dass eine Fokussierung auf das deutsch-französische Verhältnis den Blick auf ein erweitertes Feld zwischenstaatlicher Kräfteverhältnisse verstellt, in denen die anderen Mitgliedstaaten sich zwar um diese beiden Blöcke Frankreich und Deutschland gruppieren, aber durchaus eigene Koalitionen eingehen und Akzente setzen. Der Artikel soll eine erste Bestandsaufnahme leisten und zeigen, auf welche Dynamiken die Formierung der Hansa zurückzuführen ist, welche Positionierung sie in den Reformdebatten einnimmt und ob die Hansa lediglich der verlängerte Arm der deutschen Stabilitätsunion oder doch einen eigenständigen Widersacher der französischen Reformbestrebungen darstellt.

How do trade networks persist following disruptions of political networks? We study different types of persistence following the decline of the Hanseatic League using a panel of 21,590 city-level trade flows over 190 years, covering 1,425 cities. We use the Sound Toll data, a dataset collected by the Danish crown until 1857 that registered every ship entering or leaving the Baltic Sea, forming one of the most granular and extensive trade data sets. We measure trade flows by counting the number of ships sailing on a particular route in a given year and estimate gravity equations using PPML and an appropriate set of fixed effects. Bilateral gravity estimation results show that trade among former Hansa cities only shows persistence after its dissolution in 1669 for about 30 years, but this persistence is not robust across different regression specifications. However, when we incorporate the flag under which a ship is sailing and consider trilateral trade (where an observation is a combination of origin, destination, and flag), we find that trade persistently exceeds the gravity benchmark: Hansa cities continued to trade more with each other, but only on ships that were owned in another former Hansa city and thus sailed under a Hansa flag. Similar effects are found for trade among former Hansa cities and their trading posts abroad, yet again only conditional on the ship sailing under a former Hanseatic flag. Trade flows among the same pair of origin and destination cities, but under a different flag, do not show this persistence. Our main result shows that the identity of traders persists longer and more strongly than other forms of trading relationships we can measure. Apart from these new quantitative and qualitative insights on the persistence of trade flows, our paper is also of historic interest, as it provides new and detailed information on the speed of decline of trade amongst members of the Hanseatic League.

As Brexit removes the Nordic countries' most powerful ally from the EU, what does this imply for their approach to European affairs? The literature on small states within the EU suggests that they can counterbalance limited bargaining capacities by entering two types of alliances: strategic partnerships with bigger member states and institutionalised cooperation on a regional basis. Against this backdrop we ask whether, by significantly raising the costs of non-cooperation for Nordic governments, the Brexit referendum has triggered a revival of Nordic political cooperation. We scrutinise this conjecture by analysing Nordic strategies of coalition-building on EU financial and budgetary policy, specifically looking at attempts to reform Europe's Economic and Monetary Union and proposals to strengthen the EU's fiscal powers. We find that Nordic governments have successfully collaborated on these issues in the context of new alliances such as the 'New Hanseatic League' or the 'Frugal Four.' Yet, their coalition-building strategies rely on relatively loose and issue-specific alliances rather than an institutionalisation of Nordic political cooperation, implying that this revival of Nordic political cooperation hardly involves the institutions of 'official' Nordic cooperation. We argue that this reflects lasting differences among the Nordics' approach to the EU as well as electorates' scepticism about supranational institution-building, implying that 'reluctant Europeans' are often also 'reluctant Scandinavians.'

As Brexit removes the Nordic countries' most powerful ally from the EU, what does this imply for their approach to European affairs? The literature on small states within the EU suggests that they can counterbalance limited bargaining capacities by entering two types of alliances: strategic partnerships with bigger member states and institutionalised cooperation on a regional basis. Against this backdrop we ask whether, by significantly raising the costs of non-cooperation for Nordic governments, the Brexit referendum has triggered a revival of Nordic political cooperation. We scrutinise this conjecture by analysing Nordic strategies of coalition-building on EU financial and budgetary policy, specifically looking at attempts to reform Europe's Economic and Monetary Union and proposals to strengthen the EU's fiscal powers. We find that Nordic governments have successfully collaborated on these issues in the context of new alliances such as the 'New Hanseatic League' or the 'Frugal Four.' Yet, their coalition-building strategies rely on relatively loose and issue-specific alliances rather than an institutionalisation of Nordic political cooperation, implying that this revival of Nordic political cooperation hardly involves the institutions of 'official' Nordic cooperation. We argue that this reflects lasting differences among the Nordics' approach to the EU as well as electorates' scepticism about supranational institution-building, implying that 'reluctant Europeans' are often also 'reluctant Scandinavians.'