Which baltic state was part of the hanseatic league

Stockholm, Sweden — Last week, there were reports in the Swedish and Finnish press about what was presumed to be a Russia submarine probing the harbors in both Stockholm and Helsinki. Six hundred years ago, the Hanseatic League held both economic and military sway in an area that at its farthest extent went from Novgorod in northern Russia to trade zones near London. The league was centered in the German city of Lubeck on the Baltic. The Hanseatic League established free trade among its members, who agreed to a basic charter.

It also established its own navy and defense force to protect its cargos, and it succeeded in largely eliminating pirates from the Baltic. The first trade alliances that evolved into the league began after the end of the Viking era in the 12th century and lasted until the rise of the Swedish Empire, which gained control over most of the Baltic Sea in the 16th century. It was the merchant class that was the driving force behind the league in that the rise in trade became highly profitable to them and greatly increased the prosperity of those living in the league trading area.

Over the centuries, cities dropped in and out of membership as circumstances changed. The EU faces many of the same types of pressures that the league faced. The Hansa did not take any kind of defeat lightly. In the end however the Hansa prevailed, imposing the Treaty of Stralsund in which the Danes were compelled to concede Hanseatic privileges.

For some historians, this marks the height of Hanseatic power. That power gave the Hansa the scope and the ambition to develop an early version of the logistics chains so prominent in international commerce today.

Warehousing was a key to this, providing secure places to store, weigh and assess goods in locations linked to transport networks. Intermarriage between the populations of the two towns helped reinforce the relationship.

The Steelyard was a self-contained community and compound, including storage space for goods, a weighbridge, accommodation, a wine cellar and a garden. Security was tight. Its traders enjoyed privileges given to them by grateful English monarchs in return for financial favours. In return the king granted the Hansa privileges including concessions in many of the Cornish tin mines. Hans Holbein famously painted the portraits of Hanseatic merchants operating out of 16th-century London see image on page These men exude status, wealth and, above all, great confidence in their future as well as their illustrious past.

However, the privileges that these merchants enjoyed — including freedom from arrest and exemption from many customs duties — caused resentment. In England, rival trading groups, such as the Merchant Adventurers, began to flex their lobbying muscles. Worse still, so did the government itself.

In Queen Elizabeth I forced the Hansa to leave the Steelyard — albeit temporarily — and the site never regained its significance before being destroyed in the Great Fire of London. The Reformation led to disputes among its members. Added to all that was a reorientation of European trade towards new opportunities opening up in southern Europe, Asia and across the Atlantic. And a shift in the natural world had an impact. Due to changes in sea temperature, huge shoals of herring, a staple of Hanseatic trade and diet and once said to be so thick in places that they could be caught by hand moved in the 15th century out of the Baltic and into the North Sea.

That might have been the end of the story. But, during the Napoleonic invasions of German territory, the memory of the Hansa was revived as an ideal of robust Germanic independence. The Prussians and Nazis also attempted to exploit Hanseatic history as an example of Germanic racial expansion. The name lives on too in the German airline Lufthansa and the football team Hansa Rostock.

And along the eastern Baltic coast the memory is still potent. In the Estonian capital, Tallinn, the Hanseatic past is celebrated through architecture and cuisine in a way shrewdly designed to appeal to German tourists. The cog was developed for the burgeoning trade routes across the Baltic, and was in effect an early forerunner of the modern container ship. And as trade developed, towns which were hundreds of miles apart needed reassurance that they were all getting value for money and a fair deal.

So, they created a system of common standards and regulations. An agreed schedule of weights and measurements was particularly important, and the museum has several examples on display.

Imitation was also a big problem, so there was plenty of regulation about the type of cloth, for example, that could be traded - it had to be stamped or sealed or folded in the right way. The Hanseatic League, in other words, was active in quality control. Highly prized cloth from Bruges or Leiden would be trademarked, even though there was no international law that prevented the copying of another product. Sometimes, of course, disputes emerged, and even natural trading partners fell out.

But the Hanseatic League endured for a remarkably long time because it helped guarantee quality, organise logistics and create trust. Eventually, inevitably, the tide of history began to turn, and a number of big factors saw the Hansa gradually lose influence.

The rise of nation states as centres of political power challenged its trading model, as did the emergence of new markets and trade routes around the world. Even modern-sounding ideas like climate change played their part, as shoals of herring, a key Hanseatic commodity, moved out of the Baltic in the 15th Century in search of warmer waters elsewhere. You get a sense of that at the top of Engelsgrube, the street that looks down the hill towards the Trave river.

It used to be known as the English Road, leading down to the quay where the ships bound for England were moored. English towns and cities were never a formal part of the Hanseatic League. Even in medieval times English merchants were semi-detached from the dominant European network of the day. It is pretty quiet by the river now, but in the Middle Ages this was a port that served 10 counties in the interior.

The Lynn kontor was run mainly by merchants from Danzig now Gdansk in Poland , importing wax and pepper. Lynn kept up the Baltic link. Over the past few years those links have been reborn as towns across Europe have created a network called the New Hanseatic League or the Hanse. And while the Brexit process grinds on, those old links are also being revived on a political level within the EU.

A group of northern countries including the Netherlands, Ireland and the Scandinavian and Baltic states have also started calling themselves the New Hanseatic League. Broadly speaking, they want to promote free markets and conservative fiscal policies, as a bulwark against more protectionist policies emerging from southern Europe. They feel comfortable with each other, and they are beginning to exert influence on the direction of European economic reform.

But they also worry about losing the UK, their most influential ally in the room. But beyond the high politics of leaving the EU, towns are continuing to forge links of their own. So I was demoted. At first sight there is a degree of irony that an area that voted so heavily for Brexit is so keen to create new links with Europe.

In the referendum, Leave won But locals argue that Brexit makes efforts to restore Hanseatic links even more appropriate.