The inner zone of the Hanseatic League was the Baltic Sea, but its merchant
activities expanded to the North Sea, the Channel and the Irish Sea too. The integration of this Northern region began in the 8th and the 9th centuries when the Norman settlements' network from the English and French coasts unfolded entirely to Novgorod. However, real international trade did not exist before Hanse.
The history of the forming of the Hanse in the 12thcentury is little known. The name Hanse means the group of merchants. The name of Hanse appeared in the documentary sources very late, mentioned first in 1267 in a diploma issued by the English king. The Baltic zone, giving the Hanse’s core area in the time of the Middle Ages, was a relatively advanced region, from where primarily raw materials and food were exported into the countries of the industrialised West. Tree, wax, rye, wheat and woodenware were transported on Hanse’s ships to the Low Countries, England and France, in exchange for salt, fabric, textile and wine. This commercial system was simple, robust, but very fragile at the same time. The reason for the fragility of the system was the lack of state control or a strictly organised league first of all. The Hanseatic League was merely a loose coalition of cities', which rivalled with each other. Members of the league varied between 70 and 170 cities. The strength of the Hanseatic League rooted in using the same commercial system and being part of the same civilisation. The collective interest and the civilizational proximity were mostly enough for the foundation of strong solidarity and a public spirit. It was a vital coacting force that the Baltic region's cities were not quite big and costly (different from the Italian cities) that let them be fruitful in the international maritime trade even alone. Lübeck was the capital of the merchant league, where the first assembly of the Hanse was convened in 1356. The eagle, the symbol of Lübeck, became the Hanse’s badge until the 15th century. Though the trade of Lübeck or the Hanseatic League did not attain the development level represented by Venice or Bruges. The elements of the money and the barter got mixed all the time in the Hanse towns' trade. At the same time, the commercial network of the Hanse was the first inter-regional system of Europe where the mass consumption products were distributed in a large quantity.
Figure 10. The spread of plague in Europe in the 14th century. The antecedents of the apocalyptic period of the black death dated back to the turning of the 13th and the 14th century. The European population's number of inhabitants (90 million according to the estimates) attained the upper limit of the carrying capacity of contemporary agriculture to the beginning of the 14th century. The technical development of
agriculture slowed down powerfully in already the 13th century, and the cold period of the Little Ice Age entering at the beginning of the 14th century aggravated the situation for long, as a result of what the European population's living space narrowed down significantly. The North European and the highland marginal agricultural areas became depopulated. The first crisis came forward between 1313 and 1321 when the majority of the vegetation period was cold and wet. The demographic, the economic and the environmental effects together contributed to the beginning of terrible famines. By 1340, in Europe, in many directions the lands were left uncultivated, partly because the famine caused decline in population, partly because of the exhaustion of the land, and partly because of the decay of the draught animals. The underfed, starving European population had been striken by the first wave of the plague with a central
Asian origin between 1347 and 1351. The mortality rate was highest in the cities, in the harbours and along the trade routes. The plague recured several times in the second half of the 14th century and as a
result Europe lost one third of its population during the 14th century (N.J.G. Pounds: An Historical Geography of Europe, Cambridge 1990. 188 p.).
The crisis of the 14th century created steady prosperity for Baltic foods. The plague affected the population of the Low Countries only slightly, so the claim for the Baltic import was growing continuously. However, after 1370, the price of the agricultural products decreased consistently with the end of the living crisis. On the other hand, the price of industrial products rose, which had taken back the
Hanse trade strongly. The recession affected the Hanse hinterland, moreover the league had to face the region's strengthening territorial states also. The relation with Denmark was tense for centuries because of the Sund usage. The English and the Dutch dealers attempted to supplant the Hanseatic League from the Baltic trade, knowing the efficient
state support behind themselves. Moreover, Poland appeared on the horizon following the defeat of the Teutonic Order (1466) and the Grand Duchy of Moscow after conquering the aristocratic republic of Novgorod (1476), which was the most Eastern city of Hanse. Although Lübeck was able to win its war waged against England between 1470 and 1474, the decline of the merchant's league was already unstoppable.