Hanseatic League

(noun)

A commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe.

Related Terms

Examples of Hanseatic League in the following topics:

  • Trade and Commerce

    • In cities linked to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea a trade monopoly developed in the Hanseatic League.
    • Long-distance trade in the Baltic intensified, as the major trading towns came together in the Hanseatic League, under the leadership of Lübeck.
    • The Hanseatic League was an alliance of North German and Baltic cities during the Middle Ages.
    • The Hanseatic League was founded for the purpose of joining forces for promoting mercantile interests, defensive strength and political influence.
    • By the 14th century, the Hanseatic League held a near-monopoly on trade in the Baltic, especially with Novgorod and Scandinavia.

  • Italian Trade Cities

    • The trade routes of the Italian states linked with those of established Mediterranean ports and eventually the Hanseatic League of the Baltic and northern regions of Europe to create a network economy in Europe for the first time since the 4th century.

  • Danish Intervention

    • After the Defenestration of Prague and the ensuing Bohemian Revolt, the Protestants warred with the Catholic League until the former were firmly defeated at the Battle of Stadtlohn in 1623.
    • Wallenstein lacked a fleet, and neither the Hanseatic ports nor the Poles would allow the building of an imperial fleet on the Baltic coast.
    • At this point, the Catholic League persuaded Ferdinand II to take back the Lutheran holdings that were, according to the Peace of Augsburg, rightfully the possession of the Catholic Church.

  • The League of Nations

  • Effects of the Persian Wars

    • Once Sparta withdrew from the Delian League after the Persian Wars, it reformed the Peloponnesian League, which had originally been formed in the 6th century and provided the blueprint for what was now the Delian League.
    • A series of rebellions occurred between Athens and the smaller city-states that were members of the League.
    • For example, Naxos was the first member of the League to attempt to secede in approximately 471 BCE.
    • According to Thucydides, the siege of Thasos marked the transformation of the League from an alliance into a hegemony.
    • The Delian League was the basis for the Athenian Empire, shown here on the brink of the Peloponnesian War (c. 431 BCE).

  • The Persian Wars

    • The Persian Wars led to the rise of Athens as the head of the Delian League.
    • This formed the basis for an exclusive Ionian “cultural league”.
    • In the course of doing so, Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland ones into an alliance called the Delian League, so named because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire, prepare for future invasions, and organize a means of dividing the spoils of war.
    • Historians also speculate that Sparta was unconvinced of the ability of the Delian League to secure long-term security for Asian Greeks.
    • The Spartan withdrawal from the League allowed Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power within the Hellenic world.

  • The Rise of the Macedon

    • During that conflict, Philip conquered Potidaea, but ceded it to the Chalkidian League of Olynthus, with which he was allied.
    • In 337 BCE, Philip created and led the League of Corinth.
    • Members of the league agreed not to engage in conflict with one another unless their aim was to suppress revolution.
    • Another stated aim of the league was to invade the Persian Empire.

  • Introduction to the Peloponnesian War

    • The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) was fought between Athens and its empire, known as the Delian League, and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta.
    • The Argive democratic alliance was broken up and most members were reincorporated into Sparta’s Peloponnesian League, reestablishing Spartan hegemony throughout the region.
    • Members of the Peloponnesian League continued to send reinforcements to Syracuse in hopes of driving off the Athenians, but instead, Athens sent another 100 ships and 5,000 troops to Sicily.

  • Athens

    • These victories enabled Athens to bring most of the Aegean and many other parts of Greece together in the Delian League, creating an Athenian-dominated alliance from which Sparta and its allies withdrew.
    • Athens moved to abandon the pretense of parity among its allies and relocated the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens, where it funded the building of the Athenian Acropolis, put half its population on the public payroll, and maintained the dominant naval power in the Greek world.
    • Originally intended as an association of Greek city-states to continue the fight against the Persians, the Delian League soon turned into a vehicle for Athens's own imperial ambitions and empire-building.

  • The French Wars of Religion

    • Henry of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, leader of the Catholic League, funded and supported by Philip II of Spain.
    • The Catholic League had put its preachers to good use.
    • Open war erupted between the royalists and the Catholic League.
    • Charles, Duke of Mayenne, Guise's younger brother, took over the leadership of the League.
    • Fighting continued between Henry IV and the Catholic League for almost a decade.