Notes and Background information edited by Yair Davidiy, Brit-Am, Israel
Contents:
1. Introduction. Phoenician Sidon in the North.
2. The German Feudal Order
3. Towns & Cities
4. Differences Within Germany
5. Banking Families
6. Rise of the Hansa
7. Hansa Expansion
8. Colonization of Foreign Areas
9. Breaking the Monopoly
10. The Hansa in England
11. Competition with the Dutch
12. The Hansa Demise
13. The Hanseatic League and the Jews.
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1. Introduction. Phoenician Sidon in the North.
We identify a significant section of the population of the Netherlands with the Tribe of Zebulon.
Genesis 49:
13 Zebulun shall dwell on the Shores of the Sea; and He shall become a haven for ships, And his border shall adjoin Sidon.
See: Identifying Sidon
Sidon was a major Phoenician city. The term "Sidonian" was synonymous with Phoenician. Phoenicia gave rise to Carthage in what is now Tunisia. Carthage became a great empire. At one stage Phoenicians and Carthaginians began settling in Northern Germany. They intermarried with the local potentates and influenced the language and culture.
This has been studied by Professor Theo Venneman of Munich Unviersity, Germany, and by Robert Mailhammer, in Australia.
The city of Hamburg is on the site of a place named "Caudinge." This is a dialectical form of the name "Sidon" (Tsidon" in Hebrew). A name. "Codan", applied to the Baltic Sea in the region east of Jutland is also a dilaectical form of "Sidon." This suggests a region associated with Sidon stretching from the German border with the Nethlerands eastwards. This was the area that later gave rise to the Hanseatic League.
The Hanseatic League in its organization and mercantile orientation has been compared to that of the Phoenicians.
See:
Ancient Names. Traces of Israelites in the North
# 5. CODAN - Sidon - Germans of Sidon Adjoing the Netherlands of Zebulon
https://hebrewnations.com/articles/archaeology/ancient.html
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2. The German Feudal Order
The Emperor ruled over the Holy Roman Empire. This was an offshoot of the Empire of Charlemagne who died in 814. The HRE considered itself the rightful legal rulers of the whole of Christendom. This claim was more or less recognized by the Pope though the Popes of Rome and the Emperors in Germany were at frequent loggerheads with each other.
The HRE included both German and non-German countries. Nevertheless in German-speaking areas a German consciousness existed. Under the Emperor were to be found local Kings, Dukes, and semi-independent cities with their own elected ruling bodies.
Under the Kings and Dukes were lesser nobles. Aristocrats without land of their own became knights in the service of others.
After that were serfs and peasants. Serfs had to work some of the time for the local noble whereas peasants gave their overlord a portion of the annual harvest.
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3. Towns & Cities
In the 900s CE small towns and cities had started to be set up all over Germany.
They were usually located around the castles and palaces of the nobility or of the local leading Church official. Some of the cities became directly subject to the Emperor himself while others recognized the local potentate. The townships had control over their mercantile interests and their own legal and judicial system. Of an estimated population in Germany of 12 million in 1500, 1.5 million (i.e. one in eight) resided in cities and towns.
William Z. Ripley ("The Races of Europe," 1899) claimed that the average city-dweller was more dolichocephalic (i.e. long-headed) than the peasantry. This according to the "science" of Ripley would have indicated that they were of a different ethnic origin.
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4. Differences Within Germany
https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/German-society-economy-and-culture-in-the-14th-and-15th-centuries
# The more recently settled areas of the north and east were characterized by great farms and extensive estates
that produced a surplus of grain for export through the Baltic ports.... In the northeast the great landlords, headed by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, tightened their control over the originally free tenants, denied them freedom of movement, and ultimately bound them to the soil as serfs.
# The south and west was a region of denser population, thickly sown with small villages and the 'dwarf' estates of the lesser nobility. In the south the heavy urban demand for grain chiefly benefited the larger peasant proprietors, who sold their surplus production in the nearest town and used their gains to acquire more land. The lesser peasantry, with their smaller holdings, practiced chiefly subsistence farming, produced no surplus, and therefore failed to benefit from the buoyant urban demand. The frequent division of the patrimony among heirs often reduced it to uneconomically small fragments and encouraged an exodus to the cities. On the other hand, landless day labourers who survived the Black Death in the mid-14th century were able to command higher wages for their services. #
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5. Banking Families
There were two great German banking families.
The founder of the Fugger dynasty began life as a weaver.
The Fuggers were originally established in Swabia in the southwest.
The Weslers were also from Swabia but from a noble family. They claimed descent from the Roman-Byzantine general Belisarius who had defeated Attila the Hun. Their interests were more international. After the Reformation, both the Welser and Fugger families remained in the Roman Catholic Church.
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6. Rise of the Hansa
The German Language were divided into three main groups:
Low German was spoken in the north and east.
Middle German was spoken in the central area from west to east.
High or Upper German was in the south.
The Hanseatic league is associated more with Low German areas. The Hanseatic League (1356-1862 CE) was centered on the north German cities of Lubeck (east of Denmark), Hamburg (southwest of Denmark), and Bremen (west of Hamburg). At one stage it had a membership of 200 cities and towns. It waged wars of its own having been in conflict with Denmark and other principalities. The League's decline has been attributed to increased competition from England, Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden as these states grew more powerful and to social unrest resulting from the Protestant Reformation.
Lubeck (founded around 1143) in many ways was the chief city. Lubeck was in an area of the Slavic Wends who had been Germanicized adopting German Language and culture. Lubeck became the staging point and center for German merchants trading with Scandinavia, the Baltic, and Russia.
Lubeck set up a network between merchant cities for economic cooperation and mutual protection. This was the Hansa.
Individual Membership required birth to German parents, subjection to German law, and a commercial education.
see; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
Similar arrangements to those of the Hansa had existed between Scandinavian merchant centers. Different Germany cities had also begun to make arrangements with each other. To some degree the Hansa tended to supercede and even take control of these former groupings.
Hamburg became a free Imperial city in 1189, Lubeck in 1226.
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7. Hansa Expansion
In 1241 Lubeck and Hamburg formed an alliance. They gained control of the salt-fish trade. This was very important on those days. Due to lack of refrigeration salted fish were an important source of protein and nourishment.
https://www.quora.com/Which-member-of-the-Hanseatic-League-was-the-most-powerful
# In order to pass quickly from Northern Sea to the Baltic Sea, all merchants from the Hansa had to transfer goods through the land from Hamburg to Lubeck, and the opposite. It was also the entrance point of those goods and fishes from northern sea to the Holy Roman Germanic Empire, and its divided but yet rich territories.
The Hansa competed with Scandinavian merchants in the trade with Russia and eventually replaced them. The Hansa took over trade through Novgorod in skins of the Russian squirrel. These were used for fur-trimmed cloaks and other fashionable garments. It was very lucrative. The trade had first been dominated by the Swedes at Visby but the Hansa gained control of it. The Hansa was in league to some degree with numerous non-Hansa cities whose numbers varied from 70 to 170. They had outposts in Norway, Flanders, and England. The Hansa attempted to monopolise all sea trade and to a degree succeeded. They were especially important in the grain trade, salt-fish trade. squirrel fur from Russia trade, and through Lubeck the construction and sale of ships especially small cog boats.
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8. Colonization of Foreign Areas
The Hansa supported monarchs, imposed trade boycotts, and fought wars. The primary objective was always financial.
# The Livonian Confederation of 1435 to c. 1582 incorporated modern-day Estonia and parts of Latvia and had its own Hanseatic parliament (diet); all of its major towns became members of the Hanseatic League. The dominant language of trade was Middle Low German, a dialect with significant impact for countries involved in the trade, particularly the larger Scandinavian languages, Estonian, and Latvian. #
Between 1361-1370 the Hansa successfully waged war against Denmark and Norway.
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9. Breaking the Monopoly
In the Dutch-Hanseatic War (1438-1441), the merchants of Amsterdam sought and eventually won free access to the Baltic and broke the Hanseatic monopoly.
Tsar Ivan III of Russia closed the Hanseatic Kontor [trading-point] at Novgorod, Russia, in 1494.
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10. The Hansa in England
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/A2MFANtn3Z/hanseatic_league
London was never formally one of the Hanseatic cities, but it was a crucial link in the chain - known as a kontor or trading post. The community of German merchants who lived on the banks of the Thames were exempt from customs duties and certain taxes.
'At any given time they probably had about 15% market share of English imports and exports,' says Jens Tholstrup, an economist with a strong interest in the Hanseatic period.
English merchants had chafed against the Hansa quasi-monopoly but the Hansa would heavily bribe the English monarchs. This ended when Elizabeth-1 expelled Hanasa merchants from the country in 1597-98.
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11. Competition with the Dutch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
# The Hansa sold ships everywhere in Europe, including Italy. They drove out the Dutch, because Holland wanted to favour Bruges as a huge staple market at the end of a trade route. When the Dutch started to become competitors of the Hansa in shipbuilding, the Hansa tried to stop the flow of shipbuilding technology from Hanseatic towns to Holland. Danzig, a trading partner of Amsterdam, attempted to forestall the decision. Dutch ships sailed to Danzig to take grain from the city directly, to the dismay of Lubeck. Hollanders also circumvented the Hanseatic towns by trading directly with north German princes in non-Hanseatic towns. Dutch freight costs were much lower than those of the Hansa, and the Hansa were excluded as middlemen.
# When Bruges, Antwerp and Holland all became part of the Duchy of Burgundy they actively tried to take over the monopoly of trade from the Hansa, and the staples market from Bruges was transferred to Amsterdam. The Dutch merchants aggressively challenged the Hansa and met with much success. Hanseatic cities in Prussia, Livonia, supported the Dutch against the core cities of the Hansa in northern Germany. After several naval wars between Burgundy and the Hanseatic fleets, Amsterdam gained the position of leading port for Polish and Baltic grain from the late 15th century onwards. The Dutch regarded Amsterdam's grain trade as the mother of all trades.
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12. The Hansa Demise
In the 1500s the Swedish Empire and Denmark replaced the Hansa in their region. German princes encroached on Hansa privileges and some Hansa cities worked against other ones. After the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) the Hansa imploded. It was formally abolished with the creation of the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm-I in 1862.
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13. The Hanseatic League and the Jews.
Jewish communities weren't allowed to settle in Hanseatic towns until the 1500s to 1700s, Luebeck only allowed the residence of Jews in the 1900s!
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHanseatic_League
According to Altmann, Berthold. ..." Jews were able to thrive in trade after the Thirty Years' War 'because' the Hanseatic League became ineffective. " Sephardic Jews from Portugal came to Northern Europe after 1580 when Phillip-2 of Spain annexed Portugal and introduced the Inquisition. In 1610 there were about 20 Sephardic merchant families in Hamburg. They were protected but held no official "Hans" priveleges. In principal to belong to the Hansa one needed German parents. The Sephardic Jews in Hamburg "were prominent merchants with many contacts and a high turnover in trade. The Hamburg Senate protected the Portuguese Jews much as it did the English community." In Hamburg, "the senate granted all foreign merchants, including the Portuguese [Jews] equal rights as to export, import and wholesale trade in 1612, while all crafts, dominated by the guilds, remained closed for foreigners."
Concerning the long-range impression it appears that Hansa cities in succeeding generations were relatively LESS anti-Jewish than other German locales.
"We find partial support for Montesquieu's famous argument that trade encourages 'civility.' Hanseatic cities with a tradition of long-distance trade do not show persistence of anti-Semitism," Source: PERSECUTION PERPETUATED by Nico Voigtlaender and Hans-Joachim Voth, Working Paper, 2011.