Binnenmeere

The late medieval Hanse was an odd structure and very different to the maritime republics of the Mediterranean. Not so much because it was dominated by trading cities rather than princes, but because of the way it operated.  

Just compare the great Hanseatic cities of Lubeck, Hamburg, Gdansk, Riga, Reval etc. with the great Italian maritime republics of Venice, Genoa and Pisa.  

Both operated in geographically closed oceans, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. They transported goods over longer distances. But pretty much everything else was different:  

Mediterranean trade was mainly in high value, low weight goods, spices, silk, incense, carpets, glass coming into Western Europe in exchange for silver as well as goods like wine, salt, grain, olives and fish. 

The Baltic trade was predominantly in bulky everyday goods, herring, rye, stockfish, cloth. The only luxury items were furs and beeswax, though these were still quite bulky. 

The med traders sailed on galleys who would be rowed wherever the helmsman pointed her at, whilst the Hansards sailed on sailing ships that could not really go upwind, making arrival times and sometimes even arrival locations somewhat unpredictable. The cities around the Mediterranean were in constant competition with each other. The Venetians would attack a Genoese galley with the same fury as a Muslim one, or maybe with even more vigour. Within the Hansa the cities cooperated if they found common grounds. And those who did not agree would either not send a delegate to the Hanseatic diet or if the delegate was already there, the delegate would not vote. After that, those who had walked away would be left alone, unless they would proactively undermine the effort of the majority, at which point they could be excluded. 

Venice and Genoa conquered their trading posts along the Mediterranean and incorporated them into their maritime empires. Some of these, like the islands of Corfu, Crete and Cyprus were quite sizeable. In the later stages, Venice would become a significant land-based state as well as a maritime republic. None of the Hanseatic cities pursued a similar policy. When they went outside their own territory, they did that through their Kontors, which were embedded into the trading centres of Bruges, London, Bergen and Novgorod. They did go to war, and as we have seen quite successfully. But they usually tried to avoid it. And it was never to gain territory, but to force the princely rulers to confirm or expand their privileges and trading rights. Another major difference was the relative size of trading firms. 

In Italy great trading firms emerged with representatives in all the major centres, from Cairo to Bruges. The owners of these firms became immensely rich and dominated politics until gradually transitioning to princely rulers, like the Medici in Florence or the tight oligarchies in Florence and Genoa. The Hanse world on the other hand was mainly one of medium-sized merchants, where well-educated ambitious men could rise to the highest positions in their city, whilst sometimes the sons of successful merchants find themselves relegated to the lower ranks if they lacked the skills required. Why was that? Find out in episode 119 of the History of the Germans Podcast, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from. Here is a link that takes you straight there.