Image 10.1
LÜBECK: "QUEEN OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE" (1300s)1
The rise of autonomous chartered towns limited the power of rulers and lords. They differed dramatically from urban centers in other cultures. Most European towns governed themselves and constituted centers of power through the banding together and the pooling of resources by otherwise powerless individuals. All urban inhabitants enjoyed exemption from feudal dues and other obligations. Nearly all gained their livelihood from manufacturing and commerce. Many also took up the necessary burdens of self-­‐government and defense. Cities, as incorporated communities, elected officials, kept records, imposed taxes, built high walls, and maintained militias. Over time, their administration gained in complexity. By 1450, the urban government of Frankfurt am Main divided into eighteen distinct committees. Yet, except for a few Italian city-­‐states, most looked to local and regional rulers—princes, kings, bishops, dukes—to administer justice between the towns and other political actors, to mint coins, and to keep good order in the wider realms of territory in the midst of which individual towns lay. In order to secure these benefits, most urban communities sided with territorial rulers in their political struggles with feudal lords. From the 1200s in northern Europe, dozens of cities formed a trading and defensive consortium called the Hansa, which controlled a big portion of European commerce. Linking cities and businesses along the North and Baltic Seas from England to Novgorod in Russia, it provided security for its members, won for them exemptions from taxes and fees in major trading centers including London, and increased the members’ political autonomy. Lübeck, a major port city and the most important member of the Hansa, is depicted below, as it looked in the fourteenth century.
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Image provided courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.