Nobody reads H.G. Wells any more but three-quarters of a century ago he was a giant. He once remarked that Finance and Administration were key to the rise and decline of Imperial Fortunes. Wells was brought up to understand the two 19th Century schools of thought on Trade and War. But he also glimpsed as through a glass darkly a third possibility. This faded option was the driving force behind the 12th to 17th century Hansa Trading Empire.

In the 19th Century the Corn Laws were at the heart of English Parliamentary Debates. Most of the arguments were rooted in vested interests. Nonetheless underpinning the opposing positions were moral arguments about War and its relationship to Trade.

The Free Traders argued for Peace through Trade and the Protectionists for Peace & Permanence through Self-Sufficiency. The Hansa represented a third school. Trade per se was not the point at issue but the manner and moral tenor of that trade…Trade as a Carrier of the Usury Virus for instance.

In the Middle Ages, the walled town of Visby was at the centre of the Hansa Trading Empire with commercial treaties and lines of supply and demand reaching out into all the corners of the Roman Catholic United States of Europe. Maritime Law was determined by the Hanseatic Elders. Herring was the Hansa staple and a Hansa ship never travelled with an empty hold. Visby was host to the Hansa top brass for many years...as good an off-shore tax haven as one would wish.

The people of Gotland however were less than enthusiastic about this great cancerous growth upon their island home. There were skirmishes and unstable alliances. The little maritime interests of the Gotland fishermen and the little landed interests of the Gotland smallholder would not always coincide with the big European maritime interests of the Hansa Merchants…and as time passed even less with the commercial interests of the Confederation of Hanseatic Towns.

By the end of the 14th century Gotland wanted nothing to do with the military pretensions of the Hanseatic League. They wanted out. Their prayers were answered. Mysterious cosmic force caused the deep ocean currents of the North Atlantic Ocean to move and the economics disappeared overnight from the Hansa Shipping Cartel. Gotland returned to its former peaceful glory and became the home of such great Swedish poetic spirits as Ingmar Bergman…creator of the rich visual and emotional feast that is his silver screen production of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute.

It is normal to associate the Association of Hansa Merchants, the Confederation of Hansa Towns and the Hansa League of City States with the Hansa’s periods of Growth, Power and Decline. My model also has periods of growth, power and decline but my focus is on the key shifts in the Structure of the Hansa.

(I) Merchant Adventurers 1130-1180
(II) Merchants' Hansa 1180-1250
(III) Hansa of the Towns 1250-1350
(IV) The Golden Years 1350-1400
(V) Power Games 1400-1450
(VI) The War Years 1450-1480
(VII) Two Centuries of Decline 1480-1680.

In the summer of 1999 I sketched out a plan of research. My starting point would be the historic records of the five Hanseatic City-States of Visby, Novgorod, Hamburg, Riga and Danzig and the three Hansa Factories at London, Bergen and Boston.

Research into the Competitive Relationships between the Hansa and the Teutonic Order, the Roman Catholic Church, the English Court, the Swedish Court and the Spanish Court would also be pursued. Enlargement of the European Union would open up new opportunities to trace the relevant Medieval Documents.

Underpinning my Research Plan were two working assumptions. Strategically the Hansa operated like a modern multinational corporation. The Hansa’s goals would thus be to secure a minimum thirty percent market share in each key commodity sector.

Secondly, while the tariff measures of the Hansa at the end of the 13th century were grounded in Sound Political-Economic Theory and led to the rise of the Hansa, the confiscatory measures introduced at the beginning of the 15th century were grounded in Unsound Political-Economic Theory and led to the Hansa’s decline.

I have in mind to spend half of next year affiliated to the Economic History Department at Lund University while gathering the data needed to prepare Financial Accounts for 40 commodities traded by 200 Hansa City States from 1130 to 1630. Here is my basket of commodities:

Amber, Barley, Beer, Butter, Cereals, Cloth, Copper, Corn, Fish, Flax, Flour, Furs, Gold, Grain, Hemp, Herrings, Hides, Honey, Iron, Lead, Leather, Linen, Manufactures, Orientals, Pitch, Potash, Rye, Saffron, Salt, Saltpetre, Silk, Silver, Spices, Sugar, Tar, Timber, Wax, Wheat, Wine and Wool.

Seven years ago I argued that a Hansa Study of this nature would be valuable as Pure Research. However two further benefits now suggest themselves.

First my Hansa Study will establish the basis for exploring the hypothesis that the Financial Technique of Central Banking introduced in the second half of the 17th century shifted the relationship between War & Peace, Trade, Finance and Administration and led to our 300 years of Global Material Expansion.

Secondly…to the extent that British Imperial Policy from Elizabethan Times to the present day was grounded in lessons learnt from the success and failure of the Hansa…valuable insights are to be gained into Trading Policy for a new century by establishing the soundness of the Political-Economic Doctrines presently vying for public favour.