The origin of Hanseatic League can be traced back to12nd century. Cologne (K&; OumlLn), Lubeck (Lübek), Hamburg and Bremen successively inherited the trade relations between Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Anglo-Saxon countries and Ireland before the Norman Conquest due to their convenient geographical location. Cologne businessmen obtained the privilege of trading in Britain and establishing overseas residences, and generously paid the ransom for Richard Lion's Heart, thus obtaining the tax-free concession in Britain. Since then, the king of England who succeeded to the throne has granted similar privileges to the merchants in Lubeck and Hamburg, and the merchants in these cities formed an early business alliance in Britain.
1158/1159 Henry, the lion of Herzogtum Von Sachsen, seized Lubeck from the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Through this occupation, the economically prosperous kingdom of Saxony opened the passage to the Baltic Sea. Businessmen in Lower Germany soon took this as a base and extended their business activities to the whole Baltic region. Businessmen from Lubeck soon set up commercial stations in the Swedish city of Visby and the Russian city of Helmgard, and took control of the business in Riga on 1299.
Because of the same race and interests, foreign German businessmen's groups began to unite and form a closer alliance to reduce competition. 12 10, Lubeck and Hamburg agreed to use the same civil law and criminal law in some matters to protect each other's businessmen in this city, which can be regarded as the beginning of the Hanseatic League. 124 1 year, the two cities formed a formal alliance to protect their businessmen from robbers and pirates. 1259, Lubeck, Rostock and Wisma formed a similar alliance to suppress pirates. By 1282, when the Hanseatic League in London and Bruges merged with the Hanseatic League in Lubeck and Hamburg into a single cooperative group, the Hanseatic League had been formed as far as the four major commercial cities in North Germany were concerned.
The word "Hanseatic" comes from the Gothic word "army" or "company", which means "heap" in German. It first refers to trade associations or guilds, and later refers to German merchant groups abroad. Before14th century, "Hanseatic" was only used to refer to the German groups in London and Bruges, such as "Hanseatic in Cologne" and "Hanseatic in Hamburg", and it was also used to collectively refer to the business of merchants in northern Germany, and the merchant Hanseatic evolved into a city Hanseatic.
1293, at the repeated request of Lubeck, businessmen from mecklenburg and Pomerania held a congress in Rostock, and decided that all cases related to them would be solved according to the laws of Lubeck in the future. Twenty-six cities voted for the resolution. Lubeck became the headquarters of Hanseatic League, and Lubeck Law became the same law of the League.