The First Merchant Guilds of the Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was, in the first instance, an association of merchant guilds. The guilds were the basic units of the League’s commercial system, and the guilds were the foundation on which the League’s later institutions were built.
The earliest merchant guilds of northern Germany were the Kaufmannsgilden of the Rhineland and Westphalia. The guilds were associations of merchants who travelled together, lived together in common hostels in foreign cities, and protected one another from the many dangers of medieval travel. The Romans had merchant guilds, and they survived the collapse of the Roman world in many places. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the merchant guilds of northern Germany acquired a new importance, as the long-distance trade of northern Europe revived after centuries of decline.
The Cologne guild
The most important of the early guilds was the guild of Cologne, which had obtained trading privileges in England as early as the reign of Ethelred II (978–1016). A charter attributed to Henry II, dated to the 1150s, confirmed the rights of the Cologne merchants to trade at the port of London and to be judged by their own law in disputes with the English. The Cologne guild was the founder of the Steelyard in London, and the Cologne guild was the principal channel through which the trade of the Baltic reached the English market.
The Westphalian guilds
Similar guilds existed in Dortmund, Soest, and other Westphalian towns, and they established the pattern of the merchant guild that would later be followed by the Baltic cities. The guilds were, in the first instance, local associations: they protected their members, regulated trade, and maintained the hostels in which the merchants lived during their stays in foreign cities. They did not yet form a league, and they did not yet act collectively. But they established the habits of cooperation that would, in time, become the foundation of the Hanseatic League.
The Wendish guilds
The guilds of the Wendish towns were modelled on the guilds of the Rhineland and Westphalia. The guild of Lübeck was founded in the late twelfth century, and the guilds of Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, and the other Wendish towns were founded in the thirteenth century. The guilds of the Wendish towns were, in the first instance, local associations, but they cooperated with one another, and the cooperation was the foundation of the League’s later growth.