The Hanseatic League

The Treaty of Novgorod and Hanseatic Privileges in Russia

The Treaty of Novgorod was one of the most important treaties in the history of the Hanseatic League, and the foundation of the League’s commercial dominance in Russia. The treaty was first concluded in 1270, and the treaty was reinforced in several subsequent treaties, including those of 1300, 1323, 1371, and 1434. The treaty gave the merchants of the League extensive privileges in Novgorod and in the Russian north, and the treaty was the principal channel through which the goods of Russia reached the markets of the West.

The principal provisions

The principal provisions of the treaty were:

  1. The merchants of the League were allowed to trade freely in Novgorod and in the surrounding region, including the great fur markets of the Russian north.
  2. The merchants of the League were allowed to hold divine services in their own church, the Church of Saint Peter, which was exempt from Russian ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
  3. The merchants of the League were allowed to bear arms within the city, in self-defence and in defence of their property.
  4. The merchants of the League were allowed to maintain a permanent garrison in the kontor, the Peterhof, which was the only such garrison in any of the kontore.
  5. The merchants of the League were exempt from most of the customs duties that other foreign merchants had to pay.
  6. The merchants of the League were judged by Hanseatic law in disputes with the Russians, and the Russian authorities were obligated to enforce the decisions of the League’s courts.

A remarkable and fragile arrangement

The treaty was a remarkable document, and the foundation of the League’s commercial dominance in Russia. The treaty was, however, also a fragile arrangement, and the treaty was constantly under threat. The Russian authorities were, in the late Middle Ages, increasingly interested in the fur trade, and they were determined to assert their control over the fur trade. Their attempts to assert control over the fur trade led to several conflicts with the League, and the conflicts were one of the principal causes of the wars between the League and Russia.

A useful background: Novgorod was, in the 13th–15th centuries, a veche republic — a self-governing city-state with its own assembly, its own bell (the vecheboy kolokol, removal of which was a sign of Moscow’s subjugation), and its own foreign policy. The Hanseatic treaties were with the veche, not with the grand duke of Moscow. This made the treaties politically asymmetric: the Hanseatic cities dealt with Novgorod as a sovereign, but Moscow treated Novgorod as a subject city. The eventual Moscow-Novgorod reconciliation (1478) is, in effect, the moment when the treaties’ political basis disappeared.

The privileges granted by the treaty were finally revoked in 1474, when the League closed the Peterhof in retaliation for Russian attacks on Hanseatic merchants. The closure of the Peterhof marked the end of the League’s commercial dominance in Russia, and the closure was a major blow to the League’s commercial position in the East.

A note on the chronology: the closure of the Peterhof in 1474 happened against a background of escalating Russian-Hanseatic tension. The 1471 Battle of Shelon, in which Moscow defeated Novgorod, was the decisive moment in the integration of Novgorod into the Moscow state. The 1474 closure was a League response to a Russia that was no longer the Novgorod of the 13th century.