A Companion to the Hanseatic League

102 North

table 3.1 Danzig Sea Commerce 1460–1583 (Number of ships that called at or departed from

Danzig)

Ports of Departure or Origin 1460 1475/76 1530 1583

Niederlande 11 160 235 1015
Lübeck 59 168 24 66
Rostock 10 45 21 27
Stralsund 20 18 13 27
Wismar 5 18 3 3
Kolberg 2 1 10 50
Stolp 2 5 2 22
Warp – – – 20
Rügenwalde – 5 1 18
Stettin 1 7 6 15
Greifswald 3 3 2 11
Treptow 3 – 1 11
Köslin – – – 10
Anklam 1 1 8 1

Source: Johannes Schildhauer, “Zur Verlagerung des See- und Handelsverkehrs im nordeuropäischen

Raum während des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte vol. 4 (1968),

192–206.

Both the trade of Lübeck and that of the Wendish Hanseatic League cities

grew with the Baltic Sea trade. However, the Dutch profited disproportionately

from the trade and would fully control these cities economically at the close

of the sixteenth century. Additionally, Bruges, the traditional destination of

the Hanseatic merchants in Flanders, had been in decline since 1460, because

the merchants had primarily frequented the Brabant trade fairs in Bergen op

Zoom and in Antwerp. By the time the Hanseatic merchants finally completed

a counting house in Antwerp in 1563, Antwerp’s commerce had already passed

its zenith.

Upper German rivals of the Hanseatic cities had on the other hand greatly

profited from the Brabant trade fairs. As rivals to the people of Cologne, mer-

chants of Nuremberg purchased English cloth at the Brabant trade fairs that

they had dyed and finished on the spot in order to expand trade to the South

and Southeast. Demand for silver in the Burgundian Netherlands in the last

third of the fifteenth century drew the expanding trade of the Upper Germans