202 Jahnke
The Intra-Baltic Trade
The Baltic was certainly not only the main route for international trade between
Bruges and Reval/Danzig. Baltic trade was also made up of many other trad-
ing activities, both big and small, within this area. This Intra-Baltic trade had
many components. Some were of supra-regional relevance, like the trade in
salt, Baltic cloth, hops, stone products or Baltic wine. Others had only regional
relevance, like that of Estonian gloves or Swedish salmon. All these activities
together distinguished Hanseatic trade and it is its multiplicity that was the
primary hallmark of this trade. The Hanseatic merchant was not a monolithic
wholesaler, but a multitasking all-rounder with many connections and inter-
ests. He was acting on the international level as well as on the supra-regional
level and the regional level from many places at the same time.
The Organization of Baltic Trade
One of the biggest problems of the Baltic trade was the long distances between
its trading centers and the seasonal problems of shipping and communication.
It took between four weeks, depending on the weather conditions, and, during
the winter, up to three or four months to get from Reval to Lübeck, so it was not
possible to communicate rapidly with factors at other places. To resolve this
problem, the Hanseatic merchants in the Baltic developed their own system
of trade. Instead of organizing their companies after the Italian example, with
strong headquarters and dependant subalterns at other markets, the Baltic
merchants pinned their hope on decentralization. The Hanseatic companies
operating in the Baltic were designed by a consortium of independent mer-
chants, which dealt with their own goods in the same manner as they did with
the goods of their partners (see the chapter by Christian Selzer and Ulf Ewert).
As a result, the distance between the different places did not matter, because
every merchant knew that his partner would act as carefully and responsibly as
he did—and without any additional charges. This system was extremely inex-
pensive and reliable and tailor-made for the conditions around the Baltic Sea,
but there was one downside: because of the absence of a general headquar-
ters, Hanseatic merchants were not able to calculate their earnings and losses
continuously. Rather, merchants had to wait until all trading activities with all
partners in the particular company were completed.
As a result of this system, Baltic merchants were individually rich, but
experienced poor cash flow over long stretches of time and therefore made
no investments in productive industries. This aggravated the tendency for