The Baltic Trade 215
of Baltic grain, even if this import did not lead to that country’s dependency
on Hanseatic merchants.73 Only 20 to 25 percent of the demand of the whole
Norwegian population was satisfied by Hanseatic imports, which as stated
earlier is significant but not a monopoly.
Generally, it can be said that until 1400 the entire Baltic region exported
grain to the West and the North. Because of its economic system, the Teutonic
Order relied solely on exports, but Hansard merchants all over the Baltic also
seized the opportunity. After 1402 the picture changed, as Danzig and Thorn
grew into the main entrepôts of grain trade in the Baltic as the Western Baltic
developed into one of the greatest grain-consumers of the region. The rea-
sons for the rise of Danzig and Thorn are explained by the special agricul-
tural system of Poland, Prussia and the German East. In these regions, great
manors produced saleable surpluses, which were exported via the Vistula
River.74 At the same time, the breweries of the Wendian quarter developed
a rising demand of grain that consumed the whole regional surplus. This
meant that the Lubeckian brewers needed in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies alone 10,000,000 kg grain per year, not including the demand of their
Rostockerian and Wismarian colleagues.75
At the end of the fifteenth century, the importance of the grain-trade
between the Baltic East and the Netherlands increased.76 The growing demand
of the Dutch and Flemish towns and the cheap supply of Polish, Prussian,
and Livonian grain was an ideal connection. Both areas developed their own,
special interests in trade which existed contrary to, for example, the interests
of Lübeck and the other Wendian cities.77 The grain export from the eastern
Baltic, which was simply one export among others before this development,
Commerce. Maritime bulk trade in Northern Europe, 1150–1400, ed. Lars Berggren, Nils Hybel
and Annette Landen, Papers in Medieval Studies, vol. 15 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute
2002), 53–91. Richard W. Unger, “Feeding the Low Countries Towns: The grain trade in the
fifteenth century.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 77/2 (1999), 329–358, here 333f.
73 Kåre Lunden, “Hanseatane og norsk økonomi i seinmellomalderen. Nokre merknader.”
Norsk Historisk Tidsskrift 46 (1967), 97–129.
74 A. Mączak and H. Samsonowicz, “La zone Baltique,” 78f.
75 W. Frontzek, Braugewerbe, 20.
76 M. van Tielhof, The mother of all trades, 6f; R.W. Unger, “Feeding the Low Countries Towns,”
334f; Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide, “The Baltic grain trade and cereal prices in Flandres
at the end of the Middle Ages: some remarks.” In The Baltic grain trade, five essays, ed.
Walter Minchinton (Exeter: Association for the History of the Northern Seas, 1985), 11–20;
The same, La formation des prix céréaliers en Brabant et en Flandre au xve siecle (Brussels:
Editions de l’Universite de Bruxelles, 1975), 214–242.
77 M. van Tielhof, The mother of all trade.