38 Hammel-Kiesow
These supplied important trading goods and were also consumers of goods
that had originated from trading branches abroad.
However, it wasn’t until the outset of the fourteenth century that the
Flemish, English, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Slavic, Baltic and Russian mer-
chants were almost completely driven from the primary routes of the early
Hanseatic trading system. Virtually no information exists regarding the extent
of trade conducted by these other groups.
The Traveling Associations of the Low German Merchants
During the middle Ages, merchants throughout Europe banded together in
voluntary associations in order to safeguard their interests by means of joint
trading. Aside from an obvious interest with regard to trade, these associa-
tions also performed social and religious functions. Usually, the organization
of these associations was such that they could make decisions, decide on
procedure, and punish rule breaking at their meetings. Such merchant asso-
ciations were primarily organized into two larger conglomerations, including
those formed by merchants in their respective hometowns and those formed
at the travel destinations of merchants abroad.76 The former can be further
differentiated into associations comprising all the merchants within a town
(for example those in St. Omer and Valenciennes), and into associations that
united the merchants in their travel destinations (i.e., the association for the
Schleswig travelers from Soest and the fraternities Danicum in Cologne). This
was particularly true of the association formed in the bigger cities with far-
reaching trade relations.
The kore, law of self-governance, allowed the merchants to manage their
own affairs without the need for a judge. The kore was the crux of specific
rights of merchants (ius mercatorum), the origin of which dated back to antiq-
uity. This ability to self regulate was a feature of the (free) union, a basic form
76 Meir Kohn, “Merchant Associations in Pre-Industrial Europe,” in idem, The Origins
of Western Economic Success: Commerce, Finance, and Government in Pre-Industrial
Europe (Hanover: Department of Economics, Dartmouth College, 2003), http://ssrn
.com/abstract=427763 (accessed August 6, 2008); critical towards the positive image of
merchant unions in research: Roberta Dessy and Sheilagh Ogilvie, Social Capital and
Collusion: The Case of Merchant Guilds, cesifo Working Paper Series No. 1037, September
2003, http://ssrn.com/abstract=449263 (accessed August 6, 2008); Selzer, Mittelalterliche
Hanse, 13–30. A new approach by Sheilagh C. Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade:
merchant guilds, 1000–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).