Introduction 3
tion of the Hanse as dynamic and pliable organization.11 For time being, how-
ever, Hanse history remained largely the concern of German historians until
the 1960s with the publication of Dollinger’s survey.
Philippe Dollinger was a student of both Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre at
the University of Strasbourg, where he spent almost his entire career. His book,
The German Hansa, broke new ground when it was published over forty years
ago. It was groundbreaking not because it presented anything particularly new
about Hanse history—it was a survey after all, and had its share of errors—
but because it freed the study of the Hanse from the fetters of regional and
national histories and from the often politicized histories written since the
Second World War. This is not to suggest that in the decades prior to Dollinger’s
book there was nothing particularly interesting happening in the field of Hanse
history—quite the contrary, as I have pointed out—but it presented the first
successful unified Hanse history accessible to a broad international readership
by a non-German author.
The publication of Dollinger’s book solidified the ongoing scholarly move-
ment that placed Hanse history in an international context, and one that
was no longer strictly dominated by German scholars. It still remains one of
the most widely read books on Hanse history in English. Indeed, aside from
Dollinger’s, T.H. Lloyd’s book, England and the German Hanse,13 may be the
best-known book on the Hanse available in the English language. But this is
not to say that scholars writing in English have failed to engage with and con-
tribute to Hanse scholarship. Quite the contrary; far more scholarship on the
Hanse is being produced in English than ever before.
A variety of scholars during the past twenty or so years have re-examined
some of the older concerns of Hanse scholars and have refined previous
conclusions and have opened up new avenues of research. For example, fol-
lowing the lead of von Brandt decades earlier, Ernst Pitz took up the constitu-
tional issue again late in his career and reinforced the diffuse nature of Hanse
11 Ahasver von Brandt, “Die Hanse als mittelalterliche Wirtschaftsorganisation,” in A. v.
Brandt, et al., eds., Die Hanse als mittelalterliche Wirtschaftsorganisation (Cologne: vs
Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1963), 9–37.
12 Philippe Dollinger, La Hanse (xiie–xviie Siècles) (Paris: Aubier, Éditions Montaigne, 1964).
The book was subsequently published in German in 1966 and in English in 1970.
13 T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: A study of their trade and commercial
diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
14 Most recently see, Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz and Stuart Jenks, eds., The Hanse in Medieval
and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013).