8 Harreld
Burkhardt situates the organization of the kontors within the context of a
medieval corporate body. In this regard, kontors would have been familiar to
both the Hanse merchants and the officials of the towns in which they were
located. The kontor does not, therefore, represent a “completely new organiza-
tional structure,” rather it was one that developed over a long period of time.
One important aspect of long-term development for Hanse merchants was
the many regulations instituted in the kontors that were intended to regulate
trade within the kontor and between Hanse merchants.
Although the kontors were set up as enclaves where merchants could live
and work with others from Hanse towns, Burkhardt describes life in the kontor
as very hard for the residents who were not full-fledged merchants. According
to Burkhardt, the male-dominated kontors, where merchants, assistants, and
boys (placed with a merchant to obtain an education) created a community
that was, indeed, different from home. The boys were subjected to often-
violent rites of passage and were occupied with menial tasks. Assistants, in
spite of their status that allowed them more freedom than the boys, were very
much under the merchants’ authority—though beatings were not allow once
a boy became an assistant. Even most of the merchants living at the kontors
were junior partners, which meant that they were beholden to the wishes of
the “home office.”
Nevertheless, virtually all of the daily work at the kontors was geared toward
trade and the maintenance of regulations and relationships that continued to
insure commercial security. As a result, the kontors also served a political func-
tion for the Hanse towns. The kontors were in a particularly good position to
disrupt trade if necessary. Boycotts, embargoes, and blockades were especially
successful during the height of Hanse commercial power in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. This was, however, a two-edged sword, as rulers could
just as easily close down Hanse kontors when it suited them.
Outposts also served Hanse merchants in various parts of the North Sea
and the Baltic on a temporary basis. Unlike the four kontors, outposts were
much smaller and were usually open only seasonally. Burkardt suggests that
there may have been as many as 50 Hanse outposts, including some on the
Atlantic coast of France, and in Lisbon. The use of the outposts was tied to
the trade in a specific commodity, for example salt along the Atlantic coast, or
Herring in the North Sea.
Although the kontors and outposts served a variety of functions, they figured
also in the construction of social networks, which is the topic Ulf Christian
Ewert and Stephan Selzer take up in Chapter 5. After explaining the theory
and methodology of social networks, Ewert and Selzer trace the population