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CHAPTER 6
The Baltic Trade
Carsten JahnkeThe Baltic Trade: A General Introduction
From the beginning of the League, the trade along the coasts of the Baltic
Sea was the backbone of all sea-going Hanseatic activities. Products from
the regions on the farthest east of the Baltic Sea were of such high interest
that from Roman times onwards merchants accepted the risks of a long and
troublesome journey to sell western and to buy eastern products at both ends
of the Baltic. The German merchants who came to the Baltic in the eleventh
century and who would become the later Hanse did not create a new trade
route; they intensified and developed the old and well-rehearsed northern axis
of European trade. (See Chapter 1).
The Hanseatic trade in the Baltic was not static: in the course of time some
towns developed a greater importance for trade than others, as some trading
goods changed their importance and appeared or disappeared from the inter-
national stock lists. The trade and trade system of the Baltic were in a constant
flux, but the east coast of the Baltic Sea was the most important economic
center of this area throughout the period. Wax and fur were two of the most
important trading goods from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.
The Baltic Sea trade was not only of interest because of wax, fur and other
trading goods, but also because this sea was one of the most important com-
mercial connectors in northern Europe. From the tenth century onwards, the
Baltic Sea constituted one of the most important trade routes, connecting
not only the individual shores of the Baltic, but also tying the Russian, Polish,
Hungarian and middle German production centers to international trade-
routes via river and overland transport. Therefore, the Baltic was not predomi-
nantly a production center of European scope, but first and foremost one of
the most important European zones of contact and trade.1
1 Carsten Jahnke, “Der Ostseeraum und seine Produktion bis 1400.” In Der Ostseeraum bis 1400,
ed. Thomas Riis (Tönning: Der andere Verlag forthcoming); Henryk Samsonowicz, “Les foires
en Pologne au xve et xvie siecle sur la toile de fond de la situation économique en Europe.”
In Der Außenhandel Ostmitteleuropas, 1450–1650. Die ostmitteleuropäischen Volkswirtschaften
in ihren Beziehungen zu Mitteleuropa, ed. Ingomar Bog (Cologne, Vienna: Böhlau, 1971),