The Early Hanses 63
Low German merchants had received a similar affirmation in 1309. The kontor,
which, at first, was the only one of the big four not to have its own building
(the merchants assembled in the refectory of the Carmelite monastery), set
the rules in 1347. This, in turn, resulted in the 1356 intervention by emissaries
of the council for the gemene stede. The preparatory meeting for the council
emissaries in Lübeck is considered to mark the seminal event in the First Day
(Founding Day) for the Hanseatic League.
Thus, one cannot draw a mono-casual portrait for the ‘advance’ of the mer-
chants and cities of the Hanse. For each targeted area in the economic territory
of the Hanse, individual factors determining economic and political actions
must be identified on the basis of development within the individual Hanse
regions and cities (which, however, did not make continuous progress in any
one direction throughout the three discussed centuries). The result seems,
most often, to indicate specific purposeful actions, which drove development.
Ultimately, it was very much the exploitation of both bigger and smaller oppor-
tunities, interrupted by or connected to a number of failed ventures, that ele-
vated the Low German merchants and their cities to a leading position, which,
around the mid-fourteenth century, they defended by means of the “hense van
den dudeschen steden.”