 What was the Hanseatic League?
What cities in the post-Brexit era could learn from a 14th-century trading bloc As you fly from the country now known as Germany to Britain, the coastal geography of northern European cities gently unfurls. From the middle of the 13th century, and for some 300 years after, many settlements dotted along this route formed the prosperous Hanseatic League, a European trading confederation of market towns, before the rise of the nation state led to its dissolution. The Hanseatic League is not well known, and today it lives on most prominently in the name of the German national airline Lufthansa, literally the 'Hansa of the skies', whose planes you can look out of – and down towards the Hanseatic cities – on the short journeys between mainland Europe and Britain. In the traumatised atmosphere of post-Brexit Britain, it is worth remembering the Hanseatic League. In the late 1300s, Chaucer wrote about characters travelling to Jerusalem, and others who came from Europe; and it was at exactly this point that the Hanseatic League slowly started to coalesce, eventually influencing our isles. The League is most easily understood as a loose federation of cities that acted together in self-interest to promote trade. The Hanseatic cities developed their own legal system, and their armies came to one another's aid.
 A loose federation of coastal cities that worked together to promote trade.
 A loose federation of coastal cities that worked together to promote trade.  A casual federation of cities that worked together to promote trade.  A league of cities by the sea that agreed to come to each other's aid with armed forces when necessary.  A leauge of merchants that worked together to promote trade.