A Second Netherlands?

Is there a way that a second/alternate version of the Netherlands could form from the North German trading states, like Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg? It doesn't have to necessarily leave the HRE, but it should fill the shoes that were filled IOTL by the Netherlands. In other words an urban society and politics, the naval and commercial expertise and a successful colonial power.

So essentially what I am asking is whether it is possible for a nation to come into existence that stretches from Frisia to Pomerania and that bares stark similarities to what we know as the United Provinces?
 
Not very easily, from what I know. For a start, they were all committed members of the Hanseatic League, which was both very profitable for them most of the time, and was the lifeblood of their trade. Where cities further west slowly divorced themselves from the Hansa in order to promote local trade, for those German states, the Hansa trade was the local trade. I'm not sure they had the infrastructure or human resources to switch to the colonial trade. Secondly there's the problem that the Netherlands was formed from sizable states, with a universal interest in politics, military defence etc, and the population to act on it. The German trading states were very small, almost entirely urbanised, with different political interests depending on their location and no way of defending each other, really, except perhaps from by sea...which would be no use at all since all of their threats would come from inland. These states tended instead to rely on their money to buy off threats, and still had to contend with local larger states picking on them for profit. There would be little logic for unification, they would be more of a liability to each other than a help - for instance imagine if Portugal was to somehow unite with Venice, and then each country keep dragging the other into wars on the other side of Europe from the other. There's also the problem that the Netherlands were very defensible in a pinch - when you can flood an entire country and turn strategic cities into literal islands, you can survive most things, albeit at huge cost. The German cities could not do that. If they tried to unite, either they'd get in trouble with the HRE if they tried to assert independence, or they'd get attacked by jealous neighbours wanting a trading capital to enrich their own state. Under such events, their cities would fall soon enough. Those are the main problems. There's a few other things, but they're more petty so I won't touch on them.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I agree with Falastur, it easier to turn them into some kind of Baltic Switzerland than a second Netherland. If they could gain control over the Danish isles and Scania (not impossible) they would have a fairly stong base from to build a Swiss-style confederation. The best periode to do this is in periode before Valdemar Atterdag (day again) liberated/bought back Denmark. If Valdemar fail we could imagine Falsterbo and Copenhagen succed in throwing the creditors out of the different region, and create the fundament for a confederation of mechants republics.
 
Top