Persistence of the Hanseatic League?

so i've had this idea in my list of things to look into for a long time. simple enough: does the Hanseatic League have any chance of persisting past it's OTL end, perhaps even to the present-day, and what does everyone think would be the effects of this?
 
I don't think so. THe problem is not the League - it's sdo malleagble the members themselves didn't really know what it was. It could certainly continue to exist in some form. But with the advent of nation states, the number of independent cities was so reduced it wouldn't have stood a chance at continuing in any meaningful function. Absent some radical change in how much of Europe is governed, you can't really have a Hanseatic League after the 17th century. The centrasl governments would not tolerate it.
 
There is some good discussion here

AH Challenge: Hansa Germany
Rekjavik

But, as Carlton says, the rise of nation states would quite swamp them. So you might well need to prevent that rise. An Angevin Empire and an HRE, both loose coalitions, might, MIGHT allow the Hansa to survive. But they've got to deal with Denmark. And Sweden. and maybe the Netherlands....

AND they HAVE to become a military alliance, I think, not just an economic one.

I'd LOVE to see a modern day Hansa, but I don't know how you'd do it.
 
The movement of trade from the Baltic to the north sea/atlantic really hurts them in the long run. I'm not terrible sure how the Hansa can adjust for it.
 
The movement of trade from the Baltic to the north sea/atlantic really hurts them in the long run. I'm not terrible sure how the Hansa can adjust for it.

They wouldn't really need to. The overall volume of trade would still be enough to sustain a fair amount of prosperity, and controlling access to the Baltic would ensure a lucrative business in timber, tar, grain, wax and flax to markets in the West hungry for raw materials. The League would not be a great power, but it wasn't terribly well suited to that role anyway.

The problem is the nation states. There never was anything like a unified Hanseatic identity. Cities of the league could be subject to kings or territorial lords, self-governing or subject to external meddling. It was not a problem within the legal framework of medieval government, but no modern European state would willingly accept that degree of independence in a city. To have it continue, you need a huge change in how the countries surrounding the Baltic and North Sea are run, and I don't see how you get that without changing pretty much all of European politics.
 
hmm...perhaps they could be something like the EU, with a common currency among the member-states?

The problem is that the things the Hansa provided (some of) its members - currency, trading standards, commercial law - were the kind of things early modern central governments coveted control over themselves. They were lucrative and seen as important.
 
The Hansa have to defeat the national governments or be destroyed themselves. They need a fairly coherent block of land to make for a military defense: something like a north German/Dutch/Baltic Switzerland dominated by the "urban" centers. Distributed like currants in a hostile national pudding, they're doomed to slow extinction.

Bruce
 
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