The Evolution of States Part 33

[Footnote 707: Laing, _Norway_, p. 213.]

[Footnote 708: Laing, as cited, p. 220; Crichton and Wheaton, ii, 368.]

[Footnote 709: Sweden in 1800 stood at 2,347,303; in 1880, at 4,565,668; in 1900, at 5,136,441. Estimate for 1910, 5,521,943. Norway in 1815 stood at 886,656; in 1910 at 2,391,782.]

[Footnote 710: Laing, as cited, p. 103, _note_.]

CHAPTER III

THE HANSA

Systematic commerce in the north of Europe, broadly speaking, begins with the traffic of the Hansa towns, whose rise may be traced to the sudden development of civic life forced on Germany in the tenth century by the emperor Henry I, as a means of withstanding the otherwise irresistible raids of the Hungarians.[711] Once founded, such cities for their own existence' sake gave freedom to all fugitive serfs who joined them, defending such against former masters, and giving them the chance of earning a living.[712] That is by common consent the outstanding origin of German civic industry, and the original conditions were such that the cities, once formed, were gradually forced[713] to special self-reliance. _Faustrecht_, or private war, was universal, even under emperors who suppressed feudal brigandage; and the cities had to fight their own battle, like those of Italy, from the beginning. As compared with the robber baronage and separate princes, they stood for intelligence and co-operation, and supplied a basis for organisation without which the long German chaos of the Middle Ages would have been immeasurably worse. Taking their commercial cue from the cities of Italy, they reached, as against feudal enemies, a measure of peaceful union which the less differentiated Italian cities could not attain save momentarily. The decisive conditions were that whereas in Italy the enemies were manifold--sometimes feudal n.o.bles, sometimes the Emperor, sometimes the Pope--the German cities had substantially one objective, the protection of trade from the robber-knights. Thus, as early as the year 1284, seventy cities of South Germany formed the Rhenish League, on which followed that of the Swabian towns. The league of the Hansa cities, like the other early "Hansa of London," which united cities of Flanders and France with mercantile London, was a growth on all fours with these.[714] Starting, however, in maritime towns which grew to commerce from beginnings in fis.h.i.+ng, as the earlier Scandinavians had grown to piracy, the northern League gave its main strength to trade by sea.

Its special interest for us to-day lies in the fact that it was ultra-racial, beginning in 1241 in a pact between the free cities of Lubeck and Hamburg,[715] and finally including Wendish, German, Dutch, French, and even Spanish cities, in fluctuating numbers. The motive to union, as it had need be, was one of mercantile gain. Beginning, apparently, by having each its separate authorised _hansa_ or trading-group in foreign cities, the earlier trading-towns of the group, perhaps from the measure of co-operation and fraternity thus forced on them abroad,[716] saw their advantage in a special league for the common good as a monopoly maintained against outsiders; and this being extended, the whole League came to bear the generic name.

See Kohlrausch for the theory that contact in foreign cities is the probable cause of the policy of union (_History of Germany_, Eng.

tr., p. 260; cp. Ashley, _Introd. to Economic History_, i, 104, 110). As to the origin of the word, see Stubbs, i, 447, _note_. The _hans_ or _hansa_ first appears historically in England as a name apparently identical with _gild_; and, starting with a _hansa_ or hanse-house of their own, English cities in some cases are found trading through subordinate _hansas_ in other cities, not only of Normandy but of England itself. Thus arose the Flemish Hansa or "Hansa of London," ignored in so many notices of the better-known Hanseatic League. Early in the thirteenth century it included a number of the towns of Flanders engaged in the English wool-trade; and later it numbered at one time seventeen towns, including Chalons, Rheims, St. Quentin, Cambray, and Amiens (Ashley, _Introd.

to Economic History_, i, 109; cp. Prof. Schanz, _Englische Handelspolitik_, 1889, i, 6, citing Varenbergh, _Hist. des relations diplomatiques entre le comte de Flandre et l'Angleterre au moyen age_, Bruxelles, 1874, p. 146 _sq._). There is some obscurity as to when the foreign Hansards were first permitted to have warehouses and residences of their own in London. Cp.

Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, vol. i, -- 68; and Ashley, i, 105, following Schanz, who dates this privilege in the reign of Henry III, though the merchants of Cologne (_id._ p. 110) had a _hansa_ or gildhall in London in the reign of Richard I. Under whatever conditions, it is clear that London was one of the first foreign cities in which the German Hansard traders came in friendly contact.

A reciprocal and normal egoism furthered as well as thwarted the Hansard enterprise. Trade in the feudal period being a ground of privilege like any other, the monopolied merchants of every city strove to force foreign traders to deal with them only. On the other hand, the English n.o.bility sought to deal rather with the foreigner directly than with the English middlemen; and thus in each feudal country, but notably in England,[717] the interest of the landed cla.s.s tended to throw foreign trade substantially in foreign hands, which did their best to hold it.

In the reigns of the Edwards privileges of free trade with natives were gradually conferred on the foreign traders[718] in the interests of the landed cla.s.s--the only "general consumers" who could then make their claims felt--in despite of the angry resistance of the native merchant cla.s.s. For the rest, in a period when some maritime English cities, like those of France and Germany, could still carry on private wars with each other as well as with foreign cities,[719] a trader of one English town was in any other English town on all fours with a foreigner.[720] When, therefore, the foreigners combined, their advantage over the native trade was twofold.

Naturally the cities least liable to regal interference carried on a cosmopolitan co-operation to the best advantage. The Hansa of London, being made up of Flemish and French cities, was hampered by the divided allegiance of its members and by their national jealousies;[721] while the German cities, sharing in the free German scramble under a nominal emperor much occupied in Italy, could combine with ease. Cologne, having early Hansa rights in London, sought to exclude the other cities, but had to yield and join their union;[722] and the Hansa of London dwindled and broke up before their compet.i.tion. As the number of leagued cities increased, it might be thought, something in the nature of an ideal of free trade must have partly arisen, for the number of "privileged"

towns was thus apparently greater than that of the outside towns traded with. To the last, however, the faith seems to have been that without monopoly the league must perish; and in the closing Protestant period the command of the Baltic, as against the Dutch and the Scandinavians, was desperately and vainly battled for. But just as the cities could not escape the play of the other political forces of the time, and were severally clutched by this or that potentate, or bia.s.sed to their own stock, so they could not hinder that the principle of self-seeking on which they founded should divide themselves. As soon as the Dutch affiliated cities saw their opening for trade in the Baltic on their own account, they broke away.

While the league lasted, it was as remarkable a polity as any in history. With its four great foreign factories of Bruges, London, Bergen, and Novgorod, and its many minor stations, all conducted by celibate servitors living together like so many bodies of friars;[723]

with its four great circles of affiliated towns, and its triennial and other congresses, the most cosmopolitan of European parliaments; with its military and naval system, by which, turning its trading into fighting fleets, it made war on Scandinavian kings and put down piracy on every hand--it was in its self-seeking and often brutal way one of the popular civilising influences of northern Europe for some two hundred and fifty years; and the very forces of separate national commerce, which finally undermined it, were set up or stimulated by its own example. With less rapacity, indeed, it might have conciliated populations that it alienated. A lack of any higher ideals than those of zealous commerce marks its entire career; it is a.s.sociated with no such growth of learning and the fine arts as took place in commercial Holland; and its members seem to have been among the most unrefined of the northern city populations.[724] But it made for progress on the ordinary levels. In a world wholly bent on privilege in all directions, it at least tempered its own spirit of monopoly in some measure by its principle of inclusion; and it pa.s.sed away as a great power before it could dream of renewing the ideal of monopoly in the more sinister form of Oriental empire taken up by the Dutch. And, while its historians have not been careful to make a comparative study of the internal civic life which flourished under the commercial union, it does not at all appear that the divisions of cla.s.ses were more steep, or the lot of the lower worse, than in any northern European State of the period.

The "downfall" of such a polity, then, is conceptual only. All the realities of life evolved by the league were pa.s.sed on to its const.i.tuent elements throughout northern Europe; and there survived from it what the separate States had not yet been able to offer--the adumbration, however dim, of a union reaching beyond the bounds of nationality and the jealousies of race. In an age of private war, without transcending the normal ethic, it practically limited private war as regarded its German members; and while joining battle at need with half-barbarian northern kings, or grudging foreigners, it of necessity made peace its ideal. Its dissolution, therefore, marked at once the advance of national organisation up to its level, and the persistence of the more primitive over the more rational instincts of coalition.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 711: Menzel, _Geschichte der Deutschen_, bk. ix, cap. 147; Kohlrausch, _History of Germany_, Eng. tr., pp. 157, 162, 257; Dunham, _History of the Germanic Empire_, 1835, i, 108; Sharon Turner, _History of Europe during the Middle Ages_, 2nd ed. i, 13. The main authority is the old annalist Wittikind.]

[Footnote 712: Heeren, _Essai sur l'influence des Croisades_, 1808, pp.

269-72; Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, bk. iii, ch. 3.]

[Footnote 713: As to the process of evolution, see a good summary in Robertson's _View of the Progress of Society in Europe_ (prefixed to his _Charles V_), Note xvii to Sect. I.]

[Footnote 714: The Spanish _Hermandad_ was originally an organisation of cities set up in similar fas.h.i.+on. E. Armstrong, _Introduction_ to Major Martin Hume's _Spain_, 1898, p. 12.]

[Footnote 715: Lubeck was founded in 1140 by a count of Holstein, and won its freedom in the common medieval fas.h.i.+on by purchase. Hamburg bought its freedom of its bishop in 1225. Hallam, _Middle Ages_, 11th ed. iii, 324. Many Dutch, supposed to have been driven from their own land by an inundation, settled on the Baltic coast between Bremen and Dantzic in the twelfth century. Heeren, _Essai sur les Croisades_, 1808, pp. 266-69, citing Leibnitz and Hoche. Cp. G.H. Schmidt, _Zur Agrargeschichte Lubecks_, 1887, p. 30 _sq._]

[Footnote 716: "The league ... would scarcely have held long together or displayed any real federal unity but for the pressure of external dangers" (Art. "Hanseatic League" in _Ency. Brit._, 10th ed. xi, 450).]

[Footnote 717: Cp. Ashley, as cited, i, 104-112; Schanz, as cited, i, 331.]

[Footnote 718: Cp. W. von Ochenkowski, _Englands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters_, 1879. pp. 177-82, 221-31.

Cp. the author's _Trade and Tariffs_, pt. ii, ch. ii, -- 1.]

[Footnote 719: Hallam, _Middle Ages_, iii, 335. On private war in general see Robertson's _View_, note 21 to -- i.]

[Footnote 720: Ashley, i, 108, 109.]

[Footnote 721: Whereas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries England and Flanders had freely exchanged trading privileges, in the fifteenth century they begin to withdraw them, treating each other as trading rivals (Schanz, i, 7, 8).]

[Footnote 722: Ashley, i, 110.]

[Footnote 723: This principle may have been copied from the practice of the Lombard _Umiliati_. The common account of that order is that when in 1014 the Emperor banished a number of Lombards, chiefly Milanese, into Germany, they formed themselves into a religious society, called "The Humbled," and in that corporate capacity devoted themselves to various trades, in particular to wool-working. Returning to Milan in 1019, they developed their organisation there. Down to 1140 all the members were laymen; but thereafter priests were placed in control. For long the organisation was in high repute both for commercial skill and for culture. Ultimately, like all other corporate orders, they grew corrupt; and in 1571 they were suppressed by Pius V. (Pignotti, _Hist. of Tuscany_, Eng. trans. 1823, pp. 266-67, _note_, following Tiraboschi.)]

[Footnote 724: In such accounts as M'Culloch's (_Treatises and Essays_) and those of the German patriotic historians the Hansa is seen in a rather delusive abstract. The useful monograph of Miss Zimmern (_The Hansa Towns_: Story of the Nations Series) gives a good idea of the reality. See in particular pp. 82-147. It should be noted, however, that Lubeck is credited with being the first northern town to adopt the Oriental usage of water-pipes (Macpherson, _Annals of Commerce_, 1802, i, 381).]

Chapter IV

HOLLAND

NOTE ON LITERATURE

The special interest of Dutch history for English and other readers led in past generations to a more general sociological study of it than was given to almost any other. L. Guicciardini's _Description of the Low Countries_ (_Descrizione ... di tutti Paesi Ba.s.si_, etc., Anversa, folio, 1567, 1581, etc.; trans. in French, 1568, etc.; in English, 1593; in Dutch, 1582; in Latin, 1613, etc.) is one of the fullest surveys of the kind made till recent times. Sir William Temple's _Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands_ (1672) laid for English readers further foundations of an intelligent knowledge of the vital conditions of the State which had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the great commercial rival of England; and in the eighteenth century many English writers discussed the fortunes of Dutch commerce. An English translation was made of the remarkably sagacious work variously known as the _Memoirs of John de Witt_, the _True Interest of Holland_, and _Political Maxims of the State of Holland_ (really written by De Witt's friend, Pierre Delacourt; De Witt, however, contributing two chapters), and much attention was given to it here and on the Continent.

In addition to the many and copious histories written in the eighteenth century in Dutch, three or four voluminous and competent histories of the Low Countries were written in French--_e.g._, those of Dujardin (1757, etc., 8 vols. 4to), Cerisier (1777, etc., 10 vols. 12mo), Le Clerc (1723-28, 3 vols. folio), Wicquefort (1719, folio, proceeding from Peace of Munster). Of late years, though the lesson is as important as ever, it appears to be less generally attended to. In our own country, however, have appeared Davies' _History of Holland_ (1841, 3 vols.), a careful but not often an illuminating work, which oddly begins with the statement that "there is scarcely any nation whose history has been so little understood or so generally neglected as that of Holland"; T.

Colley Grattan's earlier and shorter book (_The Netherlands_, 1830), which is still worth reading for a general view based on adequate learning; and the much better known works of Motley, _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_ (1856) and the _History of the United Netherlands_ (1861-68), which deal minutely with only a period of fifty-five years of Dutch history, and of which, as of the work of Davies, the sociological value is much below the annalistic. All three are impaired as literature by their stale rhetoric. The same malady infects the second volume of the _Industrial History of the Free Nations_ (1846), by W. Torrens M'Cullagh (afterwards M'Cullagh Torrens); but this, which deals with Holland, is the better section of that treatise, and it gives distinct help to a scientific conception of the process of Dutch history, as does J.R. M'Culloch's _Essay on the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Commerce in Holland_, which is one of the best of his _Essays and Treatises_ (2nd ed. 1859). The _Holland_ of the late Professor Thorold Rogers has merit as a vivacious conspectus, but hardly rises to the opportunity.

Of the many French, Belgian, and German works on special periods of the history of the Low Countries, some have a special and general scientific interest. Among these is the research of M. Alphonse Wauters on _Les libertes communales_ (Bruxelles, 1878). Barante's _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne_ (4th ed. 1838-40) contains much interesting matter on the Burgundian period. The a.s.siduous research of M. Lefevre Pontalis, _Jean de Witt, Grand Pensionnaire de Hollande_ (2 tom. 1884; Eng. trans. 2 vols.), throws a full light on one of the most critical periods of Dutch history.

Dutch works on the history of the Low Countries in general, and the United Provinces in particular, are many and voluminous; indeed, no history has been more amply written. The good general history of the Netherlands by N.G. van Kampen, which appeared in German in the series of Heeren and Uckert (1831-33), is only partially superseded by the _Geschichte der Niederlande_ of Wenzelburger (Bd. i, 1879; ii, 1886), which is not completed. But the most readable general history of the Netherlands yet produced is that of P.J. Blok, _Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk_ (1892, etc.), of which there is a competent but unfortunately abridged English translation (Putnams, vol. i, 1898).

Standard modern Dutch works are those of J.A. Vijnne, _Geschiedenis van het Vaderland_, and J. van Lennep, _De Geschiedenis van Nederland_. For Belgian history in particular the authorities are similarly numerous.

The _Manuel de l'histoire de Belgique_, by J. David (Louvain, 1847), will be found a good handbook of authorities, episodes, and chronology, though without any sociological element. The _Histoire de Belgique_ of Th. Juste (Bruxelles, 1895, 3 tom. 4to) is comprehensive, but disfigured by insupportable ill.u.s.trations.

-- 1. _The Rise of the Netherlands_

The case of Holland is one of those which at first sight seem to flout the sociological maxim that civilisations flourish in virtue partly of natural advantages and partly of psychological pressures. On the face of things, it would seem that the original negation of natural advantage could hardly be carried farther than here. A land pieced together out of drained marshes certainly tells more of man's effort than of Nature's bounty. Yet even here the process of natural law is perfectly sequent and intelligible.

One of the least-noted influences of the sea on civilisation is the economic basis it yields in the way of food-supply. Already in Caesar's time the Batavians were partly fishermen; and it may be taken as certain that through all the troubled ages down to the period of industry and commerce it was the resource of fis.h.i.+ng that mainly maintained and retained population in the sea-board swamps of the Low Countries. Here was a harvest that enemies could not destroy, that demanded no ploughing and sowing, and that could not well be reaped by the labour of slaves.

When war and devastation could absolutely depopulate the cultivated land, forcing all men to flee from famine, the sea for ever yielded some return to him who could but get afloat with net or line; and he who could sail the sea had a double chance of life and freedom as against land enemies. Thus a sea marsh could be humanly advantaged as against a fruitful plain, and could be a surer dwelling-place. The tables were first effectually turned when the Norse pirates attacked from the sea--an irresistible inroad which seems to have driven the sea-board Frisians (as it did the coast inhabitants of France) in crowds into slavery for protection, thus laying a broad foundation of popular serfdom.[725] When, however, the Norse empire began to fail, the sea as a source of sustenance again counted for civilisation; and when to this natural basis of population and subsistence there was added the peculiar stimulus set up by a religious inculcation or encouragement of a fish diet, the fis.h.i.+ng-grounds of the continent became relatively richer estates than mines and vineyards. Venice and Holland alike owed much to the superst.i.tion which made Christians akreophagous on Fridays and fast-days and all through the forty days of Lent. When the plan of salting herrings was. .h.i.t upon,[726] all Christian Europe helped to make the fortunes of the fisheries.

Net-making may have led to weaving; in any case weaving is the first important industry developed in the Low Countries. It depended mainly on the wool of England; and on the basis of the ancient seafaring there thus arose a sea-going commerce.[727] Further, the position of Flanders,[728] as a trade-centre for northern and southern Europe, served to make it a market for all manner of produce; and round such a market population and manufactures grew together. It belonged to the conditions that, though the territory came under feudal rule like every other in the medieval military period, the cities were relatively energetic all along,[729] theirs being (after the Dark Ages, when the work was largely done by the Church) the task of maintaining the sea-d.y.k.es[730] and water-ways, and theirs the wealth on which alone the feudal over-lords could hope to flourish in an unfruitful land. The over-lords, on their part, saw the expediency of encouraging foreigners to settle and add to their taxable population,[731] thus establis.h.i.+ng the tradition of political tolerance long before the Protestant period.

Hence arose in the Netherlands, after the Renaissance, the phenomenon of a dense industrial population flouris.h.i.+ng on a soil which finally could not be made to feed them,[732] and carrying on a vast s.h.i.+pping trade without owning a single good harbour and without possessing home-grown timber wherewith to build their s.h.i.+ps, or home-products to freight them.[733]

One of the determinants of this growth on a partially democratic footing was clearly the primary and peculiar necessity for combination by the inhabitants to maintain the great sea-d.y.k.es, the ca.n.a.ls, and the embankments of the low-lying river-lands in the interior.[734] It was a public bond in peace, over and above the normal tie of common enmities.