It was an epoch of associations in which the league arose.  The Church was but a society, fighting as an army for its liberty.  Each trade had its guild, and none might practise his trade unless he was a member of the particular guild controlling it.  The handicrafts were in the same case; and the real or operative freemasonry was instituted, about the same time, for the erection of ecclesiastical and palatial buildings.

Wealth, power, pomp, and pride began to wane in the cities of the league early in the fifteenth century, and the movement was accelerated by the change of ocean routes of trade due to the discovery of America, and the Cape of Good Hope way to India.  The final extinction came as late as October, 1888, when the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen, whose right to remain free ports had been ratified in the imperial constitution of 1871, renounced their ancient privileges and became completely merged in the autocratic Fatherland.

With good reason the world’s commerce is to-day accepted as one of the most imposing and unique phenomena of our time.  It is but necessary to consult a statistical handbook in order to obtain a conception of the gigantic figures involved in the exports and imports of the multifarious articles of commerce to and from all countries—­figures whose magnitude precludes the possibility of forming an adequate conception of their true significance.  No less astonishing are the means employed by traffic to-day to develop our system of credit and our complex and useful web of communication.  One fact, however, should be borne in mind:  namely, that our commerce is of comparatively modern growth.  The two factors chiefly responsible for its development were:  (1) The great voyages of discovery which began at the close of the fifteenth century and opened a theretofore unsuspected field of production and consumption; and (2) the utilization of steam, that great triumph of the nineteenth century.  Perhaps a brief sketch of that earlier commercial development which immediately preceded our extensive modern commercial network may not be unwelcome to the reader desirous of contrasting the narrower but nevertheless fascinating mediaeval conditions of the German Hansa with those prevailing in our present mercantile world.  Let us inquire how the confederation of the Hansa arose, and, after briefly sketching its external history, review in greater detail its commercial and industrial methods, its art work, domestic life, and constitution.

The development of the German Hansa may be traced to two principal sources:  (1) The associations formed by German merchants abroad, and (2) the union established by the Low-German cities at home.