The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hanse \Hanse\, n. [G. hanse, or F. hanse (from German), OHG. & Goth. hansa; akin to AS. h[=o]s band, troop.] An association; a league or confederacy.
Hanse towns (Hist.), certain commercial cities in Germany which associated themselves for the protection and enlarging of their commerce. The confederacy, called also Hansa and Hanseatic league, held its first diet in 1260, and was maintained for nearly four hundred years. At one time the league comprised eighty-five cities. Its remnants, L["u]beck, Hamburg, and Bremen, are free cities, and are still frequently called Hanse towns.
Hanseatic \Han`se*at"ic\ (h[a^]n`s[-e]*[a^]t"[i^]k), a. Pertaining to the Hanse towns, or to their confederacy.
Hanseatic league. See under 2d Hanse.
Wikipedia
The Hanseatic League (also known as the Hanse or Hansa; Middle Low German: Hanse, Dudesche Hanse, or ) was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. It dominated Baltic maritime trade (c. 1400–1800) along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period (c. 15th to 19th centuries). Hanse, later spelled as Hansa, was the Middle Low German word for a convoy, and this word was applied to bands of merchants traveling between the Hanseatic cities whether by land or by sea.
The League was created to protect the guilds' economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and furnished their own armies for mutual protection and aid. Despite this, the organization was not a state, nor can it be called a confederation of city-states; only a very small number of the cities within the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.
Usage examples of "hanseatic league".
Siamese lug-sails, brigantines, galeasses, Hanseatic League cogs, sixty-oared papyrus galleys, Norse drakkars and dragon-prowed Viking longships called the Oseberg ship.
In the very next instant the hall was filled with the most horrendous feminine scream that the Hanseatic League had probably ever heard.
The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the inland country.
In years gone by, Friedrich had served as a sailor on one of the Hanseatic League's ships.
The only real question was how much independence the old Hanseatic League city was going to retain, and that was what Gustavus' current diplomatic dance with the city's authorities was all about.
It was primitive, but the pilots from the Hanseatic League trusted the method.
They were executed, and there were massacres of Jews in Provence, at Narbonne and Carcassone, then all over Germany: Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Mainz and the trading towns of the north belonging to the Hanseatic League.
Every time I turn around they're telling us how the Republic of Venice or the Hanseatic League or ancient Athens did it—.
Odin, Wotan, Parsifal, King Alfred, Frederick the Great, the Hanseatic League, the Battle of Hastings, Thermopylae, 1492,1786, 18l2, Admiral Farragut, Pickett's charge.
He was a Bergenske and he spoke English with a Germanic guttural accent, relic of the days when the Hanseatic League ruled the Bergen shipping trade.
There were even differences in political allegiances, for many cities within the political boundaries of Poland became members of the Hanseatic League, and no longer swore allegiance to the Polish Crown.
Once the Hanseatic League had flourished here and this had been known as the German Wharf.
German gunners of the Hanseatic League on the Steelyard wharf let offjoyful bursts of cannon-fire when apprised that Elizabeth was passing, and crowds gathered on the banks to see her, cheer and wave.