The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive coalition of merchant guilds and their market towns that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea and inland during the 13th to 17th centuries.
The League was created to protect economic and diplomatic interests in the cities and countries as well as along the trade routes that the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system, and standing armies for protection. The Hanse was not a city-state, nor a alliance of city-states; only a small number of the cities within the league enjoyed the freedom comparable to those of a free city. Another role fulfilled by the league was to provide its members with independence from the local rulers. The merchants still owed
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