Geography made Lübeck a bustling port linking the Christian states of northern Europe with territory newly colonized around the Baltic, exploiting the rich commercial possibilities of a region abundant in timber, furs, amber, and resin. The ambitions of the merchants who lived and worked there ensured that over the years Lübeck became the most influential of a cluster of similar city-states around the Baltic and beyond, including Danzig, Riga, Bergen, Hamburg, Bremen, and even Cologne. By the mid-fourteenth century these had banded together in a loose commercial partnership known as the
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