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 Hanseatic League. The axis of trade for the league’s merchants stretched from London and Bruges in the west as far as Novgorod in the east, and throughout this trading region Hanseatic agents could be found pushing the interests of their bloc.
