As part of the Flow Project, I am dedicating my doctoral thesis to a comprehensive investigation of Hanseatic trading privileges and their significance for the functioning of the Hanse. My research focuses on my assumption that privileges, as documented special rights, not only secured and regulated trade throughout the approximately 300-year history of the Hanse, but also played a central political role in shaping the Hanse’s self-image. For the first time, I am systematically analysing selected Hanseatic decrees from the period 1358 to 1669 using digital methods.

My project thus not only presents the first comprehensive study on the significance of privileges for the Hanse, but also provides a long-term analysis of the Hanse due to the long period of investigation.

There is broad consensus among researchers that the joint negotiation of trade privileges by merchant groups in the 12th and 13th centuries contributed decisively to the emergence of the Hanse. As Rolf Hammel-Kiesow emphasises, the ‘struggle to maintain these privileges’ was a central element of Hanseatic city politics from the 12th to the 17th century. Privileges thus shaped the entire history of the Hanse and were considered a key pillar of its economic success, as they reduced transaction costs and facilitated long-distance trade.

While the significance of these trading rights for the Middle Ages has already been intensively researched, their importance for the Hanse in the early modern period has received little attention to date. Some researchers argue that the value of privileges declined due to political and economic changes in early modern Europe and that the Hanse clung to outdated structures. This is precisely where I come in, systematically examining the different contexts in which privileges were discussed at the Hanse’s meetings in order to gain a new understanding of their significance for the Hanse – beyond their economic value.

In order to research the Hanseatic League’s policy of privileges, I am evaluating the ‘Hanserezesse’ – the diets of the Hanse meetings between the 14th and 17th centuries. These constitute a unique source, as they document the Hanse’s key economic, legal and political decisions.

In order to make these sources accessible and analyse them specifically with regard to the Hanse’s policy of privileges, I am working with a multi-stage digital workflow:

1. In the first step, the sources are transcribed. The recess manuscripts are available in Middle Low German and High German and feature different fonts. The texts are automatically transcribed using handwriting recognition (HTR). Models tailored to the respective centuries were trained specifically for this purpose. Some of the models were created as part of the citizen science project ‘Read!Hanse.Sources.’ and developed within the framework of the Flow project. This results in machine-readable transcripts that serve as the basis for further analysis.
2. In a second step, a subcorpus is formed that contains only the relevant text passages. From the large text corpus, I specifically filter out those passages that relate to documented trading rights and are represented by various terms such as ‘privileges,’ ‘freedoms’ or ‘merchant rights.’ In order to take into account different spellings and possible recognition errors, I use methods such as fuzzy search and clustering. This results in a smaller, thematically focused subcorpus that is suitable for manual annotation.

I then mark and annotate the selected text passages in the web-based annotation tool INCEpTION according to a specially developed category scheme. This scheme distinguishes between different contexts of use in which privileges can occur – for example:

• as protective or acquisitive rights,
• as the subject of complaints and conflicts,
• as a means of internal organisation, or
• as an argument in diplomatic negotiations.

Through this annotation, I systematically capture the complexity of the sources. This allows me to systematically identify the different functions and meanings of privileges – as an economic instrument, political lever, or marker of identity.

The annotated dataset enables me to examine privilege policy both qualitatively (through in-depth analysis of individual cases) and quantitatively (through statistical evaluation of frequencies, time sequences and patterns). This allows me to trace changes over the centuries and to gain a nuanced understanding of the role of privileges in the political and economic activities of the Hanse.

At the same time, I demonstrate how extensive historical source material can be accessed using digital methods – and how innovative approaches are opening up new perspectives in Hanseatic research.

PROJECT ‘THE FLOW’    Profile page Inga Lange