HANSE - About Boston Preservation Trust efforts by Lady ... English themselves as well as the Dutch,...
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Transcript of HANSE - About Boston Preservation Trust efforts by Lady ... English themselves as well as the Dutch,...
HANSE
Boston’s medieval economic history, Baltic trade and today.
The Visitor Economy
Dr Pamela Cawthorne
Honorary Associate of the Department of Political EconomyUniversity of Sydney, Australia
She has held administrative posts in UNIDO,UNRWA,Viennaand OXFAM UK
She lives between Sydney and Boston and has an ongoing project researching the Boston Economic Hansa history, and the demographic changes in Boston.
She join the History of Boston project in 2013
Author
THE HANSE LEAGUE
• Hansa or Hanse probably means people, community or crowd.
• It was an association of traders from a number of German towns led by Lubeck known as the ‘Hanseatic League’. They wished to reduce trade restrictions and maintain monopolies.
• The League consisted of major and minor Hanse‘Kontore’, the major were London, Bruges, Bergen and Novgorod.
• Boston, along with King’s Lynn, Newcastle, Hull, Yarmouth and Ipswich were all ‘Minor Kontore’, meaning ‘having hanse warehouses.’
• To be a merchant you had to be a guild memberand pay a gold noble, (£700) to the Guild
BOSTON AND TRADE
Boston’s importance as a port in the 13th and early 14th century was based firstly on its role as the leading wool exporter at a time when wool was England’s major export.Secondly on the importance of the Boston Fair which attracted merchants from all over Europe .Thirdly its role as the leading provincial port for Hanseatic merchants.
Cologne merchants were noted in Lincolnshire in 1230 and they brought wine and cloth to Boston fair in the same year. Cologne merchants were present at the fair in 1235 and in 1251 Ernald de Colonia sold 17 tuns of wine to royal wine buyers at the fair.
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ABBEYS AND FRIARIES
As a result, by 1283 merchant houses were set up in the town, with links to important abbeys over England eg Fountains Abbey
St. Botolph’s first stone was laid in 1309
By 1317 there were four different Friaries in the town. –Augustinian, Franciscan and Dominican in South End where both the Guildhall and parts of the Dominican Friary complex (now Blackfriars Theatre) remain.
These had links with the Hanseatic merchants, such as Wisselus Smalenburg, whose 1340 tombstone was moved from the Franciscan Friary to St Botolph’s.
WOOL AND TRADE
Between 1279-1288 37% of wool exported from England went out through the port. The Wool Staple moved from Lincoln to Boston in 1369, and by 1377 Boston was the tenth largest town in the country and the second port to London.
The Hanse merchants’ Guilds gained importance from the mid 13th century and led to eventual domination of sea trade in the 15th century. Starting in Germany – the Hanse gradually extended influence through out the Baltic.Cities such as Riga (1201) and Tallin (1219) were founded for the League
Hamburg, Kiel, Lübeck Lüneberg, Stad, Stargard, Stettin, Stralsund, Wismar Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Brunswick (CC), Erfurt, Frankfurt, Goslar, Halle, Magdeburg Bohemia, Poland, Prussia, Livonia, Sweden Breslau (Wroclaw) Dansig (Gdansk) Dorpat (Tartu) Fellin (Viljandi), Elbring (Elblag) Köningsberg (Kalinengrad) Krakow, Pernau, Stockholm, Thora (Torun) (CC), VisbyPrincipal KontoreBryggen (Bergen), Brygg ( Bruges), Steelyard (London) and NovgorodSubsidiary KontoreAntwerp, Berwick, Boston, Leith, Hull, Ipswich, Kings Lynn, Kaunas, Newcastle, Polotsk, Pskov, Yarmouth,York
TRADEBy the 1380s the cloth trade in Boston was dominated by the Hanseatic merchants who accounted for 89% of cloth exports through Boston and Lynn. The figure from 1377-1427 was 98%. As well as wool, by 1310 Boston traded significantly in wax, dried fish and fish oil, furs and goatskins
The Customs House in Boston was called the ‘Stylyard’s House’ ‘ probably where the Grammar School is now, and was the place where weighing took place to determine duties. This was also near the then market (Mart Yard of the Grammar School)
Separate from this, there was also a Hanseatic Steleyard in Boston, probably located near the later site of Boston General Hospital on a ‘Five acre field’.
‘In the Utrecht treaty of 1474 the place was called Staelhof or Stylyard, which is explained to signify the spot where the great public beam and balance stood, by which all goods were weighed on landing in order to ascertain and secure the King’s toll’ Pishey Thompson
GYSOR’S HALL
The Gysor’s Hall was built in 1248 as a merchant’s house and subsequently used for the receipt of manorial dues. Guildhall (the hall of the Guild of St. Mary) stands opposite and Shodfriars Hall (believed to be the medieval hall of the Guild of Corpus Christi) stands further along South End closer to the central market place; it was known as the Old Flemish House.
In the 1380s 60% of Hanseatic cloth exports from England went via Boston, but by the end of the 15th
century, London took 96% of such exports and from 1496-1501 Boston accounted for considerably less than 1% of England’s cloth exports.
Boston’s Hanseatic trade was based on the kontor at Bergen and by the end of the 15th century, the Bergen kontor was in decline. The Hanse building in Boston was said to dilapidated by 1481 and the Steelyard to be ‘little or nothing occupied’. Later efforts by Lady Margaret Beaufort in 1505 to lure the traders back with favourable treatment met with failure.
Towards the end of the 15th century the Hansards left Boston.
THE GUILDHALL
STEELYARD
STEELYARD
By the end of the fifteenth century, the Hanse were being challenged by other groups: the English themselves as well as the Dutch, Scots and Italians and American trade. But it was 1669 before the very last meeting of a Hanseatic Diet took place in Lübeck.
LUBECK
THE LEAGUE TODAY
In 1980 the alliance was revived in Zwolle HollandBy cultivating traditions and encouraging a vibrant exchange between its members, the Hanseatic League aims to bring about closer economic, cultural, social and national ties across Europe.
Lubeck is the lead city, there are 182 towns and cities in the league in northern Europe and the Baltic states.
In 2009 Kings Lynn joined and in 2012 Hull, the first two English towns to be members , will Boston be the third?
BOSTON’S VISITOR ECONOMY
• We need to build on the history on the town
• Invest in the look of the town
• Provide adequate visitor facilities
• Work in partnership with the historic sites and with the other Lincolnshire towns.
• Develop an internet presence
RELEVANCE TO US
Growing the visitor economy – an example
• Captive visitors from sea side hotels – come by coach• The Stump guide gave 5154 Boston leaflets at the coach station• 230 coaches came (a Wednesday count during March to September)• 167 came from Skegness• 18 private parties• 45 different coach services
• They needed to shop, a tourist guide, lavatories, food.• The Market was very popular• The leaflet had one 10 % off voucher, vouchers are popular with visitors.• No official greeter • No ‘specials’ for the drivers, they need incentives and free parking.• Poor contact with visitor centres. Poor signage to the historic quarter and
tourist information.
TRAVELOn the A16 south of Boston there is a high usage by cars peaking in August. The density of population is 1.79 per
hectare, second only to Lincoln. Boston is one of only four local authorities to see an increase in those getting
to work as passengers in cars and vansCar ownership is higher than in the rest of England.
At the Port of Boston, 650,000 tons were imported 2012/13
The number of bus passenger journeys in Lincolnshire grew by almost 31% between 2005/06 and 2008/09. The
growth in England over the same period was just 8%
213,034 rail passenger used Boston railway station in 2013/2014
Join up Kings Lynn, Boston and Hull, eastern ports.
SWOT
• A vibrant tourist trade, international visitors
• A positive national profile
• Poor infrastructure for tourism, eg hotels and guides, signage
• Opportunities for businesses and education
• Residents may feel side-lined, cannot see the broader picture of expenditure and travel to eastern European countries
LINCOLNSHIRE – THE FREEDOM COUNTY
• The promotion of economic regeneration through tourism, improving our national image, drawing together a disparate county.
• Bomber County, religious freedom, political freedom.
• The Pilgrim Fathers• Captain John Smith• John Foxe - The Book of the Martyrs• Robert Browne – The Brownists• Revd. John Cotton – The Puritan Path to Freedom• The Wesley Family – John, Charles and Susanna - The Founders of Methodism• Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army
• Scientific Freedom• Sir Isaac Newton• Sir Joseph Banks • both men were Presidents of The Royal Society• John Harrison – The Chronometer
• The Freedom of Navigation• Captain John Smith• Sir Joseph Banks • Matthew Flinders• George Bass• Sir John Franklin• John Harrison
HANSE LEAGUE
• COUNCIL LEADERS HAVE WRITTENTO THE LEAGUE OUTLINING BOSTON’S HANSEATIC
HISTORY
• KINGS LYNN LEADER TO PUT MOTION AT THE HANSE TAG (Assembly) IN ESTONIA JUNE 4th
TO 7th JUNE
• WE HAVE FORMED THE BOSTON HANSE GROUP
THANK YOU
• Dr Pamela Cawthorne and Gavin Kitching
• The Big Local
• Councillor A Austin, Mayor and Consort
• Boston Borough Council
• Luke Skeritt
• Councillor Nick Daubney Leader Kings Lynn
• Mr Richards, historian, Kings Lynn
• The History of Boston Project members
ANY QUESTIONS?
Gavin Kitching,[email protected]
Martin Fairman, History of Boston [email protected]
Perhaps it is a good thing that the northern partnership will never be as formal as Westminster’s politicians would like. A loose, flexible alliance, it can avoid pomp and power play, and concentrate instead on the pragmatic business of making Europe richer. Just like those stolid Hansa trading posts of yore.
From The Economist Nov 2013
