A WALLED city-within-a-city once stood on the site now occupied by London’s Cannon Street station. From the 15th to 17th centuries, its counting houses, guildhall and wharves echoed to a babble of Germanic languages. It connected London with a chain of other Hansa trading posts strung along the shores of the North and Baltic seas. These shared a common legal system and sheltered each other from tariffs and customs restrictions. For centuries the Hanseatic League’s cogs and hulks plied the inky waves, pregnant with cloth, timber and furs.Even today, cultural similarities betray the old links: gabled merchants’ houses and pubs serving eel and herring are found on damp, blustery coasts from East Anglia to Estonia. The mercantile spirit lives on, too: Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordics and the Baltics share a taste for balanced books and free trade. Most underwent economic reforms before the euro-zone crisis and have low bond yields and triple-A credit ratings to show for it. Many sport prominent Eurosceptic parties such as the True Finns, Alternative for Germany and the UK Independence Party, which channel voters’ anger at being…
The Economist: Europe
