Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

BRADLEY D. NARANCH
Rhineland—to distant buyers in Brazil, China, Hawaii, Cameroon,
Australia, or the Fijian islands. 25 In most instances, however, Han se -
atic ships plied the waters of distant overseas markets in search of
foreign cargo to move from one regional location to another, regardless
of national provenance.
A second reason for the success of the cosmopolitan business
model was that Hanseatic envoys succeeded in negotiating their own
trade treaties with postcolonial states in Latin America and African
states such as Liberia and Zanzibar, which provided them with basic
legal and personal protection. Hanseatic merchants quickly negotiated
commercial treaties with the newly formed states of Latin
America, whose diplomats were eager to line up Western European
recognition of their fledgling governments. 26 Beginning with a trade
arrangement with Brazil in 1827, Hanseatic delegations representing
Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck signed additional treaties with
Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and other Latin American republics. 27
By 1845, more than forty Hanseatic firms operated in Mexico, twenty-eight
in Central America and the Caribbean, and sixty-seven in
South America. 28 In contrast to North American cities like Baltimore,
Hanseatic commercial networks in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and
the Pacific were initially less susceptible to nationalist pressures. By
cultivating cosmopolitan connections with both Western and non-
Western merchants, suppliers, and purchasers, Hanseats succeeded
25 Karl Andree, ‘Das Erwachen der Südsee’, in Geographische Wanderungen
(Dresden, 1859), ii. 318–20. On the role of German-manufactured harmonicas
in the world economy of the nineteenth century, see Hartmut Berghoff, ‘Har -
mon icas for the World: The Creation and Marketing of a Global Product’, in
Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (eds.), The Mechanics of Inter nation -
alism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War (Ox -
ford, 2001), 321–56.
26 Albrecht von Gleich, ‘Die Hansestädte und Lateinamerika’, in Volker Plage -
mann (ed.), Übersee: Seefahrt und Seemacht im deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich,
1988), 22–5.
27 J. Prüser, Die Handelsverträge der Hansestädte Lübeck, Bremen, und Hamburg
mit überseeischen Staaten im 19. Jahrhundert (Bremen, 1962); Herbert Minne -
mann (ed.), Handels- und Schiffahrtsvertrag zwischen den Senaten der freien und
Hanse städte Lübeck, Bremen, und Hamburg und Sr. Majestät dem Kaiser von
Brasilien, unterzeichnet zu Rio de Janeiro am 17. November 1827: Eine Doku men -
ta tion (Hamburg, 1977).
28 Schramm, Deutschland und Übersee, 55.
108