Mrs. E. Gee Nash, in The Hansa, Its History and
Romance, has written a good popular account of the greatest romance of commerce in history. For the general reader, however, the development of the Hansa League should have been more closely linked up with the development of Europe as a whole. Mrs. Nash hardly refers to the rise of nationalism as a con- tributory cause of the decline of the League, though she mentions that the League made war several times against sovereign states, and was not always defeated. As far as the internal affairs of the League and the life in Hansa towns are concerned, however, she has given us a fairly complete account, though there is some reduplication owing to faulty arrange- ment, and the astute diplomacy by which the merchants retained their position of privilege is never described in detail. Copious extracts from contemporary documents, on the other hand, give a very interesting view of the trade of the time, and the book is rendered more attractive by excellent photo- graphs and line drawings by the author.
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