Hanse towns
Black's Law Dictionary · Henry Campbell Black, M.A. · 1910
Black's Law Dictionary
The collective name of certain German cities, including Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, which formed an alliance for the mutual protection and furtherance of their commercial interests, in the twelfth century. The powerful confederacy thus formed was called the "Hanseatic League." The league framed and promulgated a code of maritime law, which was known as the "Laws of the Hanse Towns," or Jus Hanseaticum Maritimum.