d the Crusades to the degree Italian city-states continued their trade not only with western Europe but also with the Muslim Arabs and Turks (Gies and Gies 105ff).
Other foreign-trade alliances were formed by merchant traders in Germanic cities of the Holy Roman Empire in northern Europe, referred to as the Hanseatic League, comprising mainly Cologne, Hamburg, and Bremen, and navigating northern Europe's large rivers southward and Baltic trade northward (Gies and Gies 107, 154). By the 15th century, traders in Bruges, Antwerp, and Amsterdam were squeezing the Hanseatic cities (222). But by that time economic development had achieved critical mass
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