Wind the clock back to the period from around 1400 to late 1800, when trade in North Western Europe was dominated by the Hanseatic League, an alliance of largely sea-bordering merchant towns from the Baltic to the North Sea.
The Hansa States were originally centered on the North German town of Lübeck, which became known as 'Queen of the Hansa' as it lay at the center of the considerable shipping movement from the Baltic to the North Sea.
However, the Hanseatic League also established trading posts in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Bristol, Hull, Newcastle, Great Yarmouth and York, in England, as well as Leith, the sea port north of Edinburgh in Scotland.
For over 400 years the Hansa States — whose name lives on in the German air carrier Lufthansa, the Hansa Brewery in Bergen, Norway and the Baltic Hansabank (now Swedebank) — traded with each other in what could loosely be described as an older form of the European Union.
London-Hamburg Love-In
Much more importantly, between 1368 and 1369, 34 percent of the Hanseatic trade was between London and Hamburg, which was quickly establishing itself as a major maritime port. Despite the demise of the original Hanseatic League around the end of the 1600s, the core members — including Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen — continued the Hansa trade until around 1862.
Thus it is not surprising that Cameron has chosen to finesse his deal to keep the UK within the EU in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, with Angela Merkel. The depth of history, trade and maritime connections — in spite of two world wars — between the two nations cannot be underestimated.
Cameron knows he has to come away from Hamburg with Merkel's support for a new deal on the UK's membership of the EU at a crucial summit next week. Cameron needs her help in convincing Euroskeptics back home that the UK has renegotiated a special arrangement with the EU that limits the powers of Brussels, maintains Britain's borders and clamps down on benefit tourism.
Merkel knows too that Germany cannot afford to lose such a close ally as Britain; she would lose face to preside over a significant loss to the EU and her coalition relies heavily on Cameron's conservatives in the European parliament.
There is a deep bond between them, epitomized by the city in which they meet, whose favorite saying is "Wenn es in London anfängt zu regnen, spannen die Hamburger den Schirm auf." ("When it starts raining in London, people in Hamburg open their umbrellas").
