commercial relations between the north sea area and the baltic contributed in a fundamental way to holland's economic dominance in the seventeenth century. they were embedded in a region where numerous expressions of a common culture facilitated the mobility of people and commodities or the spreading of tastes and ideas. the german hansa played a very important role in this process, but also after its decline, economic contacts between the north sea region and the baltic continued and with them a prolonged process of cultural interaction. this volume describes the interconnections of the various aspects of the common economic culture in the region between ca. 1350 and 1750.