Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "the_black_sheep@..." <mderon@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > It is like this:
> > Northern Germany was the Hanse, and the Hanse was Northern
> > Germany. The Hanse(atic League) spoke platt (Low German) and Low
> > German was the language of the Hanse. The Hanse Diets kept their
> > minutes part in Latin, part in Low German; *never* in High
> > German. If Columbus hadn't discovered America, moving Europe's
> > center of gravity to the west and producing Holland's Golden
> > Century, the Hanse would still be powerful and might have become
> > a separate state, speaking another language than High German. And
> > Middle Low German was the trade Lingua Franca of the North Sea
> > and the Baltic, thus it became creolized; it played a similar
> > role to the development of the grammar and vocabulary of
> > Danish, Swedish and Norwegian as the one of Northern French to
> > English.
> >
> Opinions may differ, but Europe's centre of gravity moved north in
> the High and Late Middle Ages, contributing to the high
> urbanisation of Flanders in particular,

You are putting the cart before the horse. 'Centre of gravity' in the
description of the geographics of economy is a figure of expression;
it describes where the production and trade activity is high; it is
not a separate force, it doesn't cause anything in itself. The reason
trade and production moved to the Netherlands from Northern France was
the building of a road through the St. Gotthard pass in Switzerland
around 1250. That opened a transport route from the big port on the
Mediterranean, Venice, through the river Po and Ticino, across the St.
Gotthatd pass to the Rhine and to the Netherlands and England. Since
then it was the policy of the French to gain control over the Rhine,
by expanding France, to control trade once more, which they succeeded
in doing by taking Strasbourg, which caused the Dutch trade to
collapse and trade and production to move to England which then became
the No. 1 enemy of France.

> with the Hanse partly as the competition in
> the North Sea, but not really in the Baltic trade (where Hanse
> virtually had the monopoly). England's wool export policy, combined
> with the Reformation and the outcome of war with Spain plunged
> Flanders into stagnation, with trade moving from Antwerp to
> Amsterdam.

Reformation? That was the Spanish who destroyed the Southern Netherlands.

> Imho the Provinces had no choice but to develop in the maritime
> direction if they wanted to stay afloat.

???

> It would seem that the gravity centre shrunk rather than shifted.

See above why.

> The Provinces were a relative latecomer in the Atlantic and the
> Pacific trade,

Many Spanish ships had Dutch crews before the liberation wars.

> though for a while they did better than England - theoretically
> there was nothing to stop the Hanse from expanding in that
> direction as well - though it was a race.

Aha.
The Netherlands is closer to the New World than the cities of the
Hanse. That settled that race,. Various kings of of Denmark-Norway (eg
Chr II and Chr IV) sought to develop their kingdom to a base of trade
like the Netherlands and England, but failed too.


Torsten