Perhaps more than similar historical structures the character of the "Hanseatic League" is shrouded in myths and misconceptions by a highly politicized historiography in Germany since the 19th century. Philippe Dollinger (1904-1999) was the first "international" scholar who supposedly broke with these traditions with his work "La Hanse (XIIe-XVIIe Siècles)", Paris 1964. It is one of the few standard texts on the Hanseatic League which have been translated into English ("The German Hansa", Macmillan, London 1970.) Dollinger was a student of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre at the University of Strasbourg and his book has also been translated into German, Dutch and Polish. However, it is not without errors and of course relatively outdated. In many ways, it is in still written from a distinctly German (conquest) perspective. Only the German translation was revised recently (2012) by Volker Henn and Nils Jörn.

If you want to read German, other books are much more up-to-date, such as Carsten Jahnke: "Die Hanse" (2014), which contradicts many misrepresentations by older scholars or Rolf Hammel-Kiesow’s standard text “Die Hanse” (1st ed. 2000).

For English texts, check if you can gain access to the "Companion to the Hanseatic League" ed. by Donald Harreld (2015), which collects a number of articles by leading scholars on the subject. The most popular English study should still be “England and the German Hanse, 1157 - 1611: A study of their trade and commercial diplomacy” by Terence Henry Lloyd (Cambridge University Press 1991).