Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a merchant, explorer, and writer from Venice, in what is now Italy. He travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. He wrote about his journeys in a book called The Travels of Marco Polo, which was also known as Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione. The book described the mysterious culture of the East, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty. It gave Europeans one of their first full looks at China, Persia, India, Japan, and other Asian societies.

Marco learned the trade of merchants from his father and his uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who had travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. The three of them set out on a long journey to Asia, passing through many places along the Silk Road until they reached "Cathay". Kublai Khan's royal court welcomed them, and the emperor was impressed by Marco's intelligence and humility. Marco was appointed to serve as Kublai's foreign emissary and was sent on many diplomatic missions across the empire and Southeast Asia. These trips took him to present-day Myanmar, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. He also travelled widely inside China and lived in the emperor's lands for 17 years, seeing many things that Europeans had never known about.

Around 1291, the Polos agreed to escort the Mongol princess Kököchin to Persia, and they arrived there around 1293. After leaving the princess, they travelled overland to Constantinople and then to Venice, returning home after 24 years. At that time, Venice was at war with Genoa. Marco joined the fighting for Venice and was captured by the Genoese. While he was in prison, he told the story of his travels to Rustichello da Pisa, a fellow prisoner who wrote it down. Marco was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married, and had three children. He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice.

Marco Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed record of his experiences. His account gave Europeans a clear picture of the East's geography and customs. It also included the first Western record of porcelain, gunpowder, paper money, and some Asian plants and unusual animals. His stories inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travellers. Polo's writings have inspired a great deal of later literature, and they also influenced European cartography, leading to the creation of the Catalan Atlas and the Fra Mauro map.

Life

Marco Polo was born around 1254 in Venice, though the exact date and place of his birth are not known. His father, Niccolò Polo, was a merchant who traded with the Near East. Niccolò and his brother Maffeo travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan, a Mongol ruler and founder of the Yuan dynasty. When Niccolò returned to Venice around 1269, he found that his wife had died and that his son Marco was about fifteen. In 1271, Marco, his father, and his uncle set off for Asia. Marco was later nicknamed Milione, which means "Million," because he kept saying that Kublai Khan's wealth was counted in millions. They sailed to Acre and rode on to the Persian port Hormuz.

Kublai Khan appointed Marco as his foreign emissary, and Marco travelled widely inside China for 17 years. In 1295, after 24 years away, the Polos returned to Venice with many riches. In 1296, Marco was captured by the Republic of Genoa during a war with Venice. While in prison, he dictated an account of his travels to Rustichello da Pisa. This became The Travels of Marco Polo, which gave Europeans their first detailed look at the Far East, including China, India, and Japan. Marco was released in August 1299 and became a wealthy merchant in Venice. He died on 8 January 1324.

The Travels of Marco Polo

Main article: The Travels of Marco Polo

Further information: Franco-Mongol alliance and Byzantine-Mongol alliance

Map of Marco Polo's travels

A miniature from Il Milione

No single official version of Marco Polo's book exists, because the early copies differ a great deal. Rebuilding the original text is a matter of textual criticism. About 150 copies in various languages are known. Before the printing press was available, copying and translating often caused errors. Polo told his memories aloud to Rustichello da Pisa while both were prisoners of the Genova Republic. Rustichello wrote Devisement du Monde in Franco-Venetian, probably as a handbook for merchants about weights, measures and distances. The oldest copy is in Old French, and another copy is kept in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. In 1302, a Dominican brother named Francesco Pipino translated the book into Latin, a few years after Marco returned to Venice. The first English version appeared in 1579, by John Frampton, who used a Castilian translation. Later translators included Henry Yule, A. C. Moule with Paul Pelliot (who used a manuscript from the Cathedral of Toledo), R. E. Latham, and Sharon Kinoshita.

The story begins with Marco's father and uncle travelling to Bolghar, where Prince Berke Khan lived, then to Ukek and Bukhara. They met Kublai Khan at Dadu, now Beijing, in 1266. The brothers returned to Venice in 1269 or 1270, and Marco met his father for the first time. In 1271, the three Polos set out again, sailing to Acre and travelling by land along the Silk Road to Kublai's summer palace at Shangdu. Marco later served Kublai and wrote about Myanmar and other places. In 1292, the Polos left China with a wedding party bound for Persia, sailing from Zaitun on 14 junks and passing Singapore and Sumatra. Only eighteen of the six hundred people in the convoy survived, including all three Polos. Scholars note that the book was written in 1298–1299 with the romance writer Rustichello, and that Ronald Latham believed Rustichello added romantic and fantastic elements. Some readers in the Middle Ages doubted the book, but later studies found many of its details, such as currencies and place names, to be accurate. Marco's claims about Zhenjiang in Jiangsu and Hangzhou were also confirmed by Chinese records.

Scholarly analyses

Some scholars have doubted that Marco Polo really went to China. Sceptics noticed that he did not mention the Great Wall of China, tea, Chinese characters, chopsticks, or footbinding, even though he did describe paper money. Herbert Franke wondered whether Polo had based his accounts on Persian sources, and Frances Wood argued in her 1995 book Did Marco Polo Go to China? that he may never have gone farther east than Persia. Supporters such as Stephen G. Haw replied that the Great Wall people know today was built by the Ming dynasty about two centuries after Polo's travels. Other visitors to Khanbaliq, such as Giovanni de' Marignolli and Odoric of Pordenone, also said nothing about the wall. Igor de Rachewiltz and David Morgan criticised Wood's book. Jørgen Jensen pointed to astronomical observations that Polo shared with Pietro d'Abano, which fit a stay in China, Sumatra, and the South China Sea. Haw also noted that Polo's account of watertight compartments in Chinese ships and other inventions shows how detailed it is.

Some scholars also believe that Polo exaggerated his importance in China. Morgan thought he had likely exaggerated his status, and Ronald Latham believed the exaggerations came from his ghostwriter Rustichello da Pisa. The claim that he governed Yangzhou and later Hangzhou is disputed, since no Chinese source mentions him as governor. Peng Hai linked him to a courtier named "Boluo" in the History of Yuan, and Paul Pelliot suggested he may have served in a salt office. Haw argued that Polo never claimed high rank, such as a darughachi leading a tumen, and only claimed to be an emissary of the khan, possibly a member of the keshig. A claim that the Polos helped build mangonels at the Siege of Xiangyang cannot be true, because the siege ended before Polo first came to China. Errors in his book include a bridge, later known as the Marco Polo Bridge, with twenty-four arches instead of eleven or thirteen, and ships with five masted sails where excavations found three. Wood also accused Polo of retelling others' stories, such as the journey of Kököchin, but Morgan and Rachewiltz defended him. In 2012, Hans Ulrich Vogel of the University of Tübingen found accurate details about salt production and about cowry shells used as money, which support his presence in China. Economic historian Mark Elvin concluded that the book is "in essence, authentic". Haw added that Polo's landscape descriptions, such as of the Grand Canal of China, are very accurate.

Legacy

See also: Age of Discovery, Europeans in Medieval China, Chronology of European exploration of Asia, Jorge Álvares, and Rafael Perestrello

Other European explorers, such as Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and Benedict of Poland, had already travelled to China, but Polo's book made his journey the first to be widely known. Christopher Columbus was inspired by Polo's descriptions of the Far East and wanted to visit those lands himself. A copy of the book was among his belongings, with handwritten notes. Later, Bento de Góis travelled for three years across Central Asia, inspired by Polo's writings about a Christian kingdom in the east. He never found that kingdom, but his journey ended at the Great Wall of China in 1605, showing that Cathay was what Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) called China.

Polo's travels may have influenced cartography in Europe, which helped lead to the European voyages of exploration a century later. Polo's family drew several maps of the Far East based on his accounts, but the authenticity of these maps is uncertain. A popular legend says Polo brought pasta from China, but this is a popular misconception, since pasta had already been made in Italy long before his travels. Polo is also remembered through the Marco Polo sheep, which is named after him, and Venice Marco Polo Airport, as well as many books, films, and games.