A Venetian traveler and author, whose account of his travels
and experiences in China offered Europeans a firsthand view of Asian lands and
stimulated interest in Asian trade.
Marco Polo was born in Venice, one of the most prominent
centers of trade in medieval Europe, into a merchant family. Venetian merchants
of the day traded regularly throughout the Mediterranean region. They also
maintained trading posts in port cities on the Black Sea, where they obtained
silk, porcelain, and other goods that came from China over the Silk Road, an
ancient trade route linking China with Rome. Little is known about Marco Polo’s
early life, because his own account of his travels, published later in his
life, is the primary source of biographical material about him. Polo probably
received a fairly typical education for children of merchants at that time,
learning how to read, write, and calculate.
Marco Polo’s account is also the primary source of
information about the travels of his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo,
who were jewel merchants. They left Venice in 1260 on a commercial venture to
the Black Sea ports of Constantinople (now İstanbul, Turkey) and Soldaia (now
Sudak, Ukraine). From Soldaia they continued farther east to trading cities on
the Volga River in present-day Russia. In 1262 a war broke out behind them and
prevented them from returning home, so they proceeded farther east to the great
Central Asian trading city of Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan). After three
years there they joined a diplomatic mission going to the court of Kublai Khan,
the Mongol ruler of China. The khan received them warmly and expressed a desire
to learn more about Christianity. He asked the Polo brothers to return to
Europe and persuade the pope to send Christian scholars who could explain the
religion to him. Niccolò and Maffeo journeyed back to Europe in 1269 to satisfy
the khan’s request.
The pope appointed two missionaries to accompany the Polos on their return to the Mongol court. The party set out in 1271, this time with Niccolò’s son Marco. Soon after their departure from Acre (now ‘Akko, Israel) the missionaries became concerned about hazardous conditions along the route and abandoned the embassy. The three Polos continued the journey. Judging from Marco’s account, they most likely traveled overland through Armenia and Persia (now Iran) to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, north through Persia to the Oxus River (now Amu Darya) in Central Asia, up the Oxus to the Pamirs, across the mountains and around the southern edge of the Takla Makan Desert to Lop Nur (in present-day Xinjiang Uygur (Uighur) Autonomous Region in western China), and across the Gobi Desert. In 1275 they reached the summer court of Kublai Khan at Shangdu (about 300 km/about 200 mi north of present-day Beijing). Marco’s account records that the khan warmly welcomed the party and arranged accommodations for them.
The Polos spent the next 17 years in China. Kublai Khan took
an immediate liking to Marco, who was an engaging storyteller and
conversationalist, and sent him on numerous diplomatic missions throughout his
empire. Marco not only carried out his diplomatic assignments but also regaled
the khan with interesting stories and observations about the lands he visited.
His missions took him to Sichuan Province in southern China and Yunnan Province
in the southwest, as well as northern Burma (now Myanmar). Marco reported that
apart from entrusting him with diplomatic missions, Kublai Khan also made him
governor for three years of the large commercial city of Yangzhou. Most modern
scholars doubt this claim, but it is possible that Marco held some sort of post
at Yangzhou, because the Mongol rulers of China routinely appointed foreign
administrators to oversee the affairs of their Chinese subjects.
According to Marco’s travel account, the Polos asked several
times for permission to return to Europe, but Kublai Khan appreciated the
visitors so much that he would not agree to their departure. In 1292, however,
the khan relented and permitted the Polos to return if they would serve as
escorts for a Mongol princess traveling by sea to marry the Mongol ruler of
Persia. The party departed from the southern Chinese port city of Quanzhou (in
present-day Fujian Province) and sailed to Sumatra, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka),
southern India, and the Persian Gulf. After seeing the princess safely to Iran,
the three Polos traveled overland through Tabrīz to Trebizond (now Trabzon,
Turkey), where they took a ship to Constantinople and then to Venice, arriving
home in 1295.
Contemporary accounts hold that when Marco Polo returned,
the youth of Venice flocked to his home to hear his stories about the lands he
had visited. Marco himself became known as il milione (“the man with a
million stories”) and Marco milione (“Marco Millions”), and the
courtyard of his home became known as the corte del milione (“court of il
milione”).
Marco soon became involved in a naval conflict between
Venice and its commercial rival Genoa. In 1298 he fell captive, along with 7000
of his compatriots, when the Genoese navy defeated a Venetian fleet in which
Marco was an honorary commander. During his year of imprisonment he passed the
time by telling stories. His tales attracted the attention of a romance writer
from Pisa named Rustichello, who had written two popular romances about King
Arthur. Rustichello recognized Marco’s stories as fascinating material. He
prepared an account of Marco’s travels in a literary dialect of French, the
most commonly used language for works of adventure and romance.
Rustichello frequently embellished Marco’s story. For
instance, his description of the Polos’ arrival at Kublai Khan’s court strongly
resembles a scene in one of his Arthurian romances, and his description of
battles also followed formulas that he had used in earlier works. Nevertheless,
the book was extremely popular, and translations soon became available in
Latin, Italian, Venetian dialect, English, and other languages. The English
translation of the original title of the book was The Description of the
World. Later editions and translations of Marco’s travel account have
appeared under several different titles, including Il milione, The Book of
Marvels, The Book of Marco Polo, and The Travels of Marco Polo.
After his release from prison Marco returned to Venice, where he died in 1324.
Marco Polo’s account of his travels exercised deep influence
on European readers. Cartographers looked to it for information about Asian lands,
and merchants drew inspiration from it when they planned commercial ventures.
Portuguese mariners studied it when they decided to seek a sea route to India
in the 15th century. Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus owned a Latin
translation of the work, which he read carefully. His copy still survives,
along with his handwritten annotations in the margins. Columbus relied heavily
on Marco Polo’s geography when planning his own voyage to reach Asian markets
by sailing west from Europe.
In the 20th century some scholars have raised questions
about the accuracy of Marco Polo’s account. Some have even suggested that he
did not actually travel to China but rather told stories that he heard from
others who did go there. Doubts have arisen largely from the fact that Marco’s
work does not mention several distinctive characteristics of Chinese society.
Such omissions include the use of chopsticks as eating utensils; the drinking
of tea; the use in written language of ideograms — that is, characters
representing things or ideas without expressing pronunciation; the binding of
girls’ feet to prevent normal growth (tiny feet were considered to enhance
women’s beauty); and the existence of the Great Wall, a fortification running
along the northern and northwestern frontiers of China.
In response to the critics, other scholars have pointed out
that Marco lived among Mongol rulers rather than Chinese subjects and therefore
would have had little or no exposure to chopsticks, tea, foot-binding, or
Chinese written language. As for the Great Wall, it did not exist in its
present form until the 16th century, long after Marco’s death. Furthermore,
many of the ambiguities in Marco’s account are attributable to Rustichello, who
cast the work in a form that he thought would be popular. Finally, Marco’s
account recorded many aspects of Mongol and Chinese society in convincing
detail. These features include the Mongols’ road and postal system, the careers
of Mongol administrators in China, Kublai Khan’s personality, Mongol court life,
and descriptions of important cities such as Shangdu, Khanbaliq, Hangzhou, and
Quanzhou.
(Encarta Encyclopedia)
