The Travels of Marco Polo

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The Travels of Marco Polo

THE LITERARY WORK

A travel narrative set primarily in China and Southeast Asia, spanning the years 1260 to 1295; first published in Franco-Italian (as Divisament du Monde: Description of the World) in 1299; in English in 1579.

SYNOPSIS

A Venetian merchant journeys to the Far East, enters the service of Kublai Khan of China, and describes the places he visits or hears of while he is away.

Events in History at the Time of the Travel Narrative

The Travel Narrative in Focus

For More Information

Born in 1254 in Venice, Italy, Marco Polo was the son of a prosperous merchant family’s. At the age of 17, young Marco accompanied his father, Nicolo, and his uncle, Maffeo, on a three-year journey to China that took the travelers through Persia, Afghanistan, and other countries. In 1275 the three Polos were warmly received at the imperial court of the Mongol warlord Kublai Khan in China. Marco, in particular, became a favorite with the Great Khan, who employed the young man on public missions that sent him to various parts of the empire. The Polos remained in China 17 years. Returning to Venice in 1295, they resumed their business as merchants there. In 1298 Marco Polo became involved in a sea battle between the rival Venetian and Genoese fleets; the Venetians suffered defeat and Marco was taken prisoner. While captive, he dictated the stories of his travels to Rustigielo, a fellow prisoner and a scribe from Pisa. Divisament du Monde, more familiarly known to Western readers as The Travels of Marco Polo, circulated after Marco’s release in 1299 and became an instant success. Impressing even those who doubted its veracity, the travel narrative charmed believers and skeptics alike with its detailed accounts of life in the Far East.

Events in History at the Time of the Travel Narrative

The rise of Venice

Although Polo’s contemporaries sometimes referred to him as “Marco the Venetian,” he writes little of his native Venice in his famous book. By his day the city had grown into a maritime power, gaining a reputation that paved the way for such trading expeditions as the Polos’. Venice conducted a sweeping intercontinental trade, stretching from the English Channel to the Black Sea at the European-Asian border and beyond. The republic was well-situated for such far-reaching trade. Located on a lagoon at the head of the Adriatic Sea and flanked to the east and west by the Byzantine Empire and Lombardy, respectively, Venice thrived as a port of exchange. It came by its status through efforts of its own, subduing pirates to win control of the Adriatic Sea, securing trading privileges in several Mediterranean seaports, and serving as a major port of embarkation for the Crusades to Palestine. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Venice’s phenomenal commercial expansion earned it the rivalry of Genoa, another Italian maritime republic, and a long struggle for regional dominance ensued. Venice continued to grow, amassing a colonial empire that included Crete, the Ionian Islands, and more. In 1204 Enrico Dandolo, the doge (chief magistrate) of Venice, became a leader of the Fourth Crusade, which conquered Constantinople. Venice subsequently gained possession of three-eighths of Constantinople itself, including the port facilities. From Constantinople such costly goods as silk, dyes, furs, pepper, cotton, peacock-feathers, slaves, and timber were exported to Venice, whose merchants turned around and traded them to places across Europe. Inevitably, thousands of Venetians, perhaps most notably merchants, flocked to Constantinople in hopes of making their fortunes, including the Polos. It was from Constantinople that the Polo brothers first decided to venture east, intending to conduct trade in jewels within the Mongol realm of the “Golden Horde,” that is, the western territories of Asia, encompassing the steppe lands and Russian principalities. Wars between Mongol chiefs in the region impeded the Polos’ return to Venice, leading ultimately to their journey to China (called Cathay) and the court of Kublai Khan.

Western perceptions of the East

Before the Polos’ expedition, Europeans knew little of China or the continent of Asia. What they did know was based on ancient maps, writings, and oral literature, including age-old myths and legends. Most Europeans associated Asia with stories of Alexander the Great, who fought Darius of Persia and conquered part of northern India in the fourth century b.c.e. According to one legend, Alexander locked two giants—Gog and Magog—behind iron gates in a bronze wall across the Caucasus Mountains. Other legends spoke of Alexander encountering monstrous races in the East—the Cynocephali (dog-headed men); the Blemmyae, who had faces on their breasts; and the Sciopods, each of whom had one giant foot that it used as a sunshade. Along with fantastic races, the Europeans believed fantastic beasts inhabited the region, too—unicorns, griffins, dragons, and manticores (with the body of a lion and the face of a man), as well as less sensational creatures, such as camels and elephants.

During the twelfth century, the visit to Rome of a man claiming to be “Patriarch John of India” further shaped the European vision of Asia as a land of exotic marvels. Although “Patriarch John” may have been an imposter perpetrating an elaborate hoax (who he really was remains unknown), he apparently delivered a lecture on the Indian city of Hulna, which he claimed was a Christian city. His lecture enthralled the papal curia, or Church administrators. Another influential development in this century was the appearance of the anonymous Letter of Prester John (1165), which likewise captivated Europeans. It was supposedly written by a different John, a Christian priest and ruler of the East. The letter describes the magnificence of his palace; the prosperity of his kingdom, a land of milk, honey, and precious stones; and the moral purity of his capital city. Beyond these marvels, the kingdom of the legendary Prester John was said to contain fire-dwelling salamanders and numerous fountains of youth. From this letter, written a century before Marco Polo’s book, the notion spread that an entire Christian kingdom existed in the Far East. Modern scholars still debate the authenticity and authorship of the Letter of Prester John and theorize that it should be interpreted as a dream vision or utopian fantasy—or an elaborate hoax. But twelfth-century readers had no such scruples about taking the letter at its word. They interpreted it literally, believing that indeed there was a powerful Christian king in the Orient, who reigned over a realm of unimaginable wealth and exotic wonders.

Travelers along the Silk Road

Trade between China and the West began centuries before the Polos made their expedition. Most transactions took place via the Silk Road, a caravan route consisting of interlinked roads along which merchants exchanged goods—including silk, spices, jade, and gold. Numerous branches of the main Silk Roads extended into such places as Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Actually, there were three main branches of the route:

1) The northern Silk Road, in use after 138 b.c.e., started at the ancient Chinese capital city of Chang’an (now called Xi’an). From there the road crossed the Yellow River and passed through the Gobi Desert and present-day Uzbekistan, Iran, and Iraq, before meeting the western boundary of the Roman Empire.
2) The southern Silk Road was actually a sea route that began at the ports of Xuwen and Hepu in South China, passed through the Malacca Strait, and ended in Burma or the Huangchi Kingdom of southern India.
3) A third Silk Road began in Chengdu in Sichuan Province and ran through Yunnan Province, Burma, India, Afghanistan, and Russia, before joining the northern Silk Road at Mary, a city in Turkmenistan.

In Polo’s lifetime, the Mongols controlled the Silk Road, while Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, and European merchants traded profitably along its lengths. The road was a cultural as well as a commercial institution, allowing the exchange not only of material goods but also of ideas, traditions, languages, and religious practices.

Christian missionaries, hoping to establish their faith more securely in the predominantly Islamic East, traveled along the Silk Road. In 1245 Pope Innocent IV dispatched a party of envoys, led by Franciscan friar Giovanni di Piano Carpini on just such an errand. Starting from Lyons, France, Fra Giovanni and his party journeyed first to the realm of the Golden Horde on the Volga, then across the Altai Mountains to Karakorum, Mongolia (the capital of the Mongol world), where they delivered papal letters to the Great Khan GüyüK. Ultimately, GüyüK rejected Christian doctrine and demanded the Pope’s personal appearance and submission at his court, though he permitted the envoys to depart in peace. After his return, Fra Giovanni recorded his observations on the Mongols, their customs, and their land in his Historic Mongolorum, which became an important source of information and was widely copied. In 1253 the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck obtained the permission of King Louis IX of France to travel to Karakorum as a missionary. Although cordially received at the court of Möngke Khan, William failed to convince the ruler or his subjects that Christianity was superior to other faiths. Like Fra Giovanni, William also kept a record of his travels in the Mongol territories (translated from Latin as The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–1255).

Not all journeys to the East were so short-lived or had such little impact. A Dominican friar known as David of Ashby apparently visited and stayed at the Mongol court sometime between 1260 and 1274; in 1291, the Franciscan friar Giovanni da Montecorvino, who had been active in Armenia and Iran from the 1270s, traveled as far as Peking, China, eventually building the first Christian cathedral there in 1305. Some Western merchants traveling the Silk Road even chose to settle in the East. By the seventh century b.c.e., an estimated 200,000 Persians, Arabs, Indians, Malays, and others were living in the port city of Canton (Guangzhou), while further north, merchants from Arabia, Persia, Syria, India, Italy, and Morocco were engaged in extensive business relations with the Chinese (Stockwell, p. 16). There is evidence to suggest the possible existence of an Italian community in southern China—specifically, the tombstones of Domenico Vilioni and his unmarried daughter Catherine, who both died and were buried at Yangchow in the early 1300s. The Vilioni had been well known in Venice as a merchant family’s apparently involved in the commerce of Asia for many years.

Thus, Marco Polo, his father, and uncle were not the first European merchants—nor even the first Italian merchants—to venture along the Silk Road or enter China, though few of their contemporaries apparently journeyed as far as Kublai Khan’s domain. On the other hand, of all the travelers to the East, Marco seems to have composed the most extensive written record of his journeys; it was his book that was to impart a lasting impression of the exotic East upon the curious West.

The Mongol Conquest

Polo devotes several chapters of his book to a somewhat inaccurate history of the Mongols (to whom he refers as Tartars), a nomadic people dwelling among the steppes of eastern Asia who ruled China between 1211 and 1368. While most of the Mongol khans remained nomads at heart and devoted their time to conquest, they also established a strong centralized power structure and implemented a universal code of law (the Yasa), which became the institutional foundation for the Mongol Empire.

In 1206 the Mongols became united under the leadership of one man: Chingghis (Genghis) Khan (“Universal Ruler”). Backed by a highly disciplined army that he himself organized and trained, Genghis Khan embarked upon a series of triumphant military campaigns. Polo erroneously identifies the year of Genghis’s ascent to power as 1187, then freely interweaves fantasy with history by relating how Genghis defeated the legendary King Prester John, an incident entirely made up. Genghis’s actual exploits, however, were as remarkable as anything in Polo’s book. In the 1210s he captured the Xi Xia kingdom and city of Yanjing in China, then turned west to annex Bokhara and Samarkand.

When Genghis Khan died in 1226, his heirs carried on his work, extending Mongol control over the north and west. The issue of succession proved a recurring problem within Genghis Khan’s family’s. Again Polo errs by describing the imperial succession thus: “To Chinghis Khan succeeded Cuy Kaan; the third was Batuy Kaan, the fourth Alacou Kaan, the fifth Mongou Kaan, the sixth Kublai Kaan” (Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, p. 75). In fact, Genghis chose his third son, Ögödei as his immediate heir, and Ögödei’s son Güyük succeeded his father. At this point, complications developed. Sorghaghtani Beki, the Nestorian Christian wife of Genghis’s fourth son, Tolui, was an intelligent, ambitious woman who intended that at least one of her four sons would one day rule the empire. To that end, she cultivated the support of Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, and other religious groups, as well as that of several Mongol nobles. In 1251 her eldest son Möngke became Great Khan after the sudden death of Güyük, who was rumored to have been poisoned.

Like his grandfather and uncle, Möngke Khan sought to expand his domain, launching conquests of Persia and South China. He died, however, in 1259 before his conquest of South China could be completed, and his younger brother Kublai succeeded him, officially in 1260. By that time, the Mongolian Empire controlled twothirds of Eurasia, encompassing all of presentday China, Mongolia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Korea. The governing of so enormous a kingdom required an effective and capable leader; Kublai proved equal to the task.

The reign of Kublai Khan

The first two volumes of Polo’s book deal extensively with the wealth, majesty, and military prowess of Kublai Khan. While the account is certainly colorful, it is not entirely accurate or sufficiently complete. Polo offers lavish descriptions of Kublai’s palaces and court entertainments and touts his victories in battle over his kinsmen. He dwells less upon the khan’s formidable administrative skills, which were vital to the maintenance of the empire.

In fact, Kublai distinguished himself as a warrior and as an administrator. As was expected of a Mongol ruler, he expanded his empire, completing the conquest of South China in 1279 and launching successful campaigns to subdue Annam (northern Vietnam), Champa (southern Vietnam), Burma, and Kampuchea (Cambodia), then compelling these areas to accept Mongol sovereignty. During his brother Möngke’s reign, Kublai had proved an efficient governor of the Chinese territories granted to him. Recognizing that effective administration required more skills than his people at the moment had, Kublai employed Chinese—as well as non-Chinese—officials and advisers in his administration. This policy, which he continued to invoke, earned him the allegiance of many of his Chinese subjects, though some still resented the Mongols as intruders in their country. Ironically, many conservative Mongols also came to resent Kublai for his adoption of various Chinese customs and institutions.

Within Kublai Khan’s empire, the Mongols occupied the top of the social pyramid, followed successively by the semu ren (Western and Central Asians), the han ren (northern Chinese), and the nan ren (southern Chinese). This social pyramid did not preclude Kublai Khan from invoking the practices of the lower social groups. He retained many features of Chinese government, including a civilian administration and a traditional division between the civil, military, and censorial branches of government. Along with Mongol and Chinese functionaries, Kublai employed educated foreigners in his court. The Polos became the first European additions to an administration that also employed Tibetans, Armenians, Arabs, Persians, and Turks. Kublai had established his imperial city of Khanbalik (now called Beijing) as a true world capital, populated by scholars, physicians, merchants, and clerics from Middle Eastern, Asian, African, and European nations. To an impressionable young man like Marco Polo, the opportunities for advancement must have seemed limitless.

In his account, Polo praises Kublai Khan as a wise and beneficent ruler who, by virtue of the size of his realm, the number of his subjects, and the revenue he accrues, “surpasses every sovereign that has heretofore been or that now is in the world” (Travels, p. 97). Indeed, Polo finds virtually no fault with the khan, although history has documented that Kublai had his share of flaws. Certainly, he could be extravagant; his military expeditions, the construction of his new imperial capital at Khanbalik, and his decision to issue paper currency placed heavy burdens on the treasury and led to financial woes. In the last years of his reign, Kublai suffered these financial woes as well as personal losses, especially the deaths of his favorite wife and their son, whom he had designated as his heir. When Kublai Khan died in 1294, he was a broken man, despite all he had achieved.

While in his prime, Kublai invigorated China’s economy, improving the postal relay system, extending the Grand Canal from Hangzhou in the south to the capital, Khanbalik, and stimulating trade with Europe by opening his court to foreign visitors like Polo and by encouraging commerce along the Silk Road. His merchant fleet developed markets from India to Malaysia and the Persian Gulf.

Kublai also made significant cultural contributions by introducing new intellectual elements into Chinese society. Having conquered much of the Middle East, he encouraged its Persian astronomers and physicians to introduce their ideas and theories to the Chinese. It was in this same spirit that he began his long association with the Polos—two of the first Europeans he encountered. In part, no doubt, because of his own Christian heritage (on his mother’s side), their religion claimed his attention. He had a mission for the Polos: though Kublai himself evinced no desire to convert to Christianity, he wanted them to have the Pope send 100 Christian scholars to his court to argue the merits of their faith.

The Travel Narrative in Focus

Plot summary

Although The Travels of Marco Polo purports to be autobiographical, the work focuses more on the places that Polo, his father, and uncle visit on their journey eastward. The narrative shifts back and forth between first-person, and, more often, third-person. Polo emphasizes the natives’ diet, religion, and social practices in each region. He also shows a keen interest in the various wares produced and sold in a region, from carpets and silks to furs. Divided into four volumes, Polo’s travel narrative opens with a lengthy prologue.

The prologue

Polo’s book begins with a grandiose promise to reveal all the marvels of the East, as told by “Marco Polo, a wise and learned citizen of Venice, who states distinctly what things he saw and what things he heard from others” (Travels, p. 3). Asserting that no man has ever seen as much, the prologue explains that while imprisoned by the Genoese, Polo dictated the story of his travels to his fellow inmate Rustigielo of Pisa.

The prologue then explains that the brothers Nicolo and Maffeo Polo take a first trip to the East in 1260. From Constantinople, they venture into the realm of the Tartars, where they encounter a Tartar ambassador who invites them to accompany him to the court of the Great Khan (Kublai), emperor of China. After a year-long journey, the Polos arrive at the imperial court at Shangdu (called Xanadu by Westerners and poets) and receive a gracious welcome from Kublai Khan. The khan questions them about their Christian faith, then sends them on a special mission as his ambassadors to the pope. The Polos are to request that the pope send to the khan’s court “a hundred men of learning” to argue the merits of Christianity. The khan also requests that, on their return to China, the Polos bring him some of the holy oil from the lamp above Christ’s sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Consenting to the mission, the Polos depart China, reaching Acre, the Crusader stronghold in Palestine, in 1269. Pope Clement has died, however, and there is a long delay in electing a new pope. Returning to Venice, the Polos discover that Nicolo’s wife has also died. His son, Marco, is now 15 years old. In 1271 the Polos decide to resume their mission for the khan and to take Marco with them. On learning that Gregory X has been appointed pope, the Polos relay to him the khan’s request for missionaries; the new pope decides to send only two friars, both of whom quickly abandon the Polos’ expedition once they hear of the hardships and dangers involved. More than three years later, the Polos once again reach the khan’s court.

Accepting the Polos’ gift of the holy oil and explanation of the friars’ defection from the mission, the khan receives the Venetians as warmly as before. The great ruler takes a particular fancy to Marco, now in his early twenties. For the next 17 years, the Polos remain in China as the khan’s honored guests. Marco adopts the manners of the Tartars and becomes the khan’s emissary. Knowing that the khan “took a pleasure in hearing accounts of whatever was new to him respecting the customs and manners of people, and the peculiar circumstances of distant countries,” the young man records what he sees and hears on his missions for the khan (Travels, p. 12).

In 1292, fearing that the aging khan’s death will leave them vulnerable to the enmity of jealous courtiers, the Polos head homeward. They reach Venice safely in 1295, laden with riches from their journeys.

Book 1

Unlike the prologue, the subsequent volumes of The Travels of Marco Polo do not possess a sustained narrative. Rather, each relates Polo’s observations of the regions he visits or hears about during his missions for the khan. In Book 1, Marco gives an account of the Polos’ journey from Lower Armenia to the Court of the Great Khan at Shangdu. He begins by describing Lesser and Greater Armenia, noting the terrain, the religious practices, and the goods each people has to sell. He also describes the countries of the Middle East, especially Persia, Iraq, and Asia Minor. Polo dwells upon local myths and legends, referring to Alexander the Great and the iron gates he supposedly constructed in a bronze wall imprisoning two giants and to a notorious Old Man of the Mountain, who recruited young men as assassins, ensuring their obedience with drugs and promises of paradise on earth.

Polo continues westward towards Cathay (China) via Badakshan, the Pamir, Kashmir, Samarkand, Khotan, Lop, and finally the Great Desert (later known as the Gobi). Reaching the heartland of the Tartars, he gives a detailed, if not wholly accurate, account of one man: Chingghis (Genghis) Khan (“Universal Ruler”), and of his defeat of the powerful prince Unc Can (also known as Prester John). According to Polo, Genghis routed the army of Prester John, who perished in the battle, then married his daughter and founded a dynasty. Directly descended from Chingghis, Kublai was the sixth and current Great Khan. Book 1 concludes with Polo’s introductory account of Kublai Khan’s world, mentioning Kublai’s summer palace of Shandu (Shangdu), his stable of 10,000 snow-white horses and mares, and his court astrologers, who claim to prevent—by magic—the rain from falling upon the palace.

Book 2

The second and longest volume of Polo’s books deals extensively with Kublai Khan, recounting his reputation as a warrior, his domestic life (four wives, 47 sons, and a plethora of concubines), his splendid winter palace at Taidu, the festivals held on his birthday and at the New Year, and the khan’s great hunting parties.

Polo dwells less extensively on the administrative matters in the khan’s government. He does, however, mention the circulation of paper money, the planting of trees along roadsides, the black stones dug out of the ground in Cathay and used for fuel, the relay postal system by which couriers on horseback carry messages through the provinces, and the khan’s almsgiving to the poor.

In later chapters, Polo describes a journey to the western provinces: in Thebeth (Tibet) musk is produced from local animals and salt is used as currency; the province of Karazan features huge crocodiles; fathers in the province of Kardandan suckle infants themselves after mothers give birth; the city of Mien, in Burma, has two pyramidal towers, one of gold, one of silver, that mark the tomb of a great monarch of the past; and the province of Bangala (Benghal) is rich in cotton, spices, and many kinds of drugs. In Bangala, says Polo, eunuchs serve as slaves, especially to guard women.

Book 2 also explores Mangi, or South China, which Kublai Khan reportedly invaded and annexed in 1268. The book describes other provincial cities in the region: Yan-Gui, of which Marco Polo was supposedly governor for three years; Sa-yan-fu, which the Polos reportedly helped the khan to annex by building a catapult that crushed the city’s walls and buildings; and Kin-sai, a beautiful, prosperous town with a canal system and 12,000 bridges. Traveling onward, Polo journeys to the kingdom of Kon-Cha, which boasts huge tigers, people who eat human flesh, and fowls allegedly covered with black hair instead of feathers (Polo admits to not having seen the birds himself). This second volume closes with descriptions of a few cities: Un-Guen, where sugar is manufactured; Zai-tun, a prosperous port; and Tin-Gui, famous for its fine porcelain.

Book 3

This volume deals mainly with India, which Polo divides into Greater, Lesser, and Middle India. Book 3 also contains the only Western references to Japan (called Zipangu) before the sixteenth century. After a detailed description of Chinese junks, Polo relies on hearsay to discuss Japan. He mentions the wealth of Japan—”they have gold in the greatest abundance, its sources being inexhaustible”—and Kublai Khan’s failed attempts to annex the island (Travels, p. 219). Polo goes on to mention other islands in the Japanese archipelago—Java, Sumatra, and the Andaman Isles, for instance. (Significantly, Polo never visited Japan and, although cartographers and future explorers were intrigued by his information, much of it has been dismissed as inaccurate.)

Polo follows up his account of Japan with accounts of Zeilon (Ceylon), 10 of the 13 kingdoms of “Greater India,” and the western Indian Ocean. He gives detailed information about Maabar (a province of Greater India), mingling facts about the natives’ religious rites and daily lives with fables and stories of, for example, miracles at the shrine of St. Thomas the Apostle. Polo goes on to mention more regions: the Isles of Men and Women, Socotra (an island near Yemen in the Indian Ocean), Abyssinia (Middle India), Zanzibar, and Madagascar. He concludes Book 3 by announcing his intent to speak next of northern regions he has so far neglected.

Book 4

The last and shortest volume of Polo’s book begins with a lengthy account of the hostility between Kublai Khan and his nephew, Kaidu, who ruled Great Turkey in Central Asia. On several occasions, uncle and nephew went to war against each other, and many lives were lost. Ultimately, Kublai Khan’s forces prevailed and Kaidu and his army retreated to Samarkand in Great Turkey. After discussing other conflicts among the eastern Tartars, Polo mentions a few northern regions in Tartar territory, chiefly Russia. The volume concludes somewhat abruptly, after an account of the wars between Tartar lords of the west. Given the strife, Polo’s departure from China is timely indeed. He notes as much, adding piously, “I believe it was God’s pleasure that we should get back in order that people might learn about the things that the world contains. Thanks be to God! Amen! Amen!” (Travels, p. 295).

What the account leaves out

While Polo’s book has been an object of fascinated study for centuries, the author remains a shadowy figure within its pages. Moreover, it is often difficult to separate Polo’s narrative from that of his collaborator, Rustigielo. At times Polo is referred to in the first-person, at other times in the third-person as “Messer Marco.” Little is known of Polo’s childhood and rearing; despite the autobiographical slant of his work, he reveals no details of his life before he was old enough to accompany his father and uncle on their second journey to China. Even his career and accomplishments in China are expressed in the most general terms. According to the book, he adapted quickly to Mongol ways, acquired reading and writing proficiency in four languages, and undertook several missions at Kublai Khan’s behest that took him to various parts of the Mongol Empire.

Maps and Marco Polo

The Catalan Mappamundi (c.1450-60), based on the Catalan lan Atlas produced 70 to 80 years before, shows Marco Polo’s influence on early cartography. The names of the Chinese towns located between the Yangtze and Huang He rivers are taken from Polo, as are the annotations pertaining to them. The northeast region of China is labeled “Chataio” (Cathay) and shows the capital of “Canbalech” (another spelling for Kublai Khan’s new imperial city, Khanbalik). Quinsai (Kin-sai, in Polo’s book) is also plotted on the map, near the coast, and Polo’s detail about the town having 12,000 bridges has been included. Another map, by Henricus Martellus Germanicus (c. 1489–90), mentions the position of Zipangu (Japan) in relation to other cities and countries, though Zipangu itself is not shown. Finally, Martin Behaim’s Terrestrial Globe (c. 1492) makes the first explicit reference to Marco Polo as a source for mapping; the globe shows “Thebeth,” the kingdoms of Cathay and Mangi, and even Zipangu, which is plotted at 25 degrees east of China.

On his return from China, Marco Polo was 41 years old and, like his father and uncle, unrecognizable to his Venetian neighbors, who had thought the Polos long dead. According to an account by Giambattista Ramusio—written centuries after the fact—the trio was shabbily dressed and spoke their native Venetian haltingly, with Tartar accents. Only after the Polos displayed the rich raiment and jewels acquired on their travels to the East were the doubts regarding their identities quelled. It is said that, in addition to goods, Marco may have brought back a Mongol slave, Pietro, who was ultimately granted his freedom in Marco’s will.

Factual details of the Polos’ later years are sparse. They reestablished themselves as Venetian merchants and purchased a palace in the quarter of San Giovanni Crisostomo. While serving in a war between Venice and Genoa, Marco was, as noted, imprisoned by the Genoese for a year, during which he wrote his famous book. Later, he married a Venetian woman, Donata Badoer, and they had three daughters. He was often called upon to relate the story of his travels to incredulous friends and neighbors, who nicknamed his house “the court of the millions” and Marco himself “Marco of the Millions,” a reference perhaps to his purported wealth or to his numerous tales of the East (il Milione [The Million] was also an alternate title of Polo’s book). After Marco’s death, a comic figure representing “Marco of the Millions” is said to have become a staple of the Venetian carnival. Dressed as a clown, this figure perpetrated gross exaggerations to entertain the crowds, a backhanded tribute to the deceased Marco. In England, the phrase “It’s a Marco Polo” would become synonymous with telling a falsehood.

Fact or fiction?

Marco Polo was fully aware of the legends that had sprung up about the East; indeed, he refers to the tales of Alexander the Great and Prester John in the first volume of his book. However, he also debunks a number of myths in the course of his account: “Of the salamander under the form of the serpent, supposed to exist in fire,” reports Polo, “I could never discover any traces in the eastern regions” (Travels, p. 69).

Even without the trappings of legend, the sights Polo records seemed incredible enough to his contemporaries. Yet modern historians have confirmed some of the more fantastic elements. For example, Polo mentions a substance that “when woven into cloth, and thrown into the fire … remains incombustible”; this is clearly asbestos (Travels, p. 68). He mentions black stones used as fuel in China, which have since been identified as coal. Coconuts, which Polo terms “Indian nuts,” are likewise accurately described: they are “the size of a man’s head, containing an edible substance that is sweet and pleasant to the taste and white as milk. … [and] filled with liquor clear as water” (Travels, p. 230). And the “couvade”—the practice of a father nursing his newborn baby as though he, rather than the mother, had given birth—has been observed in India, Borneo, Siam, Africa, and parts of South America. On the other hand, like Polo’s contemporaries, historians have questioned how truthful Polo is: why doesn’t he, they wonder, refer to what would become the Great Wall of China (begun centuries before the Polos’ expedition), tea drinking, or the binding of women’s feet? They also point to the lack of evidence supporting Polo’s claim that he was governor of Yan-Gui. As for his claim that he participated in the siege of Sa-yan-fu, this, say modern historians, is impossible since it was captured in 1273, two years before Polo arrived in China. Such discrepancies have fueled a theory that Polo never went to China, but compiled his book from Persian and Arabic sources. Opponents of this theory contend that much of what would become the Great Wall was not standing in the thirteenth century, that “teaculture” had not yet reached North and Central China, where Marco mostly resided, and that foot-binding was at that time limited to upper-class ladies, who would have been confined to their houses and so rarely observed by outsiders (Larner, p. 59). Moreover, the Polos’ whereabouts for 24 years has not been otherwise explained, nor has a plausible motive for lying about their whereabouts been offered. Finally there are all the exotic possessions that Marco acquired. One needs to keep in mind that Polo’s book admits to being a mix of eyewitness testimony and hearsay and that it constitutes a milestone in travel narratives. However spurious or unreliable parts of Polo’s narrative may be, his account remains one of the first Western descriptions of life in the East.

Sources and literary context

Polo’s book is supposedly based on his own experiences of what he witnessed or heard. While a prisoner of the Genoese, Polo reportedly sent for his travel notebooks before dictating his reminiscences to his fellow prisoner Rustigielo.

The Travels of Marco Polo is among the earliest of all accounts of foreign travel and is unquestionably the most detailed European account of life in continental Asia, eclipsing even that of the missionaries Era Giovanni di Piano Carpini and William of Rubruck. As a merchant, Polo naturally expressed more interest than they in Eastern trade, but he also recorded far more, including the climate, diet, and religious practices of Eastern peoples.

Impact

The Travels of Marco Polo was a popular success from its first appearance in 1299, remaining in continual circulation during the author’s lifetime. Over the next 25 years, Polo’s book, originally written in French or Franco-Italian, was translated into several languages and dialects, including Tuscan, Venetian, Latin, and German. Polo enjoyed increased fame as a result; he was even consulted on geographical matters by learned men like Pietro d’Abano, professor of the University of Padua. In his Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum (1310), d’Abano described Polo as “the most extensive traveler and the most diligent inquirer whom I have ever known” (d’Abano in Larner, p. 44). Polo’s reputation soon extended beyond his native Venice; in 1307 Thibaud de Chepoix, Vicar General to Charles de Valois (Latin emperor of Constantinople), requested a copy of Polo’s book from the author himself.

Christopher Columbus used his own copy of The Travels of Marco Polo as a guidebook, making notes in the margins and underlining passages about precious gems and other riches. Indeed, it was towards the China of Polo’s description that Columbus set sail in 1492, carrying letters addressed to the Great Khan by the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.

Polo’s book had its detractors, the skeptics who doubted the veracity of his information. Polo rebuffed them with a few simple words. He was on his deathbed when some friends who feared for his salvation entreated him to retract some of the more fantastical elements in his book. Instead Polo simply replied, “I have not told half of what I saw” (Travels, p. 313).

—Pamela S. Loy