Marco Polo
Marco Polo (1254 - January 8 1324) was a Venetian merchant and explorer who, together with his father and uncle, was among the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China (which he called Cathay). His travels are chronicled in the widely read book Il Milione ("The Million" or The Travels of Marco Polo). Marco Polo is widely regarded as one of the world's greatest explorers—although some skeptics rather see him as the world's greatest storyteller.
The Polos supposedly lived there for seventeen years before returning to Venice. After his return, in a sea battle between Venice and Genoa, Marco was captured and taken to prison, where he dictated to Rustichello da Pisa the book Il Milione about his travels.
The name Marco Polo was also given to a children's game — see Marco Polo (game) — and to a story in the science fiction series Doctor Who — see Marco Polo (Doctor Who) — and to a three-masted clipper ship built in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1851. The fastest ship of her day, the Marco Polo was the first ship to circumnavigate the world in under six months.
Marco Polo at the court of Kublai Khan
The first voyage
The Polo family was originally from the island of Curzola in the Adriatic Sea (now Korčula, part of Croatia), where the house in which Marco was born still stands. His father Niccolò (Nikola) and his uncle Matteo (Mate) were prosperous merchants in the East trade. The two merchants set out to Asia in 1255, reached China in 1266, arriving at Khanbaliq near Peking. They returned from China as Kublai Khan's envoys with a letter for the Pope asking to be sent educated people to teach in his empire, to inform the Mongols about their way of life.
The second voyage
Matteo and Niccolò Polo set out on a second journey, with the Pope's response to Kublai Khan, in 1271. This time Niccolò took his son Marco who soon won the favour of Kublai Khan, who made Marco his adviser. Soon afterwards Marco became the Khan's emissary. In his seventeen years of service to the Khan, Marco Polo became acquainted with the vast regions of China and with numerous achievements of Chinese civilization, many of which were more advanced than similar contemporary European developments.
Il Milione
On their return from China in 1295, the family settled in Venice where they became a sensation and attracted crowds of listeners, who had difficulties in believing their reports of distant China.
His restless spirit drove Marco Polo to take part in the naval battle of Korčula between Genoa and Venice in 1298. He was captured by and spent the few months of his imprisonment dictating a detailed account of his travels in the then-unknown parts of the Far East. His book, Il Milione ("The Million"; known in English as The Travels of Marco Polo) was written in the Provençal language and was soon translated into many European languages. The original is lost and we have several often-conflicting versions of the translations. The book became an instant success — quite an achievement in a time when printing was not known in Europe.
Did the trip really take place?
On his deathbed, his family begged Marco to confess that he had lied in his stories. Marco refused, insisting, "I have only told half of what I saw!"
While most historians believe that Marco Polo did indeed reach China, in recent times some have proposed that he did not get that far, and only retold information he had heard from others. Those skeptics point out that, among other omissions, his account fails to mention Chinese writing, chopsticks, tea, foot binding, or the Great Wall. Also, Chinese records of the time do not mention him, despite the fact that he claimed to have served as a special emissary for Kublai Khan—which is puzzling, given the careful record-keeping in China at that time.
On the other hand, Marco describes other apects of Far Eastern life in much detail: paper money, the Grand Canal, the structure of a Mongol army, tigers, the Imperial postal system. He also refers to Japan by its Chinese name "Zipang" or Cipangu. This is usually considered the first mention of Japan in Western literature.
Marco Polo is also believed to have described a bridge that was the site of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, a battle that marked the beginning of the Japanese invasion of north central China in World War II.
Historical impact
Although the Polos were by no means the first Europeans to reach China overland (see for example Giovanni da Pian del Carpini), thanks to Marco's book their trip was the first to be widely known, and the best-documented until then.
Legend has it that Marco Polo introduced to Italy some products from China, including ice cream, the piñata and pasta, especially spaghetti. However, these legends are highly dubious — for instance, there is evidence that pasta was known in Italy since antiquity.
The airport in Venice, Italy is named Marco Polo International Airport. See also the Marcopolo satellites.
The travels of Marco Polo are given an extended fantasy treatment in the Irish writer Donn Byrne's Messer Marco Polo.
References
- Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo Go to China?, Westview Press, 1995