Marco Polo’s controversies, 700 years after his death – 03/19/2024 – Science

Try putting yourself in the shoes of a 17-year-old who has never left his hometown. His father and uncle, two merchants who have been absent his entire life, return home before leaving on their next journey. But this time, you go along.

The journey covers 24 thousand kilometers and lasts 24 years. You will see things you could never imagine and be catapulted into the highest echelons of a powerful empire. In the end, he will become one of the most famous travelers in Western history.

What could be the script for a Hollywood film is nothing less than the biography of Marco Polo.

Born in Venice in 1254, Marco Polo traveled along the Silk Road, a medieval trade route that connected Europe to Asia, between 1271 and 1295, spending 17 years in China and becoming a well-known figure in the burgeoning Mongol Empire under his leadership. by Kublai Khan.

After returning to Italy, Marco Polo collaborated with the writer Rustichello of Pisa to chronicle his journey. The book “Il Milione” (“The Travels of Marco Polo”) resulting from these accounts became a bestseller of the medieval era. The work was translated into countless languages ​​and read by everyone who could read, from princes to priests. It was said that the navigator Christopher Columbus always carried a copy with him.

Report that shocked Europe

Marco Polo was far from the first European traveler to medieval China, much less the first to document the trip. According to Hyunhee Park, a history professor at New York University, Muslim travelers documented their land and sea journeys to the region as early as the 9th and 10th centuries.

But at a time when Europe was closed and inward-looking, Marco Polo became the first European to bring information about China into popular consciousness. Reports of him, however, did not meet the expectations of Europeans.

He described the Mongol Empire as a grand civilization with great cities. “Many Europeans were shocked, he was even accused of being a liar,” Park said.

Marco Polo’s descriptions deviated from the conventions used by other Westerners who reported on non-European lands, said Margaret Kim, professor of foreign languages ​​and literature at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

“Before and after Marco Polo, European traveling writers, when describing foreign places and people, wanted to teach moral lessons and religious doctrines. This is implicit in what they wrote. Marco Polo did not have this sense of religious indoctrination. His descriptions, at first , seem interested in landscapes and customs from different parts of the world. He was a very secular person.”

The imperial gaze

Marco Polo’s vision sets him apart from the future accounts of other European travelers, who were largely driven by the desire for conquest and the prospect of supposed civilizational superiority.

“Marco was impressed by the fortune and power of the Mongol rulers at a time when the East was famous for riches and prosperity compared to medieval Europe. In this way, his attitude was very different from the European explorers and colonialist militants who came later “, says Zhang Longxi, professor at Peking University’s Yenching Academy. He notes that future accounts of China would describe the region as backward or stagnant, far removed from European grandeur.

In China, Marco Polo became a respected figure in Kublai Khan’s court. While his position at court is a subject of debate, there is broad agreement that he was a prominent public servant with diplomatic responsibilities. Therefore, he viewed the Mongol Empire not as an outsider, but as an insider.

“[Marco] He left Venice as a teenager and lived most of the formative years of his life in Asia. It was there that he developed his way of thinking about the world that cannot be characterized as purely Western”, explains Kim.

“He, however, had what I would call an ‘imperial gaze’. He saw the world as being divided between more or less civilized peoples. Therefore, in Marco Polo’s world, whether it was quite civilized, partially civilized , or wild.”

For him, according to Kim, the great center of civilization was not the one that Europeans expected, but rather the Mongol Empire of Kublai Khan.

Controversial reports

As a source of historical information, Marco Polo has also had his share of controversies, many of them arising from the complexities surrounding his book.

There is no definitive manuscript, on the contrary, there are around 140 different versions. The role of co-author Rustichello in the production of the book and his possible influence on its content provide a layer of uncertainty analyzed differently by historians.

Kim considers the explorer to be the author of the book, responsible for its content and style, and said he believes that Rustichello supervised the preparation of copies and their dissemination.

Zhang, on the other hand, says he believes that Marco Polo would have been the source of the information, with Rustichello formatting the book’s content. “Rustichello, a romance writer, went so far as to rewrite Marco’s stories, probably adding colors and details that were appealing to medieval readers,” he explained.

He, however, added that, compared to other works of travelogue literature from that period, Marco Polo’s definitely demonstrates some restraint in terms of imaginary features.

The omission of expected information regarding China and a supposed lack of sources that could corroborate the reports led some historians, such as the renowned sinologist Frances Wood, to question the authenticity of Marco Polo’s observations.

However, many historians to this day tend to agree that Marco Polo’s observations are so original and specific that they could not have been invented or based on second-hand accounts. This, despite Polo and Rustichello making it clear in the prologue of their book that they had included third-party observations in their travel diary.

Scholars like Park also see corroborating evidence in Polo’s observations, including in documents from Chinese and Islamic sources, such as the writings of Batutta, the famous 14th-century North African explorer.

A vision for today

Today, 700 years after his death, Polo continues to be remarkably well known, even among non-academics: a popular game in the United States, a high-end clothing brand, countless travel agencies and several other businesses use his name. Its relevance, however, goes beyond its brand power.

For Kim, Marco Polo showed that “the world contains things beyond the way we imagine it, which may disquiet and bother, but which we can adapt to. Thus, the ‘imperial gaze’ is not the property of any culture or civilization and, It is certainly not the sole property of the West either.”

In Zhang’s view, his story provides us with a way to remember, in times of strong tension between much of the West and China, that non-antagonistic cultural relations are possible.

“Marco Polo offers an alternative model of East-West encounters and interrelationships that are extremely valuable to us in today’s world. It is a model of mutual understanding and cooperation rather than rivalry and conflict.”