A Venetian merchant family in Asia
Marco Polo came from a Venetian merchant family. His father, Niccolo, and uncle, Maffeo, had already traveled eastward on a trading journey and reached the court of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan before Marco was old enough to go. According to the book that carries his name, the brothers returned to Europe with a request from the khan for learned men and holy oil from Jerusalem. They then set off again around 1271, taking the teenage Marco with them.
The traditional account says they traveled overland through the Middle East and Central Asia, reached the Mongol court, and stayed for many years in the service of the khan. Marco is said to have been sent on missions across his territory. The return journey was by sea, and the family arrived back in Venice around 1295. These dates are traditional and approximate.
How the book came to exist
The text has an unusual origin. Marco Polo was taken prisoner in the war between Venice and Genoa, and while in a Genoese prison he met Rustichello of Pisa, a writer of chivalric romances. The book was written down in about 1298, probably with Rustichello shaping the language and structure. It is often called Il Milione or, in English, The Travels of Marco Polo, though early titles varied.
The text survives in many manuscripts, in several languages, with real differences between versions. There is no single authoritative original, which is a basic problem for anyone who wants to check exactly what Marco said. Early copies were also adapted by scribes and translators, who added or removed details.
What the book describes
It is less a diary than a guidebook-like survey of places, products and customs, with sections on Persia, Central Asia, China and the sea routes to India and Southeast Asia. It covers cities, markets, religions and travel conditions, and it describes Kublai Khan and his court at length. Many passages are matter-of-fact, others are fantastical or are clearly built from hearsay, such as accounts of far-off islands and strange creatures.
Some things in it seem to match what other sources say about Mongol rule: paper money, the relay-post system of the empire, and the large-scale use of coal and salt. The relay posts are discussed further in our piece on the Pax Mongolica. His descriptions of Chinese cities such as Hangzhou, which he calls Quinsai, are consistent with Song-era and Yuan-era sources, although he exaggerates the numbers.
The case for doubt
Doubt about the book began early, and in modern times it has been revived by scholars who point to several things:
- Silences. The text does not mention things a visitor to China might be expected to notice, such as tea drinking, the practice of footbinding, or, most famously, the Great Wall. Defenders point out that the walls of that period were not the Ming-era structure we know today.
- Chinese records. No Chinese or Mongol source has been found that mentions Marco Polo by name, even though the book says he held office. Chinese records of the time are enormous, but they are also incomplete, and foreigners in service often appear under different forms of their names.
- Language. The book gives mostly Persian forms of place-names, which has been taken to suggest that some information came from Persian-speaking merchants or travel guides rather than from Marco’s own experience.
- Boasting. Some passages seem to inflate his role, for example the claim that he helped in the siege of Xiangyang, which cannot be right on the dates given.
The case for belief
Others respond that the book contains too many accurate and unusual details to have been invented from rumor. Specialists have identified credible information about local customs, about trade goods and about the political structure of the empire. Marco’s silence on some features might simply reflect the fact that he was a merchant and an outsider who moved in Mongol and Persian circles and did not read Chinese. The book was also written years later from memory, with the help of a romance writer who may have restructured it.
There is another point in his favor. Documents from Venice, such as family records and a will, confirm that the family existed and that Marco lived there at the time. The long Mongol peace made journeys like his realistic, and other European travelers, mostly Franciscan friars, also reached the Mongol heartland in the thirteenth century.
Where historians stand
Most historians accept that a Polo family did travel to the Mongol world and that Marco probably saw much of what he describes about Persia and parts of China, while allowing that parts of the book may rely on others’ reports. Some prefer to see it as a compilation of what the family and other merchants knew. A minority doubt that he went to China at all. The debate is unlikely to be settled unless new documents appear.
The book’s influence is easier to judge than its accuracy. Copies circulated widely, mapmakers used it, and later explorers read it, including, according to tradition, Christopher Columbus, whose annotated copy is often mentioned. As a window onto medieval travel, it is valuable even if it must be read critically, and it is a useful example of how Europeans pictured the East.