Research Essay: Portrayal of China in Western Media

Did Marco Polo

go to China?

FRANCES WOOD

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Westview Press

NOTE ON THE TEXT I have decided to retain the spelling, punctuation, errors and oddities of the original register keepers, journal writers, etc., especially in the transcription of medieval French and Latin, for which correction

would be inappropriate.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © 1995, i996 by Frances Wood. The author has asserted her moral rights. Published in 1996 in the United States of America by Westview Press, A member of Perseus book group 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877.

First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited, an imprint of Reed Books Limited, Michelin House, 81 Ful- ham Road, London sw3 6RB and Auckland, Melbourne, Singapore and Toronto

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-8133-8999-2 (pb)

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the Amer- ican National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials z38.48-1984. 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7

PERSEUS

ON DEMAND pod

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Why go at all?

Why should two Venetian merchants have struggled across the unknown and desolate deserts of Central Asia, let alone retrace their steps bearing holy oil and taking a seventeen- year-old boy with them?

One of the most significant reasons was the growing importance of the trade in exotic products from Asia. The mercantile interest in such rarities that Marco Polo demon- strates throughout his book is hardly surprising given his background as the son and nephew of traders. The eco- nomic importance of the Far East and South-East Asia to medieval Europe, which led eventually to the great maritime explorations of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, lay in the abundance of spices, which both helped in the conservation of food before the days of refrigeration and imparted strong flavours to badly preserved foods.

Marco Polo the merchant mentions the silver mines and fine buckram of Armenia; the crimson silks of Turkey and Tiflis; Georgian oil, which was good for burning (though not eating) and very efficacious against the itch; Baghdadi pearls; cloth of gold from Tabriz; more silks, pis- tachios, dates and turquoises from Persia; the cheap par- tridges of the Persian Gulf; rubies, lapis and sesame oil in Central Asia; cotton, flax and hemp from Kashgar; steel and

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Did Marco Polo go to China?

asbestos cloth from Uighuristan; Tangut musk, the best in the world; salt from the mines of Sichuan; ginger and cinna- mon, spikenard, galingale and sugar from Bengal; Javanese pepper, nutmeg and cloves; Indian coconuts; pepper, indigo, sandalwood and ambergris from Zanzibar; and fine horses and incense made from tree sap near Aden. It was lists of exotica such as these which attracted Christopher Columbus and which appear in the marginal notes he made in his copy of Marco Polo's book (which he sent to London for in 1498).'

One of the longer passages concerning the all-important spices is that describing the surprising quantities of pepper brought daily into Hangzhou on China's eastern coast. Polo declares he heard from a customs official that every single day 43 cartloads of pepper were brought to the city, each cartload containing 223 lb.2 Even allowing that Hangzhou's markets presumably served a far greater populace than the city's one million inhabitants but dividing by the fact that pepper (if pepper was what he meant) was hardly used in the cuisine of the area, it was still a lot of pepper.

Pepper, and other spices such as cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg, were the oriental products most essential to medieval Europe. Together with related items such as scented woods and dyestuffs, they were impossible to grow in the more temperate climate of Europe and thus remained a Far Eastern monopoly, carried westwards mainly by sea. Interruptions to the spice trade meant that, on occasion, spices reached such high prices that they were used in pay- ment instead of silver or gold.8

Aside from spices, which were a virtual necessity, Far East- ern luxury items were also appreciated in Europe, and of these silk was the most significant. Prized in ancient Rome, its production remained mysterious, the poet Virgil perpetu- ating the notion that it was combed from the leaves of trees.4 Even after the Emperor Justinian received smuggled silkworm cocoons at Constantinople in AD 552, it took

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Why go at all?

another hundred years or so before the mysteries of raising silkworms and reeling the filament were unravelled and production was established in the Near East.5 In Europe, silk production took longer to develop, and the material and its production remained somewhat mysterious, James I of England issued an edict in 1608 promoting the cultivat- ion of mulberries (to provide leaves for the feeding of silkworms) but with little result. One Englishman started a moth farm, but discovered eventually that he was rearing the wrong kind of moth; and it was not until the late seventeenth century with the arrival of Huguenot refugees in Spitalfields that the English silk industry really took off,6

With such misapprehensions, it is not surprising that local production did not immediately supply the demand for silks. Far Eastern silks continued to be brought to Europe, mainly by the overland route organised by Persian middlemen, until the development of direct European trade via sea routes in the sixteenth century. Fashions changed, for whilst the decadent Romans seem to have favoured diaphanous Chinese silks, thirteenth-century Europeans preferred heav- ier damasks woven in the Near East; however it was still worth trading in the finer Chinese silk because of the profit that could be made.7 Thus, although silk remained second- ary to spices in the impetus to explore, it still provided a considerable incentive.

In the context of trade with the East, and Venetian trade in particular, the Polos were well placed. Marco the Elder (uncle of Marco the Traveller) had a house in Constantin- ople and a house in Soldaia (or Sudak) on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea. (In his will [1280] he left the Crimean house to the Franciscan order - 'dimitto fratribus minoribus' - though he wanted his son and daughter to carry on living there.8) Spices and silks were not traded through Soldaia, though furs of all sorts were brought there by Rus- sian traders; nevertheless, it was a major entrepot between West and East.

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Did Marco Polo go to China?

In the prologue to the Description of the World, the first trip of Maffeo and Niccolo Polo was from their other base in Constantinople, where they loaded themselves with jewels and proceeded to Soldaia and then 'further afield'. On the long journey out to the Far East, whether by land or sea, 'trading on' was the normal method. This form of trade - taking goods to the first entrepot, selling them there and buying fresh goods for the next stop - was practised by individual merchants and larger enterprises such as the East India Companies (from the sixteenth century). This was done partly because, with the exception of the goods noted above, most markets were fairly restricted in scope, prefer- ring known articles produced not far away.9 This method had the advantage of ensuring a return on the original investment. Taking a new cargo to a relatively unknown destination where it might not have been welcome could have meant a loss of the whole sum invested in the venture. By continually selling and buying such a major loss could be avoided. The problem of interesting people in unknown products was encountered by the Macartney embassy to China (1792-94), which took the most up-to-date scientific instruments to the Chinese court, hoping to impress and create a market, but found the instruments dismissed as gadgets and toys by none other than the Emperor himself.10

In taking jewels, which were light, luxury items of inter- national interest, the Polos could be sure of future sales.

Apart from the description of the elder Polos' movements in the Description of the World and the mention of houses in the entrepots of Sudak and Constantinople in the will of Marco the Elder, there are a few other surviving documents which indicate the Polo family's trade connections. These are mostly related to legal disputes and indicate that, despite the legendary wealth of the Polos, they were in fact small merchants, depositing a small sum of money with a local artisan Alberto Vasirulo and trading spices with Paolo Gir- ardo in 1316. Another document describes how two Polos,

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Why go at all?

Stefano and Giovanni, sons of Niccolo, then trading in Crete, were shipwrecked and lost 4,000 ducats."

Apart from the occasional reference to disputes with other merchants, the family does not seein to have made a mark on Venice. This is not necessarily surprising. The thirteenth-century merchants of Genoa and Venice seem to have been extremely careful not to commit their plans to paper, presumably for fear of competition. Most foreign trade was governed by the colleganza system in Venice, a form of contract between the traveller, who provided a third of the required investment, and an associate, who remained behind though providing two-thirds of the funds required, with the eventual profits being equally divided.'* These con- tracts are bare of descriptive detail and the later merchants' handbook, Pegolotti's Pratica detta Mercatura (c. 1340), which is often measured against the Description of the World, was written not by a trader, but by a banker. Pegolotti worked for the Florentine Company of the Bardi in Antwerp, London, Cyprus and Ayas, travelling no further east than the Holy Land, but apparently managing to gather his information on the details of travel in the more distant Far East through conversations with those who had actually made the journey."

Although the Polos are nowhere mentioned, there are scattered references to other Italian traders in China in various travellers' accounts. John of Montecorvino (1247—1328), Bishop of Peking, described a merchant, Petrus de Lucalongo, who travelled with him from Tabriz to Peking in 1291 and who later provided funds to build the first Catholic cathedral in Peking. In 1305, John of Monte- corvino sent his first letter to the Pope from Karakorum via un-named Venetian merchants who were returning home, protected in the Mongol domains by a golden safe-conduct tablet or 'passport'.14

One of the most tantalising monuments to Italian trade with China is the tombstone of a young Italian girl found

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Did Marco Polo go to China ?

in Yangzhou in 1951, She died in 1342, but her tombstone was moved in the late fifteenth century to build the walls of the city. In Gothic script inscribed on marble, she was named as Katerina, daughter of Domenico de Vilioni, apparently from a family that had been trading in Tabriz in the mid- thirteenth century. The elaborate tombstone, with its carved Madonna depicted above scenes of the martyrdom of the virgin Saint Catherine being sliced by wheels fitted with knives, suggests that she was not a tiny baby when she died and some authorities assume that her father pre-deceased her.15 The presence of a Franciscan convent in Yangzhou in the 13205 (mentioned by Odorie of Pordenone16) may well explain the design of the tombstone, though most agree that its style suggests that it was actually made by local Chinese artisans. Nevertheless, it remains a mysterious testa- ment to the travels of Italian silk merchants.

In the light of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Euro- pean trade with China, when no foreign women were allowed on the mainland,17 the presence of a daughter and her tombstone is surprising.

However, the armchair guidebook writer Pegolotti, who wrote specifically for travelling merchants, recommended that they should take women along with them, presumably to provide comfort, although he seemed to suggest that one should choose women who know the local languages, which would not, presumably, include daughters commemorated in Latin.18

The family name of the young girl, Vilioni, has led to some confusion, for a possible ancestor of Katerina's, Johannes Vilioni, is also referred to as Johannes Milion in a document dated 1185;™ and since Marco Polo was occasionally referred to as 'il milioni,w there have been suggestions that they were related. However there seems to be nothing, apart from a spelling variation, to link the Genoese and the Venetian.

That the tombstone was erected in Yangzhou is also

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Why go at all?

interesting because Marco Polo is said to have claimed to have governed the city for three years,21 some forty or fifty years before Katerina's death. Whilst there is absolutely no record of Marco Polo in the Yangzhou gazetteers, there is equally no mention of other resident Italian merchants and their families. The position of the Polos amongst these other merchants is based entirely upon the description given in the Prologue to the Description of the World. No trace remains of the Polos in Yangzhou and it is perhaps to be regretted that none of them died there, for a handsome tombstone would have been useful.

Despite the scanty evidence of the sojourn of Italian mer- chants, the Mongols were clearly less concerned with keeping out foreigners than later Chinese rulers. Their fre- quent use of non-Mongol and non-Chinese experts is well known, and their control through family branches of most of Asia meant that travel was generally less restricted than at other times. That they allowed foreign Christians to build cathedrals in Chinese cities and reside there (Italian bishops lived in Quanzhou from 1313 for a decade and at Peking from 1307-28) also indicates a lack of insularity, which obviously extended to the free travel of merchants in the silk-producing areas around Yangzhou.