This summary is taken from a book titled The Dawn of a New Era 1250-1435 written by Edward P. Cheney, the first book in the 20-volume historical series The Rise of Modern Europe. The original copyright was in 1936; this particular copy is dated 1971, so the monetary figures in �modern value� are not accurate.
The Revelation of the East
The Italians were as manifestly the forerunners of modern geographical discovery as of modern commerce and banking and of the modern fashions in learning, literature and art. Their avidity for maritime enterprise was remarkable. No shores of the Mediterranean or of its connected waters were unfamiliar to them, and both the Genoese and the Venetians early took courage to sail through and beyond the straights of Gibraltar. It was Genoese navigators who as the first of modern Europeans saw the islands of the western ocean, the Madeiras, the Canaries, the Azores, one by one rise before their eyes from the sea. Though the voyage of the Genoese Launcelot Malocello in 1270 to the Canaries, the �Fortunate Isles� of ancient tradition, is but poorly authenticated, it is certainly true that within the next few years his fellow countrymen had made more than one voyage there. Before the close of the 14th century these voyages had become common.
As these islands led to discoveries to the south and west they became properties of Portugal and Spain, but the Italians were relied upon. In 1317 Emmanuel Pezagno of Genoa was appointed lord high admiral of Portugal. With him were twenty trained Genoese seamen who were captains and pilots. Pezagno was succeeded by his son and grandson as lord high admiral. In the same year the Venetian fleet made the first of its regular voyages to Flanders and England. In 1341 when Spain sought to explore and possibly occupy the Canaries the crews of their three ships were largely Genoese. Before 1350 the Canaries, the Madeiras and the Azores were explored, but even so, westward exploration was minimal especially in comparison to the exploration of the Far East, beginning in the 13th century.
Two reasons for the expansion eastward were trade and religion, both long practiced. The former was an ancient pursuit and the later dated to early Catholic and heretical times, both reaching to distant parts of Asia.
The East as a Realm of Trading Adventure
�The Book of Ser Marco Polo� was a narrative of adventure and a report of observations. In the mid 13th century three Venetian brothers were involved in trade, Maffeo and Nicolo between Venice and Constantinople, and Marco (the older) in Soldaia, a port on the north coast of the Black Sea, within Tartar territory but mostly occupied by Italians. In 1260 Maffeo and Nicolo visited Marco then ventured further eastward to the capita; of the Khan of the Kipchak Tartars at Serai to dispose of some valuable jewels, remaining at the Khan�s court for over a year. Invited to the court of the Great Khan in China the brothers went further eastward to Cambaluc, modern Peking. The Khan was curious about the customs, learning and religion of the west. He sent the Polo brothers home instructing them to ask the pope to send a hundred learned missionaries, who might perhaps confute the priests and magicians of other religions established at his court. He also wanted some oil from the lamp that was kept burning at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The brothers were also given a general warrant from the Great Khan that secured their safety and support throughout his realm.
On their return home they found the papacy vacant by the death of Clement IV. This would it difficult to fulfill the Khan�s requests. On the positive side, Nicolo�s son was now fifteen-years-old and ready to travel with papa. So when Nicolo and Maffeo returned to China Marco went with them.
Marco was born in 1254. His journey to China began in 1271, first by sea from Venice to Acre, then to Layas in Syria. By land they traveled through Mesopotamia and Iraq to Ormuz; through Persia and its ancient caravan routes; the mountain regions of Badakshan to the Pamir, �the roof of the world�, then through the old trading cities, Bokhara, Samarkand, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan; the across the Gobi desert.
So they finally reached the court of the Great Mogul, the center of the eastern world. Kublai, who was the third successor of Genghis Khan, was sixty-years-old. The extent of his kingdom and the number of his subjects was the most of his time, perhaps ever. Near the capital city was his palace in Shangtu. It was eight miles square of enclosed grounds with a great hall set on a high marble terrace and was guarded by 12,000 men. Khan also had a train of 5,000 elephants, each with a harness of silver and precious stones. The buildings were ornamented with color tile, paintings and sculpture, and there were groves, artificial lakes and gardens.
The adjoining city was six miles square. Along with its shops, attractive dwellings and scores of inhabitants it was a place of commerce. A thousand carts and packhorses loaded with raw silk would enter its markets daily along with other merchandise and supplies.
The most valuable of his observations for travelers and merchants, however, are his comments on his journey to and from China. The route he took and his reports were studied in depth and are still the basis of much of our early geographical knowledge.
Marco remained in Khan�s service for seventeen years. He traveled throughout Cathay (northern) and Mangi (southern) China. The roads were paved and raised for drainage and there were thousands of stone bridges. The Grand Canal allowed for 200,000 merchant vessels to sail yearly from the north and south. It is a 500-mile long channel from Hangchow in the south to Tientsen in the north. Due to his travels Marco was able to describe 16 provinces and 47 cities. He estimated that he had named less than one-twentieth of the cities of China, and that there were 1,200 cities and walled towns in southern China alone.
Yangchow was a manufacturing and trading center of over a million inhabitants, with 25 lesser towns under its jurisdiction. Marco served there as a governor for three years.
Hangchow (or Quinsai) was known as the �Celestial City�. It was the ancient capital of southern China. Marco declared that, �it surpasses in grandeur, wealth and beauty every other city in the world,� and was amazed at the number of its bridges. It had ten principal market places surrounded by homes and shops, and each city three days a week with at least 50,000 buyers and sellers. There was fish, vegetables, fowl, fruit and wine. Stone warehouses along the canal were filled with merchandise from India and elsewhere. There was six tons of pepper arriving daily. The two islands in the lake outside the town had furnished buildings where a hundred weddings or other occasions could be given simultaneously, all in separate pavilions or rooms.
Hangchow residents, like most other southern Chinese, were lovers of luxury. Many were either former businessmen or were masters of some of the 12,000 workshops of the city that employed from ten to forty workmen each. These rich men wore silk and many jewels as their wives did, their homes decorated with paintings and carvings. Their means of transportation was by hired carriages or on barges with pole-men on the lake. Along with the men were their wives or mistresses. The barges could hold up to twenty people and were decked over above and fitted below with gilded cabins with windows.
The seaports of Kangui and Zayton, the modern Canton and Amoy were far south of Hangchow. In this region was produced sugar, ginger, camphor, silk, cotton, salt, saffron and porcelain. The numerous ships with up to 300 crewmen were loaded with spices, sandalwood, jewels and other items generated something like $200,000,000 a year for Khan. The port of Zayton was second only to Alexandria as the greatest trading port in the world according to Marco Polo. This port was attractive to western navigators, missionaries, merchants and monarchs. In 1308, only sixteen years after Marco�s visit there was a Roman Catholic bishopric and a settlement of Christian merchants there.
Marco also learned of Japan (Zipangu). Civilized and rich, its sovereign had a palace with a roof covered with gold plates. The Japanese preferred isolation, however, and Marco did not go there and few Chinese merchants visited. Marco also gathered information about the islands �east� of China, or the archipelago to the south including the Philippines and the Moluccas. He said that there were 7,448 islands that produced sandalwood, spices, drugs and fragrant trees. Either by journey or by conversation Marco also learned of the steppes and other regions to the north reaching to Siberia and to a journey Marco obtained knowledge of India.
The Polos began their return home in the year 1292. Kublai Khan died two years later at eighty years of age and the Polos arrived in Venice in 1295.
During the journey home Marco added to his knowledge as well as informing others of what he knew. He was especially concerned with the islands � Java, Sumatra, Candore, Singapore, the Nicobars and Andamans, Ceylon, Socotra, Madagascar and Zanzibar. He also learned of the provinces of mainland India and in the interior of Java and Sumatra (from hearsay) and Abyssinia. Merchants came to Madagascar from all countries for ivory, sandalwood, ambergris and other products. He also mentioned the regions around the mouth of the Red Sea, Arabia and Somaliland.
The year after Marco returned home he was in command of one of the galleys at the battle of Curzola in 1296, when the Venetian fleet was destroyed by the Genoese. Marco and 7,000 other Venetians were captured and imprisoned for three years. While in prison he recounted his adventures to a fellow prisoner and from this came his �Book of Various Experiences.� In it are the descriptions of the natural features of the countries he had seen, their productions, of the cities and their inhabitants, their trade, their religion, their customs, their appearance, and of China.
While Marco recorded all the various features of the east, the different races, cities, ships new animals, unknown religions and strange social customs he still spent much time on trade. Of Kashgar he wrote that they produced much cotton and also flax and hemp. Ormuz attracted traders from India who brought spices, drugs, precious stones, pearls, gold tissues, elephant�s teeth and other items. Of Yezd, located on the confines of Persia, a cloth made of silk and gold named after that city is manufactured there. The city of Chin-Kian-Fu produced tissues of silver and gold. The people of Tibet were an agricultural people. And Japan was wealthy in gold and pearls and its people were idolatrous and independent of other peoples. Marco Polo died in the year 1324.
The East as a Sphere of Missionary Enterprise
The Mongols, led by Genghis Khan and his immediate descendants, swept across Asia to the east, north and south in the beginning of the 13th century. To the south and east were the China of Kublai Khan and the Persia and Turkestan of his dependent chieftains. Westward was the plains of Russia, Poland, Moravia, Silesia, Hungary and Bulgaria. This empire was divided into four: the Far east under the Great Khan with Peking as the capital; the Changtai of Central Asia and Turkestan; Persia and its surrounding regions; the Mongols of Kipchak, or the Golden Horde, its capital at Serai on the Volga, ruling over most of Russia.
In the future the Mongol/Tartar region would eventually accept Mohammedanism, but it was to these Mongols and their subjects the Christian missionaries went to. The Catholic Church sent out Franciscan and Dominican friars not only to the countless millions of Asians, but the various Christian sects and possibly even the Orthodox Eastern Church as well. From 1245 to 1340 a series of expeditions were sent to the lands beyond the Black and Caspian Seas, Persia, Almalik (southern Siberia) and Karakorum, India and China.
Diplomatic intercourse also occurred. Three times during the later years of the 13th century messages from Persia were sent to England, France and the emperor proposing joint military action against the Mohammedans. In 1307 a Tartar embassy appeared before Edward II at Northampton for the same purpose. Letters were also sent to the pope concerning church plans.
Bishoprics and even archbishoprics were established from Armenia to China, in India and Turkestan. In the mid 14th century there were as many as forty Franciscan houses throughout Asia. Many common people were baptized, but the mission of conversion was over before the end of the 14th century. There were many books written during this period. Included are two of the earliest and best narratives by John de Plano Carpini and (the Flemish) William de Rubruquis, and a half-century after the journey by the Polos was written the popular and very detailed work by the Franciscan monk Oderic of Pordenone.
In the stories by Oderic, Polo and several other writers is the mention of someone known as �Prester John� (�Presbyter� or �Priest� John), a half mythical ruler of a wonderful land, who was a Christian and a great potentate. The accounts of the man and his kingdom varied from one author to the other. Prester John and his kingdom can be traced to a forged 12th century letter to the pope. His possible location ranged from Asia to Africa, and was finally identified with Abyssinia or Ethiopia and its Christian king.
Compilations of Eastern Travels
The Pratica della Mercatura (�Merchant�s Handbook�) by Francesco Balducci Pegolotti was valuable to 14th century traders as it contained a full description of all known trade routes between Europe and the Far East.
The Secrets of the Faithful Crusaders by Marino Sanuto, a book arguing for a new style of Crusades against Moslems of Egypt and the Syrian coast, is noted for it geographical knowledge.
A work by �Sir John Mandeville� was a work of plagiarism by Jean de Bourgogne, a French physician. Written in 1360 it was very popular.
In the 15th century Clavijo, the Spaniard and Johan Schiltberger, who was a German soldier, also left records of the east.
There was also as many as eighty narratives known as �pilgrim literature�, westerners who journeyed to Palestine from 1250 to 1450. The authors were mostly, Germans, French, English, Russians and Poles.
Merchants in the early 15th century also recorded their travels although what they wrote was already known.
This knowledge made its way into literature as in Chaucer�s �Knights� Tale� and the work titled �Man of Laws� Tale.�
Ukhagatu or Toghon Timour (1332-1368) was the last of the Mongol Emperors who reigned in Peking. Between 1360 and 1370 a native movement expelled the Mongols and other foreigners from China. The Ming dynasty took control of China, and the eastern Tartars returned to their barbarous steppes. Central Asia became a land of a hundred warring tribes. Persia and Turkestan accepted Islam and the Golden Horde lost control of the land.