History-Makers: Marco Polo

This video is sponsored by NordVPN. More on that later. Following their monumental conquest of China, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the Mongols completely reanimated trade between East and West along the new Silk Road. Among thousands of merchants and travelers who made their way to and from Asia, one guy had the good manners to take some bloody notes about it. Our protagonist, Marco Polo, wrote the first major account of the Silk Road This is cool, because he effectively introduced all of Europe to Asia all at once, and his name is nearly synonymous with the concept of traveling. But his lasting historical reputation has been iffy for a handful of reasons. So to figure out what Marco's deal is, and whether or not we can trust him as far as we can throw him, let's do some history. Hey, new merch! Look at that! The thing with Marco Polo is that he wasn't the first medieval European to visit China. Hell, he wasn't even the first Polo to visit China. See, Marco came from a noble Venetian merchant family, and his father Niccolo and uncle Mafeo had their own eastward adventures before him. Back in the year 1260, the Polo brothers were out and about on a trading assignment in Constantinople, which was at the time a crusader kingdom. But as they felt the local politics getting dodgier by the minute, they skipped town and went east just in time to avoid the Byzantine Empire's reconquest of the city. This was fortuitous, as all of the Venetians in town were either killed or had their eyes gouged out. Wow, that is horrifying. From there, the brothers went progressively further eastward, sometimes deliberately, sometimes kind of by accident, until they arrived in the splendid city of Kambalic in 1266 to meet with the great Kublai Khan. He was all, hey, new best friends, and asked them to casually hop back to Italy and return with a hundred Vatican scholars and oil from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Typical fetch quests, am I right? So Niccolo and his brother returns to Venice in 1269 to meet his teenage son Marco for the first time. Wait, what? My god, travel was slow back then, that's insane. From there, they left for Asia again in 1271 with the oil, but missing all of the scholars because a three-year Pope hiatus, or a nope, if you will, meant that nobody could sign off on it. So Marco, Niccolo, and Maffeo went down to the Persian Gulf, hoping to catch an easy ferry to China, but the local boats did not float, so instead they had to make the whole trek overland, and they didn't make it to Kambalic for another four years. When they finally arrived, Kublai was thrilled to see his pals again and took an instant liking to the multilingual Marco. He enjoyed the Polos so much that he kept them in his court and gave them jobs in his bureaucracy, which is a pretty sweet gig. As it happened, the administration of Kublai's Yuan dynasty was very diverse, so the Polos fit right in among Mongols, Central Asians, Persians, Arabs, and some Europeans. For the next 17 years, Marco and friends worked various jobs in the administration, collecting taxes, supervising trade, and reporting back to the Khan on the state of the myriad cities in his empire. All across China, Marco carried a golden passport called a Paija, which signified him as a friend of the Khan and guaranteed hospitality wherever he went. Sweet deal! As far as field trips go, this was, oof, a long one, but we're fortunate that Marco recorded loads of details about life in China. For instance, he describes how their system of paper money made trade easier and faster than hauling around bags of coins. He gave an account of the vast courier system that spanned China in the Silk Road, as well as the Grand Canal that ferried goods between Kambala, Luoyang, and Hangzhou. As all Venetians are natural canal enthusiasts, Marco was like a kid in a thousand-mile long candy shop. From his time in Chinese markets, he was able to describe the way that China produced salt, as well as catalog loads of spices and where they came from, which ended up guiding centuries of subsequent European seafarers. He also notes details from daily life, local animals like the Chow Chow and Yak, typical Mongolian milk drinks and rice wine, the use of coal as a fuel source, and the culture of filial piety. He tells how the Mongols were widely tolerant of different religions and actively encouraged diverse practices within their empire. Those are some standout examples, but by volume, most of his book is kind of a giant slog, because it was written before the 1900s invented narrative pacing. So a lot of it is, this is a city I went to, here's the name of their king, then I went to this province and crossed that desert where I saw this town, here's the name of their king, and so on and so on, which is made way worse by the fact that all the place names are incomprehensibly wrong. Partially since the book got filtered through so many translations, and partially since it's just a lot of names to keep organized. But the bottom line is that this book can be a deeply unpleasant experience for a modern reader. But that is far from the only issue with Marco's accounts. For someone who visited China, there are some curious gaps in his report, like tea drinking, chopsticks, the Chinese writing system, and the Great Wall. Plus, no Mongol documents ever mentioned a Venetian multilingual merchant traveling with his dad and uncle. To be fair, the Great Wall in Marco's day was about 10 feet tall and made of dirt, while this bad boy that we all know and love came three centuries later. Additionally, it's not exactly like they were taking attendance among the thousands of visitors and bureaucrats in Kublai's court. Still, for all the stuff he mentions, it's suspicious that he leaves out these big details. Beyond that, there's some things that he does describe that seem, well, kind of made up. He gives some salacious details about the sexual habits of Tibetans, he talks about seeing unicorns, he says that one desert is haunted by spirits that lure travelers off the path to their deaths, he jumps on the very annoying historical bandwagon myth of the non-existent King Prester John, and he describes a secret cult hiding up in the mountains getting blasted off hashish and murdering princes. It gets pretty wacky and embellished in places, is what I'm trying to say here. Some historians are now so skeptical about Marco Polo, they don't even think that he went to China, and even back when his stories were first published, his book was mockingly dubbed The Million Lies. So for all he gets right, why is Marco Polo's book still so darn weird? To figure that one out, we've got to finish Marco's journey. After almost two decades spent working for the Khan, Marco and his family were finally permitted to leave for Venice, though this time they had the luxury of sailing most of the way back as they accompanied a traveling princess bound for Persia. When they returned home, 24 very long years after they first left, the Polos found Venice in the middle of a war with their mercantile arch-rival, the Republic of Genoa. Marco spent part of his hard-earned fortune to equip a war galley complete with a trebuchet. Sadly for Marky Mark, he was captured by Genoa during a battle off the southern coast of Anatolia and got thrown in jail. But it wasn't all for nothing. See, while they were imprisoned, he struck up a friendship with fellow inmate Rusticello of Pisa. Marco told all kinds of fabulous stories about Asia and ended up dictating an account of his travels for Rusticello to write while they were both in prison. Marco published it two years later when the war ended and he was released. But here's the sticking point. Rusticello of Pisa was previously best known as Italy's foremost author of King Arthur romances. Now just imagine the setup for a second. Marco, languishing in a jail cell years after leaving China, talking some big game about his super cool adventures to his equally bored-to-tears cellmate whose greatest passion in life is writing fan fiction. This should explain a lot of what's weird with this book. That's like trusting a documentary about Chinese history to the directorial integrity of Michael freaking Bay. Oh wait, he already did that. So that's how the description of the world, later simply called The Travels of Marco Polo, came to be. The traveler told his tales and the guy who professionally embellishes professionally embellished. It was an instant bestseller across Europe and it was translated into a dozen languages. However, many manuscript editors were extremely uncomfortable with the idea of a non-Christian civilization across the steppes that was arguably richer, more inventive, and more powerful than anyone in Europe. So many of them added another link to this big game of historical telephone by editing details of Marco's travels to suit their agendas. But prejudices aside, most people were just fascinated to hear about this amazing new world on the other side of the Silk Road. While we're here, quick historical pulse check. The Travels of Marco Polo was finally published in 1300. That is the same decade as Dante's Inferno. Small world. Before we wrap up, it's worth mentioning that for all the embellishments and translator bias, Marco's accounts have largely been proven true. Even some of the weird stuff. You know those unicorns that he described? Just a rhino. Those ghosts in the desert who lured travelers to their deaths? Yeah, turns out the sand dunes of the Gobi Desert actually produce resonant chords when the sand shifts. This is what it sounds like. I see your sorcery and raise you, science! And as a nice last bit of icing on the cake, the Polos departed for home alongside a princess headed to Persia. And we've since found Chinese and Persian sources to confirm that voyage. So that's the story of Marco Polo. Travels, descriptions, and shifty historical authenticity in all. Honestly, if you know what to look out for, you can read through Marco's book and get a pretty accurate picture of the Mongol Empire. Whether that makes for enjoyable reading by modern standards is unfortunately another matter entirely. All told, I am damn impressed with the story of the Polo family. That they were able to make the trip to China twice, and that Marco was able to produce such an alluring account of his travels that opened up Asia to the European world for the first time in over a thousand years. That said, the moral of the story here is that, for history's sake, screen your ghost writers. Since 1300, history has moved pretty quick, and it's never been easier to be your own Marco Polo. Nowadays, anybody with internet access can see what's going on across the world. And if you want to make sure that you're browsing securely, then please check out today's sponsor, NordVPN. A virtual private network, or VPN, puts your data into stealth mode, and with NordVPN's military-grade encryption and servers in over 60 countries, a few easy clicks can yeet your digital self anywhere in the world. Want to visit Europe? Boom! Enjoy Scottish Twitter in its natural habitat, or catch some Italian Netflix. Want to hop over the Great China Firewall? Go for it! Hell, I had a friend in China earlier this year that I was only able to talk to because they had a VPN. And NordVPN is offering you 75% off a three-year plan and a free bonus month if you go to nordvpn.com slash overly sarcastic and use code overly sarcastic. It's really important to be selective with your VPN, because the free ones make their money by selling your data, and you really do not want that sketchiness. So trust your laptop and your smartphone to the highest rated VPN around. Again, head over to nordvpn.com slash overly sarcastic and use code overly sarcastic to get 75% off three years of secure internet and one bonus month free. Thank you so much for watching, and be sure to let me know down in the comments what history maker you want to see next. Marco wasn't actually my first choice for this one, but I'm so glad I took the leap because it was loaded with surprises for me. I'm having an absolute blast with this series so far, and I really hope that you are too. I'll catch you next time.