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April 24, 2012 | Marco Polo `really did visit China` |
Washington: A German researcher has dispelled previous claims that Marco Polo never went to China. Hans Ulrich Vogel, Professor of Chinese Studies at the German University of Tubingen believes
that a meticulous description of currency and salt production could reinstate
Polo’s honour. “Polo was not a swindler,” the Discovery News quoted Vogel as saying.
Vogel re-examined the great Venetian traveller in a new book entitled “Marco Polo
Was in China .” “The strongest evidence is that he provided complex and detailed
information about monetary conditions, salt production, public revenues and administrative
geography which have been overlooked so far, but are fully corroborated in Chinese
sources,” Vogel said. The historian asserted that these Chinese sources were collated
or translated long after Polo’s time. “So he could not have drawn on them. He
could not even read Chinese,” he said. Although there is no doubt Polo existed
- traces of his family home are still around in Venice - many have questioned
if the 13th-century traveller actually made it to China . Skeptics have argued
that his famous travelogue Description of the World, commonly called The Travels
of Marco Polo, does not mention quite a few distinctive features of the Chinese
society. Polo, who was born around 1254 in the Venetian Republic , claimed that
he reached China with his merchant father and uncle in 1275, at the age of 17.
He would spend the next 24 years venturing into the Far East China, serving for
a few years in the court of Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. The story of the explorer’s
return to Venice in 1295 and of the subsequent coup de theater when he threw back
his Tartar clothes and allowed precious stones to cascade over the floor, has
become part of the Polo legend. Since the mid-eighteenth century, doubts have
been raised about Polo’s presence in China . Historian Frances Wood argued in
her 1995 book “Did Marco Polo Go to China ?” that the famous explorer didn’t even
get beyond Constantinople . He would have made the rest of the trip up, with the
aid of an imaginative ghostwriter, Rustichello da Pisa, cobbling together details
provided by fellow traders who had actually been there. Although Polo’s tales
of exotic lands inspired Columbus and became the model for generations of explorers,
scholars wondered why he did not mention tea, chopsticks, the Chinese writing
system, and the practice of binding women’s feet. In addition, there is no mention
of the Great Wall, while Marco, his father and his uncle are not recorded in any
Chinese document. According to Vogel, skeptics have often overestimated the frequency
of documentation and the intentions of Chinese historiographers. As for the Great
Wall, new research has insisted that it did not exist at the time. “The original
wall had long since disintegrated, while the present structure - a product of
the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) - was yet to be erected,” said Vogel. Other historians
have used these arguments to reinstate the Venetian traveller, but Vogel used
new data, focusing on a largely neglected part of Polo’s travelogue. “He is the
only one to describe precisely how paper for money was made from the bark of the
mulberry tree. Not only he detailed the shape and size of the paper, he also described
the use of seals and the various denominations of paper money,” said Vogel. According
to the historian, Polo’s Travels is not a 13th century guidebook to China – but
it’s a rather dry manual to the commerce of the Silk Road . “Marco Polo reported
on the monopolizing of gold, silver, pearls and gems by the state – which enforced
a compulsory exchange for paper money,” said Vogel. “He described the punishment
for counterfeiters, as well as the 3% exchange fee for worn-out notes and the
widespread use of paper money in official and private transactions,” he said.
Vogel asserted that Polo is also the only one among his contemporaries to explain
that paper money was not in circulation in all parts of China , but was used primarily
in the north and in the regions along the Yangtze. According to Polo, cowries,
salt, gold and silver were the main currencies in other parts of China like Fujian
and Yunnan . “This information is confirmed by archaeological evidence and Chinese
sources compiled long after Polo had written his Travels,” Vogel said. The Venetian
traveler’s description of salt production was also precise and unique. Not only
did he list the most important salt production centres, but described the methods
used to make salt and detailed the value of salt production. “Polo knew what he
was talking about. His reports about monetary conditions, salt production and
revenue, public finance and administrative geography are more precise and accurate
than of all other Western, Persian or Arabian authors taken together,” Vogel said.
“This and other information, the accuracy of which has not yet been fully appreciated,
indicate that Marco Polo really did serve the Great Khan,” he added.
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