Marco Polo: The Legendary Travel Writer
Did you know that a heavily annotated copy of Polo’s book was among the belongings of Christopher Columbus who is considered as the discoverer of America!
Marco Polo (1254–1324) was a Venetian merchant believed to have journeyed across Asia at the height of the Mongol Empire. His travels are recorded in “The Travels of Marco” or simply “The Travels.”, a book that described to Europeans the then mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, giving their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan and other Asian cities and countries.
Though he was not the first European to reach China, Marco Polo was the first to explore some parts of Asia and to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. Born in Venice, Marco learned the mercantile trade from his father and his uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. Though he was not the first European to reach China, Marco Polo was the first to explore some parts of Asia and to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. This account of the Orient provided the Europeans with a clear picture of the East’s geography and ethnic customs and was the first Western record of porcelain, coal, gunpowder, paper money, and some Asian plants and exotic animals.
Polo did not write down his adventures himself. Shortly after his return to Venice in 1295, Polo was imprisoned by the Genoese, enemies of the Venetians, when he met a fellow prisoner, a writer from Pisa named Rustichello. Rustichello prompted Polo to dictate the story of his adventures to him. With the help of notes taken during his adventures, Marco Polo reverently described Kublai Khan and his palaces, along with paper money, coal, postal service, eyeglasses and other innovations that had not yet appeared in Europe. The book, written in a medieval language known as Franco-Italian, became a best-seller and had a huge impact on Medieval and Early Modern explorers, missionaries and merchants. Christopher Columbus and many other travelers were inspired by this travel journal of Marco Polo.
His book became a best seller, spreading throughout the Italian Peninsula in a matter of months — a remarkable feat in an age before Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1439. Information from the Travels was useful in improving maps of East Asia, which fed trade relations. Polo’s book reawakened Europe to the possibilities of international trade and expansion, and became a text that heavily influenced the age of discovery that dawned in Europe two centuries later.
Journals kept by Marco Polo during his travel helped him to recollect all the adventures he had during his odyssey of 24 years (1271–1295) that eventually became the book for which Marco Polo is famous. Had he not written it down, he would not have been able to produce such a detailed account of his journey which became a best seller partly because of its new insights into a faraway part of the world. Although travelers’ tales from the lands of the Silk Road had been distributed before, the wealth of information Marco Polo provided on China and its surrounding lands was unprecedented in its time.
Journals are like ‘memory forever’. With digitalization, we can literally preserve the precious moments of our life ‘forever’. Unlike paper journals, an electronic journal will not get easily destroyed in a fire or flood and no ink will fade over time. As more of us move details of our lives online and into the cloud, the options for digital journaling have become much better than they were a few years ago. Digital journaling apps are more flexible, more private, and easier to use than ever.
Try Daybook, a FREE, passcode-protected personal diary app available across various platforms, and start recording your activities, experiences, thoughts, and ideas.
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