Marco Polo Essay, Research Paper

Marco Polo, the only Venetian to travel to China and return helped Venice become an important city. Marco Polo traveled to China with his father and uncle to help Kublai Kahn. He brought things back from China and developed new things from the trading. Venice changed in many ways after Marco Polo?s travels.

Marco Polo, like his father Niccolo and his uncle Maffeo was a traveler. His first experience of traveling came in 1271 when his father and Uncle took Marco on a journey with them. At this time Marco was only seventeen years old and inexperienced.

The three of them traveled east from Venice to bring Kublai Kahn, who is in China, gifts from the pope. They first sailed to Acre, which is now in the area of Israel and Lebanon. Then they traveled overland to the top of the Persian Gulf. From there they then rode northward along the fringes of what is now Afghanistan.

They passed through the province of Badakhshan in Northern Afghanistan, where according to Marco, ?The mountains are so lofty that it is a hard day?s work, from morning till evening to get to the top of them (Clark 32).? From there they kept going northeast and reached the Pamirs, which are mountains. The three of them traveled for twelve days across this desert without seeing anything green. It was also very cold.

The Polo?s finally reached Kashgar and then traveling east they reached the Gobi desert. They took a route that was three hundred and eighty miles long and traveled this in 28 stages or days. This was an average of about thirteen to fourteen miles a day.

The Polos were now on the border of China and close to Kublai Kahn. When Kahn heard of where they were, he sent men out to meet them. Forty days later they were escorted into Kahn?s great palace in Peking.

Marco Polo was now twenty-one years old. The journey took them three and one half years. Marco met Kublai Kahn for the first time, and Kahn was amazed at what he knew. So he sent him out on a journey to the ru-

ler of Yunnan, on the border of Burma.

He returned from this mission in six months. During this time Niccolo and Maffeo settled down and began lives in Peking. For the next seventeen years Marco was making a series of journeys for Kublai Kahn. He also kept careful records of what he saw.

In 1292 Marco Polo returned to Venice with all of this knowledge, and many other things that Kublai Kahn gave him because of his journeys. It took him a year of sailing to reach Venice.

Marco Polo showed and demonstrated to the people of Venice his goods and spices from China that he collected and received as presents (Garabedian 1). He showed the Venecians ivory, jade, porcelain, silk, coal, jewels, and spices. Venetians had never gone to China and come back, so they had never seen such fine goods before, and really appreciated the goods they received.

These things that Marco Polo brought back

changed a lot of things the Venetians did. First of all, they were wasting lead, copper, and gold on making worthless metal coins. So Marco Polo introduced paper money taken from China instead of using heavy copper, lead and gold coins.

Another example of a change the Venetians went through was this. The only thing they were using to make fire was wood, and they were using up a lot of trees. So Marco introduced coal for burning.

Marco Polo encouraged other people to sail to China and trade other new and enhanced goods that led to trade Routes between Venice and China (Burland 27). These routes made Venice an important city.

Marco Polo traveled many journeys in his lifetime. He helped Kublai Kahn in all of the missions he went for him. Marco also improved the city of Venice with the goods he brought back. He also established trade routes between China and Venice.