Japan Opens to the West III
Japan Opens to the West II
Japan Opens to the West I
The Polos – Part III
Lead: After a 24 years and a journey of nearly 15,000 miles, in 1295 the Polos a family of commercial traders returned to Venice from China. Marco Polo brought home stories of their exotic travels.
Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Their friends and relative thought they were dead. Marco developed a reputation as a consummate storyteller. He was called “Marco Milione,” the man with a million stories, or to the more skeptical he was known as “the man of a million lies.” In 1298, Marco was captured along with 7000 compatriots and taken prisoner in after a Naval battle between Venice and her commercial rival, Genoa. During his year in prison, Marco passed the time by telling stories of his travels. One was his fellow prisoners was the Pisan writer Rusticiano, who encouraged Marco to record his fabulous tales. Aided by notes, Marco dictated an account of stories of Kublai Kahn’s prosperous, modern empire, his sophisticated communications apparatus, paper money system, mining of coal as fuel, as well as social and political customs of the empire. Rusticiano prepared Marco’s stories in a French literary dialect with the title The Description of the World or The Travels of Marco Polo.
The Polos – Part II
Lead: At the age of seventeen, Marco Polo joined his father and uncle on their return to central Asia and China. It was the beginning of a remarkable commercial and literary career.
Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Marco Polo was born in Venice, Italy, around 1254. His father, Nicolo, was away on a trading trip when the boy was born and when Marco’s mother died. The boy was raised by family. He probably received the typical education of a merchant apprentice, reading, writing and a primitive form of calculation. When the boy was fifteen, his father Nicolo and uncle Maffeo came home to Venice from China. Marco was invited to join them for the return trip. Mongol Emperor, Kublai Kahn, had commissioned the Polos to bring to China scholars who could explain Christianity and western science.
The Polo Family – Part I
Lead: In 1260 the Polo family, part of the commercial aristocracy of the Venetian city-state, began a remarkable series of trading expeditions. Over the next three decades they would travel tens of thousands of miles.
Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Nicolo Polo and his uncle Maffeo were merchants. Through their connections at Mediterranean and Black Sea ports, they and their Venetian compeditors traded wool, silver and merchandize for porcelain, spices, and silk. The goods came from China along the four thousand mile long Silk Road, the main trading route between China and Europe. In 1262 while the Polo were venturing further east along the Volga River, warfare broke out behind them and prevented them from returning west, so they continued their trade eastward into central Asia.