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Monica Raulino
Mr. Harvey
AP World History
28 May 2014
Marco Polo
Marco Polo, is probably the most famous Westerner who ever traveled on the Silk Road. He excelled all the other travelers in his determination, his writing, and his influence. His journey through Asia lasted 24 years with the help of his father, Niccolò and Maffeo. He became a confidant of Kublai Khan, and traveled the whole of China and returned to tell the tale, which became the greatest travelogue. Marco Polo was a great explorer, who wrote a book written about his travels which gave Europeans some of their earliest information about China and inspired many explorers including Christopher Columbus.
It is important to note however, that Marco Polo barely knew his uncle or father because they left on a trip to Mongolia when Marco was 6 years old and did not return for 9 years. During their nine-year absence, Marco was raised by his mother and other members of his extended family.Marco Polo's father and uncle impressed Kublai Khan with their intelligence and their knowledge of the world. For these reasons he kept them around for several years. In 1269 he sent them to Rome as his messengers with a request that the pope send one hundred Europeans to share their knowledge with him. Although the pope did not grant the request, the Polo brothers set out to return to China in 1271. Since his mother had died recently, Marco Polo was taken along on the trip as a world traveler at age seventeen. The return to China, over land and sea, desert and mountain, took slightly more than three years. Despite their failure to bring back the one hundred Europeans from Rome, Kublai Khan welcomed the Polos back and again took them into his service. He became increasingly impressed wit...
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...people, including the princess and the Polos, were still alive. Later, in Turkey, Genoese officials took three-quarters of the family's wealth. After two years of travel, the Polos reached Venice. They'd been gone for more than two decades, and their return to their native land undoubtedly had its difficulties. Their faces looked unfamiliar to their family and they struggled to speak their native tongue. Just a few years after his return to Venice, Marco commanded a ship in a war against the rival city of Genoa. He was eventually captured and sentenced to a Genoese prison. There he wrote a book called,The Description of the World, later known as The Travels of Marco Polo.Two hundred years after his death, Christopher Columbus set off across the Atlantic in hopes of finding a new route to the Orient. With him was a copy of The Travels of Marco Polo.
Ultimately,
When comparing the Chinese and Western historical development, the similar key events would have very different outcomes due to their different backgrounds. During the fifteenth century, Zheng He was commissioned to lead the “treasure ships” for seven voyages down the Western Seas. And, Prince Henry sent expeditions to explore the western coast of Africa. China and Portugal, the both ends of the Eurasian continent, almost simultaneously began marine navigations. They have shared some similar features, but there are actually major differences between the two. This paper will compare and contrast these two remarkable explorers. The focus will be on the ideas and circumstances that influenced their actions, and their importance in shaping history.
Francisco Vazquez de Coronado served as the political liaison for the preliminary exploration. Francisco came from a prominent Salamanca family after the passing of his father and mother he did not inherit the families fortune, this put him in a position to make a shift to New Spain and hopefully chase the dream of making a fortune and becoming rich. At the age of twenty five Francisco arrived in New Spain in 1535, upon his arrival he was introduced and attached to a highly appointed officer Viceroy Mendoza. As time passed he went on to marry a wealthy women named by the name of Dona Beatriz de Estrada, his mother in law gave Francisco a large amount of money that is called “hacienda” which mean he received a large estate or plantation with a dwelling house. Around 1537 Francisco started to make a name for him when a rebellion just outside of México broke out; he successfully put down the rebellion and the following year Mendoza appointed him “regidor” which means a member of a council of municipalities. Then a year later in 1538 at the age of twenty ei...
Exploration is an activity that is held in high esteem because of the mental challenge that comes with willingly surrendering the safety of certainty to venture into unknown land. This act is seen as reflecting the utmost courage. Although this may be true, it is important to realize that more often than not, explorers had certain expectations regarding the places they were traveling to. This fact was strongly reflected in the nature of their accounts. In Marco Polo’s case, his father and uncle had observed “many things worth of admiration… in the progress of their journey,” which took place several years before Marco Polo set off from Venice . Marco Polo surely heard about the great things they had come across. He came in knowing that, despite the risks of such long travel, the things that he would see would be unlike anything that he had ever met before. Perhaps, this was Polo’s motivation. It is never explicitly stated, but it may be that Polo was driven by curiosity. He merely wanted to learn more about the great culture he had heard about.
Christopher Columbus began many of his adventures with preexisting sources and models from well-known philosophers and explores, mixture of inventions, misrepresentations and concealment (Bodmer,10). Despite his knowledge of geography and cosmology, he used models that were complex and contradicting, providing factual and mythical reports of what he could expect to find on the islands he would soon explore. The most detailed information which was creditable based on objectivity and accurate accounts were described by Marco Polo. The book ‘Travels’, would become a resource used by Columbus to compare his discoveries, for here it would reveal actual and potential problems that were identified by Marco Polo (Bodmer, 13,14). According to Polo, land that was located beyond the reach of commercial expeditions would belong to the first man who could reach them, according to the rules of the imperialistic pattern of appropriation (Bodmer, 16). As Columbus’s imagines of finding lands rich ...
Christopher Columbus was a renaissance explorer in 1492. he was sent by queen Isabelle and king Ferdinand of Spain to look for a trade route to east Asia
Accompanied by 27,000 men on 62 large and 255 small ships, the Chinese eunuch Zheng He, led 7 naval expeditions to Southeast Asia, Middle East and east coast of Africa in the span of 28 years during the Ming Dynasty. The scale of Zheng He’s fleet was unprecedented in world history. The large treasure ships used during the expeditions were purported to be 440 feet long and 180 feet wide (Dreyer, p. 102). Throughout his travels, Zheng He brought Chinese tea, porcelain and silk products to foreign countries and also brought back exotic goods to the Ming court such as spices, plants and leather. Although his voyages fostered commercial trades and cultural exchange between China and foreign countries, the goal of his expeditions stemmed from the political motivation to maintain the tributary system and his voyages had important political implication of causing Neo-Confucian opposition and suspension of the expedition.
In 1484, Christopher Columbus attempted to interest King John II of Portugal in his voyage to explore the West. His attempt was a fail, but that did not make him lose his hope. About eight years later he went to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, attempting his service in leading such an extraordinary voyage. After the death of the last Muslim Spain agreed to finance the voyage and named Columbus as the admiral and governor of any lands he should find. In 1492 Columbus received his approval; he started his voyage to explode the west on August 3, 1492. Columbus first landing was in the Bahamas, later he discovered the Northeast coast of Cuba, eastward to the islands of Hispaniola, which now is known as Haiti and Dominican Republic. When discovering the eastward islands of Hispaniola, Columbus lost his flagship name Santa Maria, one of his famous three shi...
In this essay I am going to talk about one of the most important men in history. He was so important that without him the world would not be what it is now and throughout history his discoveries have inspired others to become fierce adventurers of the sea. Columbus had one of the brightest ideas of the time, he had the idea that he could reach China by sailing west from Europe. This idea meant that there would be a westward passage from Spain to west across the ocean to China in a cheap and easy way in order to return cheap goods from China into Europe. The story of Columbus’s journey across the Atlantic was one of the greatest journeys of exploration in history as in just a few months, he has changed the world map forever but this was not enough for Columbus as he wants the new world to give him wealth too and he now sets about to find it.
Waugh, Teresa. The Travels of Marco Polo. New York: Sidgwick and Jackson Limited, 1984. Print. This source tells the reader about the specific locations that Marco polo traveled and explored. Each chapter and division in this source goes in depth into a different location; as well as providing visuals. This source has a lot of good information pertaining to the imprisonment of Marco Polo, and the scribe who recorded Marco's tales of his travels.
Christopher Columbus was one of the most legendary sailors and explorers of all time. Christopher Columbus , an italian explorer, was born in the year of 1451 in the Republic of Genoa. Christopher Columbus was a teenager when he first set sail the ocean in 1465. He became a sailor in 1476 and started to travel many places before going on his largest voyage in 1480. In 1492, Christopher Columbus exploration to the New World linked Europe and the Americas. His discoveries enlightened the globe and started a new age of exploration. His standards and morals changed the history of the whole globe. He was known for traveling for all types of reasons for many foreign monarchs. But why would a monarch from one country be interested in employing an explorer from a foreign country to complete such an important task?
Some of the problems when studying history are the texts and documents that have been discovered are only from perspective. Furthermore, on occasion that one perspective is all there may be for historians to study. A good example of this textual imbalance can be found from the texts about the discovery of the New World; more specifically, the letters of Christopher Columbus and Pêro Vaz de Caminha during their voyages to the New World. Plenty of the text from this time is written from the perspective of the Europeans, as the Indigenous population did not have any written text. What this means is that it provided only one perspective, which can drastically hinder how history is interpreted. Columbus’s letter of his first voyage to the Caribbean
Before the most famous historic voyage to the Americas Christopher Columbus had no support to go on his expedition. Christopher Columbus tried to get support from the King of Portugal John II, but he was turned down. Spain finally agreed to sponsor his voyage in 1492 across the Atlantic Ocean. By agreeing to sponsor Christopher Columbus voyage they believed they would have gained leverage in what they were trying to do in Spain. The Reconquista made the Spaniards very powerful. By Christopher Columbus finding new land with people and gold it convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to continue to support his voyages. Even though the king and queen believed that allowing him to go on the voyages benefited them it actually allowed Christopher
The vast Silk road had people of different ethnicities travel itself, and even document it. Faxian was a Chinese Buddhist monk that had traveled the Silk Road. (Source 3) According to Faxian, their were “ a multitude of monks and a succession of very many monasteries”, this indicates that Buddhism spread across the Silk Road. Faxian even told us that “when stranger monks arrive at any monastery”, then older monks meet and receive them. Additionally Friar John of Montecorvino, a wealthy italian priest who wrote about his travels on the Silk Road. (doc 5) It is documented that the “wherein stands the church of St. Thomas the Apostle, for thirteen months”, this proves that catholicism traveled from italy all the way to India through the Silk Road. While in the excerpts the Mongols (led by the
Zheng He's first fleet included 27,870 men on 317 ships, including sailors, clerks, interpreters, soldiers, artisans, medical men and meteorologists. On board were large quantities of cargo including silk goods, porcelain, gold and silverware, copper utensils, iron implements and cotton goods. The fleet sailed along China's coast to Champa close to Vietnam and, after crossing the South China Sea, visited Java, Sumatra and reached Sri Lanka by passing through the Strait of Malacca. On the way back it sailed along the west coast of India and returned home in 1407. Envoys from Calicut in India and several countries in Asia and the Middle East also boarded the ships to pay visits to China. Zheng He's second and third voyages taken shortly after, followed roughly the same route.
Around the time of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Europe was a place in need of inspiration. Marco Polo, a merchant, and still a simple man, was this source of inspiration. He was an ordinary boy during his childhood, living a similar life to the other boys his age. Although his intentions might not have been as significant as his impact, he was very influential. Marco Polo served as an influence to many later explorers. Whether it was through his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, which focused mainly on descriptions of spices and commercial goods and many other interesting trade items he encountered in his travels, he sparked an interest and desire of not only Europe, but later explorers as well . Marco Polo was viewed to have had definite charm and also having much capability. He has also proven that he was a tough man. This is evident because of the many voyages he survived, which included occurrences of bandit ambushes, disease, and not to mention the fatigue of the travel. There have been many who believe that Marco Polo was not intellectually equipped, meaning that he was not a very educated man, as no European probably was at the time . But as always, there is of course some speculation on the many aspects of the life of Marco Polo. Many people have their own beliefs of whom the real Marco Polo was and what he accomplished. There will be mention on some of the alleged negative, yet also positive aspects of his life. Despite all the accusations or assumptions of Marco Polo, history was affected as a result of his existence. He still remains an important figure in history.