The Worlds of Marco Polo: towards a History of Globalization: course description
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David Northrup, Boston College
Marco Polo’s account of his travels through the booming worlds of Asia and the Indian Ocean were greeted with great skepticism by his contemporaries. The marvels of the East were real but so far beyond what contemporary Europeans could imagine that they seemed fairy tales. This is not primarily a study of Polo himself or of his beloved Venice but of the worlds distant worlds he visited that modern scholarship has made more intelligible. Polo will be a guide and Venice a point of departure, but the details Polo recorded are now but a tiny piece of the much better understood worlds that historians have reconstructed.
The course will look at three “worlds” as they developed in the period between1200 and 1800: the long-existing the “Silk Road” and the Indian Ocean and the new world of the Atlantic. It assumes no prior knowledge.
· Since antiquity the Silk Road had facilitated the exchange of rich goods as well as the spread of beliefs (Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam) foods, and spices. The revival of the Silk Road that took place during the 14th century with the Mongols (Polo’s “Khans”) gave new life for a time to this corridor of Eurasian globalization.
· Muslim merchants had greatly expanded commercial and cultural exchanges in Indian Ocean by Polo’s time. Following Polo’s return through these links the riches of the “Indies” attracted two different expeditions from its fringes in the fifteenth century. From the east in the first half of the century came the imperial Treasure Fleets from Ming China under the command of the admiral Zheng He. From the west at the end of the century came the Portuguese vessels of Vasco da Gama. By then the Ming had withdrawn from the Indian Ocean, but the Portuguese and other Europeans who followed added new and powerful presences in the Indian Ocean and connected its markets to the great oceans on either side.
· Accidental discoveries of the American continents by mariners intent on reaching the East led to the development of the new world of the Atlantic Except for fishermen and some northern European voyagers, Polo’s contemporaries regarded the “Ocean Sea” as a route to nowhere. Italians played an important role in charting the Atlantic but it was the Iberians who first profited from transatlantic contacts. Native inhabitants of the Americas were generally on the losing end—both as victims of Old World diseases and as slaves of the colonizing Europeans. In time a new victims slaves would be brought from Africa as slaves.
The course will compare how these worlds were built largely by trade and in varying proportions by empires, but how they were also important arenas of cultural and biological exchanges. Polo brought silk and magical tales from Asia and the Indian Ocean: the Atlantic brought Italy pomodori, polenta, and potato gnocchi.
Teaching method:
Classes will involve both lectures to introduce the subject matter and discussions to get at its cross-cultural meanings. Students will be assigned different roles to sensitize them to the complexities of cross-cultural interaction at the personal level.
The course will look at three “worlds” as they developed in the period between1200 and 1800: the long-existing the “Silk Road” and the Indian Ocean and the new world of the Atlantic. It assumes no prior knowledge.
· Since antiquity the Silk Road had facilitated the exchange of rich goods as well as the spread of beliefs (Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam) foods, and spices. The revival of the Silk Road that took place during the 14th century with the Mongols (Polo’s “Khans”) gave new life for a time to this corridor of Eurasian globalization.
· Muslim merchants had greatly expanded commercial and cultural exchanges in Indian Ocean by Polo’s time. Following Polo’s return through these links the riches of the “Indies” attracted two different expeditions from its fringes in the fifteenth century. From the east in the first half of the century came the imperial Treasure Fleets from Ming China under the command of the admiral Zheng He. From the west at the end of the century came the Portuguese vessels of Vasco da Gama. By then the Ming had withdrawn from the Indian Ocean, but the Portuguese and other Europeans who followed added new and powerful presences in the Indian Ocean and connected its markets to the great oceans on either side.
· Accidental discoveries of the American continents by mariners intent on reaching the East led to the development of the new world of the Atlantic Except for fishermen and some northern European voyagers, Polo’s contemporaries regarded the “Ocean Sea” as a route to nowhere. Italians played an important role in charting the Atlantic but it was the Iberians who first profited from transatlantic contacts. Native inhabitants of the Americas were generally on the losing end—both as victims of Old World diseases and as slaves of the colonizing Europeans. In time a new victims slaves would be brought from Africa as slaves.
The course will compare how these worlds were built largely by trade and in varying proportions by empires, but how they were also important arenas of cultural and biological exchanges. Polo brought silk and magical tales from Asia and the Indian Ocean: the Atlantic brought Italy pomodori, polenta, and potato gnocchi.
Teaching method:
Classes will involve both lectures to introduce the subject matter and discussions to get at its cross-cultural meanings. Students will be assigned different roles to sensitize them to the complexities of cross-cultural interaction at the personal level.
