History - The Polos - the west first comes to the East Flashcards
Who was Marco Polo
In 1298 an Italian nobleman from Venice was in prison in Genoa. He had been a commander on a warship, and had been caught. He told the story the story of his exciting life to another Italian in the prison, who wrote it all down. The man who told the story was Marco Polo. He was very clever. He studied the languages of China. The emperor was delighted with him and made him an important official.
Marco travelled through many parts of China and South-east Asia. He saw that Kublai lhan loved to hear about the strange things that people did in distand countries. So he wrote down the things he saw and told the emperor when he got back to Beijing. This pleased the emperors very much, so the Polos, especially Marco became more and more important in China.
Who were Maffeo and Niccolo Polo? What was their life fe
Niccolo Polo (Marco’s father) and his brother Maffeo (Marco’s uncle) were merchants from Venice. About 1364 they went trading to Bokhara. There they met some men who had come from Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China. These men asked the Polo brothers to come back with them to the emperor in Beijing, 4000 kilometres away.
It took a year for the Polos to reach Beijing. The emperor was very pleased with what they told him about the West. He thought it seemed very civilized. At last, he sent them back to Italy to ask the pope to send a hundred christian scholars to china to teach his people. The Polos went back to China, taking Niccolo’s son, Marco, with them. He was just 21 when they reached Beijing. The emperor was sad that there were no christian scholars, and asked the buddhists to teach his people instead
in ________ war broke out between the two great trading cities of ________ and ________. Marco Polo was captured in a battle and, as we saw at the beginning, ended up in prison. However he was let free after a year, and died in 1324
1298, Venice, Genoa
What was the impact of Marco Polo’s book
Marco Polo’s book made other men want to travel to East Asia. Some were monks who went for religion, some were merchants who went for trade and some were people who went just for adventure and to find out what these far-off lands were like.
What did the Polos do
1) The Polos were the first people from the west to explore Central and South-east Asia and China
2) They showed the people of Europe that there was a great civilization in China, better than the one in Europe.
3) They showed all of the wonderful things that the East had to trade
4) They showed that trade routes through Central Asia could carry many goods.
5) They taught the people of Europe that the people in Asia were ordinary human beings, not strange monsters as many people thought.
