Month: November 2025 (Page 4 of 6)

The perception of race in Marco Polo’s Medieval travels is a complex and needless to say, very misguided. In particular, I wish to discuss race in Japan and how it corelated with cartography.

To begin, Marco Polo’s “adventure” through Japan simply did not happen. The account of the land is horrifically inaccurate and there is no proof other than his own word that he traveled there. The way in which Polo describes Japan is comparable to a fictional land of horror like one from the popular anime series “Attack on Titan (AoT)”. The people of Japan are similar to the titan creatures, an exaggerated, misshapen, gigantic  mutation of humans. These titans live exclusively on an excluded island and eat the regular inhabitants. Similarly, Polo describes most “tribes” of the Japanese as deformed cannibals who are unidentifiable between male and female (again just like the titans in Aot).

I believe that Marco Polo bases his descriptions of the Japanese off of the medieval Mappamudies that would have been circulating throughout Italy in his life time. Most people except for those wealthy enough to travel would never have any exposure to other cultures/races and would only hear about them through stories (like in the bible) or ancient myths like Gog and Magog. In these stories warped adaptations of other races would be put to paper on maps. So even though Marco Polo never went to Japan he still made those claims based on the knowledge he was working with.

Marco Polo describes Japan as a large island far out at sea, about 1,500 miles away from the mainland. He describes the inhabitants as “…fair-complexioned, good-looking, and well-mannered” (Polo 244). However, he does call them idolaters, meaning he views their religion as strange or wrong. Interestingly, he notes that they are independent and “…exercising no authority over any nation but themselves,” which is different from the places Polo has previously described (Polo 244). He makes Japan seem like a distant and isolated place that’s completely separated from everywhere else.

Polo says that Japan has gold in great abundance, in quantities so great they can’t be measured. He says that they don’t export it from the island because no traders go there, which is how they possess so much of it. They possess so much that one ruler’s palace is made out of gold. The island also has pearls, which are just as valuable as the white ones and also have a spiritual significance, like the pearls in Maabar. This is shown through their custom of placing pearls in the mouths of the dead when they are buried. By describing Japan’s gold and pearls, Polo shows how much wealth and trade matter to him and have been important throughout his travels. It’s something he values and continues to share with his audience.

Polo says the people’s idols here are similar to those in Cathay and Manzi. Then, his tone noticeably shifts, and he begins to describe the idols in an exaggerated and judgmental way. He says they have animal heads, multiple heads, or multiple hands and that the works of the idols are “…so manifold and of such devilish contrivance….” He claims he can’t write about them in his book because it’s too horrible to expose to his Christian audience (Polo 247). While Polo is often judgmental of religions outside of Christianity, here he seems particularly hostile to the ideologies of these people. He also again contrasts between admiring the physical region, trade, or people of a place, and condemning their beliefs and practices.

Polo ends his account by writing that the people of Japan “…kill their captive and make a meal of him with their kinsfolk….and this human flesh they consider the choicest of all foods” (Polo 248). This detail exposes how little Polo actually knows about Japan and how the stereotypes of the East were spread in medieval Europe. By describing them as cannibals he creates fear and pushes stereotypes to his European audience, so the East is seen as distant, savage, and strange, and Christianity is framed as the most moral religion. Polo finishes writing, “…I will tell you no more of this country or of these islands, because they are so out-of-the-way and because we have never been there” (Polo 249). It’s extremely interesting that Polo admits he never visited Japan, despite describing it in vivid detail. This confession perfectly places Japan as the furthest point on his journey, so far away that it seems more like an exotic idea than a reality.

Marco Polo sailed westward for about sixty miles from Ceylon and arrives in Maabar, or Greater India. He calls Maabar “…the best part of India,” describing it as the “richest and most splendid province in the world” (Polo 260). Polo’s account focuses on the region’s foreign customs, trading practices, climate, religion, and extraordinary wealth, which is especially interesting to Polo, probably because of his background as a merchant.

Polo focuses particular attention to the precious pearls and gems that are found in Maabar in the sea between the island and the mainland. They are the foundation of the regions good fortune. Merchants form partnerships with each other during the spring months to dive and fish for these pearls that are not only monetarily valuable but are also a symbol of social status and religious commitment. The king himself wears “…so many gems and pearls that their price exceeds that of a fine city” (Polo 262). His necklace of 104 pearls represents the 104 prayers he recites to his idols every morning and night. Polo seems impressed by this commerce and representation of status and often admires the king. Besides for his gems and pearls, the king, and everyone else in Maabar, is stark naked all year round. Polo credits this to the extremely hot and humid climate. The only time the region gets rain is during the summer months, and without that rain the heat would be unbearable. Yet Polo is very clear through his writing that he finds this strange. The idea of nakedness is so unnatural to him and disrupts his own cultural expectations. During his recount, he frequently shifts between admirations for the culture, and disapproval to things he finds unnatural.

The pearls are the driving force behind the large trading scene in Maabar, and it interests Polo. The king issues a proclamation several times a year, that encourages merchants to bring him their finest pearls and gems, which he then buys at twice their value. Polo admires the trade and customs here, but he is also fascinated by the omens and “superstitions” that surround trade, like the unlucky hour of choiach where merchants refuse to bargain or buy. Or judging whether a bargain is good or bad based off of where a tarantula cries. Polo doesn’t explicitly judge or mock these customs, but his tone suggest that he likely recorded them to be marveled by his European audience and to emphasize how far he’s traveled from home.

Beyond trading customs, Polo admires the strict justice system of the province, noting his pleasant surprise that merchants and nobles can sleep on the highway during their merchant travels without being scared of theft saying, “It is a proof of the excellent justice kept by the king…” (Polo 271). But Polo is disturbed, by the region’s marriage and death customs, specifically self-immolation, which is the practice of a widow burning herself to death alongside her husband during his funeral. He says, “And I assure you that there are many who do as I have told you” (Polo 265). He feels like he has to emphasize himself to prove that these customs really do occur, because to him it seems so unbelievable.

Polo’s account not only describes the interesting culture of Maabar but also reveals information about his own cultural norms. He portrays the region and India as an unbelievable place that is so different from his own to his European audience.

Cameron DeVries

Blog Post #4

The Travels of Marco Polo: Lesser Java

November 6, 2025

In the section entitled “From China to India”, I chose to look at Marco Polo’s descriptions of the island he calls “Lesser Java”, as this is one of the longer descriptions of this section and the place during this leg of the journey in which he runs into the most people and provides interesting descriptions. This area is part of Indonesia, and was part of his long journey by ship throughout the islands of Eastern and Southern Asia on the way to India. One thing to note first is that this is one of the few places in the narratives where Marco Polo gives a brief description of his own living conditions and interaction with the place he is staying in. When talking about Sumatra, one of the various kingdoms he encounters across the island, he says that he spent 5 months there due to weather. His descriptions showed some amount of struggle but also the ways that he and his people adapted to living in this uncharted territory. He says, “we dug a big trench round our encampment” and recalls using the timber from the area and supplies from trading with the native islanders to create wooden towers and fortifications that they lived in.

The reason for digging these trenches and building fortifications ties back to his writings on the people of Lesser Java, which is one of the aspects of this journey that he writes very harshly about in this section. This is a large island, and Marco Polo refers to eight different kingdoms, each with individual rulers and languages, and how all of them are idolaters (besides the people of Ferlec, having been converted to Islam). It is with these people that Marco Polo dives into his judgmental and denigrating comments – he claims they “live like beasts”, eat “every other sort of flesh, clean or unclean”, and “whatever they see first when they wake in the morning, that they worship.” To me, this section is interesting due to how matter of fact Marco Polo had remained before (for the most part) during his travels throughout Europe and the more mapped out parts of Asia. Here, he attacks dress, hygiene, diet, religion, appearance, and seemingly anything else he can think of. In the kingdom of Sumatra, he refers to the natives as “nasty and brutish folk who kill men for food.” This all goes hand in hand with the general attitude of this entire China to India chapter, where he ranges from the trite “savage” comments, to describing these islanders as looking like dogs and all sorts of other things.

Something that remains in line with Marco Polo’s attitude and position as a merchant is his view of the natural resources and “treasures” of the region he is passing through. Some comments he makes on this front detail how “the island abounds in treasure and in costly products”, including descriptions of how delicious wine is made in tree stumps, how the fish and camphor are the best in the world, and how all kinds of precious woods, spices, fruits and plants can be found in Lesser Java. Kind of going hand in hand with this is description of the wonders of wildlife he encounters, such as elephants, monkeys, and rhinos, which he calls unicorns.

It is interesting to see Marco Polo’s mercantile nature and outlook on exotic goods continue to come out here, but also now to see how his views on wealth are tied into the people nearby and the ways in which they use it. He approves of nature’s wealth here, but seeing as this part of the world may have been considered off the beaten track or apart from what was considered “major civilization” during this time, he doesn’t document a lot of large empires, structures, or shows of wealth in this region, which was something that impressed him throughout China. He seems curious and sees potential for trade, but still lets slip his Eurocentric and Christian nature, and his judgment comes out when presented with these more drastically different ways of life across Indonesia.