1- Europe in the Age of Marco Polo

Marco Polo

• a Venetian merchant

• explorer in 13th C

• shows us three things about Europe

  • It was a backwater/not really relevant

  • It was expanding

  • It was obsessed with Asia and opening up Eastern markets (this eastward focus is what inspires people to explore West)

• represents Cosmopolitan side of European expansion

World Island

• 13th century

• Europe wasn’t a distinct continent but a peninsula that was cut off from the rest of their land mass (Mediterranean Sea to the south, mountains to the East)

• it’s really cold which negatively affects agriculture

• don’t have many precious metals

• fall of the Roman Empire destroyed their trade networks

Feudalism

• primary European political structure from the 5th to the 15th century

• creates a ton of political fragmentation

Cosmopolitanism

• impulse to go out to the outside world driven by desire to learn from ancients and to trade for money and influence

Venice & Genoa

• two powerful European city-states (Venice maritime, Genoa looked to West)

• these two often rivaled (led by merchants/private interests)

• set up impressive trade networks from 1100s to 1300s created by exchange rather than aggression)

Crusades

• 11th century to 13th century

• pope wants to reconquer the “Holy Land” but economic factors are involved too

• European monarchs establish themselves as Crusaders

  • most famous was Louis IX, king of France in the 13th C

• overall the Crusades were a failure BUT it tied together religious, economic, and political motivations for expansion AND produced mentality that God is on the side of the Europeans

• crusading ideology is the dark side of Cosmopolitanism (Christians are chosen by God)

Reconquista

• At first, Muslims & Christians were coexisting but this ends in the 15th C

• 1492: Spanish (led by King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella) expel the Moors from Grenada, so they now control entire peninsula

• main point: European power is expanding (sometimes driven by Cosmopolitanism, sometimes driven by militant Christianity of the Crusades)

Rusticello of Pisa

• fellow prisoner of Marco Polo

• writes manuscript of Polio’s voyages that inspires others to want the riches and adventures of Eastern travels

John Mandeville

• a FICTIONAL medieval night who traveled the world

• the fact his travels were so influential despite not being based in fact shows the potency of European fantasy about the East

Ottoman Empire

• blocks European path to China and control much of the Eastern Mediterranean by the late 17th C

• Mariners of Venice & Genoa now have nowhere to go/no markets —> pushes them toward the Atlantic