This 4th lecture on U.S. history, the first half of U.S. history, 2111, what I want to
do here initially is to talk about where this lecture should start.
This course is taught in every college and university in this country.
Where do most teachers begin this course?
If you were simply studying United States’ history, I guess it would be proper to start
this course with the Declaration of Independence because that’s when the United States begins,
in July of 1776, OR I’ve heard historians say – No, we should back it up to the spring
of 1775, when the redcoats and the American colonists start shooting at one another at
Lexington and Bunker Hill and Concord.
And then, I’ve heard other historians say – No, the most proper time to start would
be with, I guess, in the summer of 1775, when the continental congress appoints a commander
to the new continental army, George Washington, not only a practical measure, but a highly
symbolic one as well.
Now if the course was entitled, American History, you could probably start it with – What
in the 1490s?
Or maybe 1507, when Martin Waldseemüller publishes his world map, and gives credit
to Amerigo Vespucci for the discovery of South America.
So it’s not set in concrete where this course should start.
As someone trained in graduate school as a world historian, I tend to broaden the context
for American history.
I try to bring in both the Atlantic and Pacific worlds, and demonstrate their impact on the
history of the Western hemisphere, and of North America in particular.
So what I want to do is to begin this course in a very odd place, in a very strange time,
and that’s in Central Asia, in the 14th century.
What I want to do is make a link between the Mongol Empire, Marco Polo, and Christopher
Columbus.
If you can make this link in your head, you’ll not only see that the founding of the United
States is more complicated than you believe, but it’s also much more interesting.
Let me start with the Mongols first, and you can look at the map here and see that this
was the largest land empire in history, running from the Pacific in East, all the way into
Central Southern Europe in the West, deep into Southern Asia, and then approaching the
Arctic in the North.
But the size of the Mongol Empire is not what is of interest to us.
The Mongol Empire is significant to us because the Mongol rule over this vast continent allowed
for safe travel, safe passage for missionaries and merchants and adventurers, and so on and
so forth, diplomats.
Buddhist missionaries, Muslim and Christian, took advantage of the Mongol system, to travel.
Now the Mongols predominate in Central Asia on what we call the steppe lands.
The steppe lands are a narrow belt of pasture that run from Manchuria in the East all the
way to Hungary in the West.
The Mongols are a nomadic people.
They are a horse-bound people.
They don’t have cities.
They have small villages which they can pack up and move at a moment’s notice.
So the Mongols are in constant motion back and forth across the steppe lands in search
of water and food.
Now, the Mongols in the 14th century, under the guidance of Genghis Khan, and later Kublai
Khan, establish what we call the Yam, this sort of an interstate highway system in Central
and Southern Asia; it’s an elaborate series of horse trails.
The Yam is dotted every 25 or 30 miles with stations that have fresh water and food, extra
horses, saddles, tack, and so on and so forth.
The Yam extends Southward into the great sedentary civilizations of Asia; moving from East to
West; China; India; Persia; Mesopotamia.
The Mongols, as a nomadic people living in the steppe lands, will venture Southward to
procure horses, women, things made of metal, exotic foods, and in time, in the 14th century,
the Mongols will overrun these old, sophisticated, much more highly populous civilizations in
Southern Asia, and will conquer most of the Eurasian continent.
This again, is significant because it allows for safe passage.
People can travel quickly and safely on the Mongol Yam.
Now this is very beneficial to the Mongols as well because they establish an immense
circuit of trade in Central Asia, where they can touch upon both the Pacific; Southwest
Asia; India; Persia; Mesopotamia; Europe; and Russia, and can act as brokers in this
immense circuit of trade.
Now one of the Europeans, who took advantage of the Mongol Yam, was a Venetian merchant;
his name is Marco Polo.
Polo, as a young man, traveled all the way to Mongolia with his uncle and his father,
who ran sort of an emporium there on the Black Sea.
And then, as an adult, he went back to Mongolia, and to Beijing, and stayed with the ruler
over Mongol China, we call this the Yuan Empire, Y-U-A-N.
The ruler of the Yuan Empire, of course, was the grandson of Genghis Khan; this man’s
name was Kublai Khan, and Polo stayed with him for 17 years.
He carried out diplomatic missions for the great Khan.
The Great Khan liked to have representatives from different cultures at his court, and
of course, as an Italian, or a Venetian, Marco Polo fit the bill.
So Polo carried out a number of high-level missions for the Great Khan.
He lived at court with Kublai Khan, and then after 17 years of service, he returns home
to Venice.
Unluckily for Marco Polo, when he returns home he finds himself in the midst of a series
of wars between the Italian city-states, and Polo is captured as a POW, and thrown in jail.
While in jail, Polo discovers that his cellmate is a writer; these 2 begin to talk, and the
writer suggests, after talking to Polo, that perhaps he should relate his experiences.
Clearly, Marco Polo had traveled further and to a greater extent than any other man, so
why not put this down on paper, and try to capitalize on it.
And indeed they did.
This book has a number of titles.
My favorite is, The Description of the World.
Can you imagine writing your autobiography and calling it, The Description of the World?
This book was published in the 14th century – no 13th century – and it is still available
in every bookstore, every university and college library.
Now, a scholar, some years ago, after reading Polo’s book, made an interesting argument.
She said that there were a number of cultural artifacts, cultural practices peculiar to
China that Polo never mentions in his book.
I have read the book, and he does talk a lot about trade items – spices and silks and
tea and precious metals, and so on and so forth – which I guess makes sense because
Polo is a merchant.
Nevertheless, there are things peculiar to China that he does not talk about.
I want to mention a few of these now.
One of the things that would seem obvious to discuss if you were going to write a book
for Europeans about China, would be the Chinese characters, the alphabet.
You have to admit they look nothing like the Western alphabet.
They do not resemble our letter in the slightest, and in fact, you don’t even read in the
same direction, obviously.
We read from left to right; Chinese characters are read vertically.
Polo doesn’t mention this in his book.
Maybe he just saw Chinese characters every day, and didn’t think of it as being unique.
Of course, it would be unique to European audience.
But it’s not mentioned in his book.
Polo also doesn’t mention chopsticks.
In China, of course, food is chopped to a size that can be gripped with chopsticks,
and eaten in that fashion, instead of with a fork as they did in Europe.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t mention these.
Perhaps they were just commonplace to him over time and he didn’t think of them as
being unique.
Nevertheless, if you were going to write a book about China for Europeans, it seems like
this is something you would mention.
Even more startling is Polo’s lack of attention to Chinese foot binding.
Elite Chinese women, and we’re talking about a very small percentage of the population,
have their feet bound as infants.
The toes are curled under the foot, bound all the way through infancy and adolescence.
By the time an elite Chinese girl reaches her sexual maturity, she really doesn’t
have feet anymore; she has little hooves.
There are some pictures here on our site that you can see clearly that the foot is broken,
the toes are compressed underneath the foot, and you can see the shoes worn by elite Chinese
women look like there’s perhaps half a foot there.
Now this is a very odd cultural practice, and again, it’s practiced by elite Chinese
women, the very women that Polo is supposed to be staying with and mixing with in the
court of the Great Khan.
Yet, he never mentions this in his memoirs.
The historian asked the obvious question – Why?
Why did the Chinese do this?
There are a couple of reasons.
It’s a cultural symbol for one thing.
If you meet a Chinese woman with bound feet, you know without having to ask, that she is
a kept woman; she is among the elite class.
She does not have to work.
When it comes to matters of sexuality, I would say generally – c’est la vie – but this
is one sexual fetish, and it is a fetish in China, these small feet, this is one sexual
fetish that goes right over my head.
I don’t understand it, but of course, I’m not Chinese.
The point being, the major point, is that Polo doesn’t talk about it, and these are
the very people that he’s mixing with.
Now if Chinese women have bound feet, or elite Chinese women, elite Chinese men often grow
their fingernails very long.
It’s not unusual to see fingernails 6 and 8 inches long.
Again, it’s a cultural symbol.
It demonstrates that this man does not have to work.
Let’s face it, it would be hard to pick up a hammer with fingernails 6 to 8 inches
long.
It’s a cultural symbol, much like bound feet are a cultural symbol.
Of course, this is not mentioned in Polo’s book either.
There’s another practice in China that’s interesting that Polo doesn’t mention, and
that’s cormorant fishing.
Now cormorant is a river bird indigenous to China.
It fishes; it dives into the water, into the rivers, captures fish, and eats them.
Chinese fishermen have, for millennia, used cormorants to fish.
They tether one of the bird’s legs to a pole.
They put a piece of pliable metal around the bird’s neck and tighten it a bit, so the
bird can’t swallow, and then they cast the cormorant.
The cormorant goes into the river, catches a fish, he can’t swallow the fish, he brings
it back to the boat.
The Chinese fisherman extracts the fish, puts it in his basket, and then casts the cormorant
again.
A very efficient, but unusual way of fishing, certainly in the eyes of Europeans.
This is not mentioned by Polo in his book.
Then finally, one of the – well, I’ve heard it said – the only manmade structure
that’s visible from orbit, of course, is the Great Wall of China, and the Great Wall,
also, is not mentioned in Polo’s book.
There’s no way he could have missed it.
It’s only a day or so ride by horseback, north of Beijing, where Polo lives for many
years.
Again, did he simply see these things on an everyday basis, and they became commonplace
to him?
For someone trained in cultural history, like myself, it seems very odd that these things
that are peculiar to China are left out of Polo’s memoirs.
So I want to end this lecture by pointing out that in 1492 Christopher Columbus had
2 books aboard his flagship, the Bible and Marco Polo’s Description of the World.
Remember that Christopher Columbus, when he sails west in 1492, he is headed back to China.
He wants to shake hands with the descendants of the Great Khan, and his voyage has been
inspired, in part, by reading Polo’s Description of the World.
We’ll pick this up in a later lecture.
Thank you.