OF THE indies

The aim of the European voyages

MARCO POLO

In the late 1200s, the merchant Marco Polo of Venice became one of the few Europeans to visit Asia. He took four years to travel the Silk Road to China, where he spent 17 years serving the emperor Kublai Khan as a diplomat.

Marco Polo journeyed all over Asia on missions for the Khan.

FANTASTIC STORIES

On his return to Italy, Marco Polo's stories of the Indies were published as a book. It described Asian rivers full of precious stones (above), and many more fantastic sights. People loved his tales, but many readers thought he had made them up.

Of exploration was to reach “the Indies”, which was the old European name for Asia. The Indies included all the eastern lands, from India to Japan. Europeans had only the vaguest ideas of where these places were. The one thing they did know was that the Indies were rich. They had spices, gold, jewels, and silk - goods that were scarce in Europe, and which Europeans desperately wanted to get their hands on.

The silk road

For centuries, spices and other eastern goods had been brought west along a trade route called the Silk Road. By the time they reached Europe they were hugely expensive, because of the profits taken by all the merchants who bought and sold them along the way.