Yuan Paper Money: Comparing Marco Polo’s Account and Chinese Sources .... Yunnan Cowry Currencies: Comparing Marco Polo’s Account and Chinese Sources .... Places in China with paper mone
Trang 2Monies, Markets, and Finance
Trang 3Marco Polo Was in China
New Evidence from Currencies,
Salts and Revenues
By
Hans Ulrich Vogel
LEidEN • bOStON2013
Trang 4dei Tartari, 1863 For the complete picture see Fig 34 in this book the illustration was provided
by Photoservice Electa/anelli by courtesy of Ministro per i beni e le Attività Culturali and Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Vogel, Hans Ulrich.
Marco Polo was in China : new evidence from currencies, salts and revenues / by Hans Ulrich Vogel.
p cm — (Monies, markets, and finance in East Asia, 1600–1900, iSSN 2210–2876 ; v 2) includes bibliographical references and index.
iSbN 978-90-04-23193-1 (hbk : alk paper) — iSbN 978-90-04-23698-1 (e-book)
1 Money—China—History 2 taxation—China—History 3 Salt—taxation—China—History
4 Polo, Marco, 1254–1324 i title
Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke brill NV, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Koninklijke brill NV incorporates the imprints brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
idC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
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this book is printed on acid-free paper.
Trang 5my wife
beatriz Puente-ballesteros
medical doctor and historian of intercivilisational encounters in medicine
between Jesuits, Chinese and Manchus
for her love, encouragement and support
and
in memory of
Herbert Franke (1914–2011)
the great German sinologist and specialist on Yuan economic,
social, political and cultural history
Trang 7List of Figures, Maps and tables xi
Preface from Mark Elvin xvii
Préface de Philippe Ménard xxi
Preface from the Author xxiii
Acknowledgments xxvii
transliteration and Conventions xxxi
i introduction 1
1. Structure and Contents of this book 2
2. Approaches and Methods 8
3. Cons and Pros for Marco Polo’s Stay in China 11
3.1. Authorship of the book 14
3.2. Complexities of Manuscript transmission 17
3.3. Nature, Style, intentions and Receptions of the book 22
3.4. itinerary and data 36
3.5. Persian Rendering of Chinese Place Names 39
3.6. Aspects of Chinese and Mongol Civilization and Culture 43
3.7. “Latins” at Khubilai’s Court 67
3.8. Participation in the Xiangyang Siege 67
3.9. Governorship in Yangzhou 68
3.10. Missions of the Polos 69
3.11. the Polos and Chinese Sources 74
3.12. Return from China 80
3.13. Golden tablets of Authority 84
ii Paper Money in Yuan China 89
1. Marco Polo on Yuan Paper Money (1275–1291) 106
2. Other Western, Persian and Arabic Mediaeval Authors on Yuan Paper Money 109
3. the Short-lived issue of Yuan-style Paper Money in Persia in 1294 113
Trang 84. Chinese Sources on Paper Money during the Yuan Period
(1271–1368) 118
4.1. Aspects of Production 120
4.2. Aspects of Circulation 159
5. Yuan Paper Money: Comparing Marco Polo’s Account and Chinese Sources 212
iii. Cowry Monies Circulating in Yunnan and Southeast Asia 227
1. Marco Polo on Cowry Currencies (1275–1291) 230
2. Chinese Sources on Yunnan Cowry Currencies during the Yuan Period (1271–1368) 234
2.1. Exchange Rates 236
2.2. denominations 238
2.3. Cowry imports 239
2.4. Cowry Currency in Private transactions 258
2.5. Cowry Money in Public Revenue and Finance 262
3. Yunnan Cowry Currencies: Comparing Marco Polo’s Account and Chinese Sources 267
iV Salt Production and Salt Monies in Yunnan and Tebet 271
1. Marco Polo on Salt Production in Yunnan (1275–1291) 272
2. Marco Polo on Salt Currencies in Tebet and Caindu (1275–1291) 285
3. Chinese Sources on Salt Currencies (Late Eighth to Mid-twentieth Centuries) 297
3.1. Nanzhao Kingdom (Late Eighth Century) 298
3.2. Yuan Period (Early Fourteenth Century) 299
3.3. Ming Period (Mid-Fifteenth Century) 299
3.4. Qing Period (Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries) 301
3.5. Republican Period (Mid-1930s) 307
3.6. People’s Republic of China (1950s) 307
4. Salt Forms Produced by Yunnan Saltworks (Early Eighteenth Century) 309
4.1. dry-boiled Salt Forms 311
4.2. Salt Forms Made by Hand or Moulds 312
5. Salt Currencies: Comparing Marco Polo’s Perceptions and Chinese Sources 315
5.1. Weight of Salt Currencies 315
5.2. Value of Salt Currencies 317
Trang 95.3. Salt Prices in Caindu and Other Regions of China 318
5.4. Circulation and Monetary Functions of Salt Currencies 324
5.5. Salt Monies, Governments and Markets 328
V Production, Revenue and trade of Salt in Changlu and Lianghuai 331
1. Marco Polo on Salt Production techniques in Changlu 332
2. Marco Polo on the Salt Production and distribution Zone of Lianghuai 339
3. did Marco Polo Hold an Office in Yangzhou? 348
Vi. tax Revenue of Hangzhou and its territory 365
1. Marco Polo’s Millions: the Salt tax Revenue 366
2. total Annual Revenue as Reported by the Venetian 379
3. Commercial taxes in Le devisament dou monde 391
4. Marco Polo on Levies in Overseas trade in Quanzhou 394
Vii Administrative-Geographical divisions in Yuan China 399
Viii Conclusions 419
Appendices Appendix 1: Compilation of Passages on the Production and Use of Paper Money in the Yuan Empire from Selected Manuscript and Print Versions of Marco Polo’s Account 429
Appendix 2: Compilation of Passages on the Production and Use of Chinese Paper Money and Salt Revenue in the Accounts of Other Western, Persian and Arabic Authors 439
Appendix 3: Coins of Venice 471
Appendix 4: the Weight Measures libbra and saggio of Venice 474
Appendix 5: the Weight of the miskal 475
Appendix 6: Relationship between the Persian System of balish, sum and miskal, the Chinese System of ding, liang and qian, and Marco Polo’s saggi and grossi 477
Appendix 7: Compilation of Passages on Chinese Salt Money, Salt Production and Salt Revenue from the Most important Manuscript and Print Versions of Marco Polo’s Account 491
Appendix 8: tables 3 and 27 529
Trang 101. Marco Polo Editions 547
2. Other Primary Sources 554
3. Secondary Literature 562
index 629
Trang 111. the Great Khan carried by elephants, as illustrated in
Glazemaker’s dutch version (1664) of Marco Polo’s book 54
2. the story of the Polos escorting Princess Kökechin to Persia from 1291 to 1295, as depicted by Withold Gordon in 1926 83
3. Front side of an early Zhongtong 10 wen paper note discovered 1982 in the Wanbu Huayanjing 万部华严经塔 or White Pagoda 白塔 in Huhehot, inner Mongolia 97
4. Front side of a Zhiyuan 1 guan paper note excavated in 1983/1984 in Heicheng 黑城 (Khara Khoto), inner Mongolia 103
5. Front and reverse side of a late Zhongtong 500 wen paper note discovered 1965 in Xianyang City 咸阳市, Shaanxi Province 104
6. Chinese seals in a letter of the Persian ilkhan Arghun (ca 1258–1291) to Philip iV of France (1268–1314)—called “the Fair”—from the year 1289 117
7. Production of paper money in the Great Khan’s empire, French mediaeval illustration of the early sixteenth century 125
8. Legend areas on the front side of Yuan paper notes 132
9. Phags-pa inscriptions on Yuan paper notes after 1269 135
10. Legend in area F on Zhongtong paper notes before 1269 138
11. Legend in area F on Zhongtong paper notes from 1269 onwards 139
12. Legend in area F on Zhiyuan paper notes issued from 1287 onwards 139
13. Explanation of the seals on the early Zhongtong 10 wen paper note found in 1982 in the White Pagoda of Huhehot 147
14. Split-edge seal on an early Zhongtong 500 wen note found in 1988 in a Yuan tomb in Huarong 华容 in Hunan 150
15. Explanation of the seals on Zhiyuan 2 guan paper notes excavated in 1983 and 1984 in Heicheng (Khara Khoto) in inner Mongolia 153
Trang 1216. Merchants bringing precious goods to the Great Khan in
exchange for paper money, French mediaeval illustration
of ca 1412 172
17. Printing plate made of clay for counterfeiting Zhiyuan 1 guan
paper notes found in Shandong in the 1910s 175
18. bronze seal of the Storehouse for burning [Worn-out] Notes
of the Jiangxi 江西 branch Secretariat, 1293 177
19. Seals used for marking worn-out paper notes of Jiangdong
Circuit 江東道, Zhejiang, 1288 178
20. Cowries found in Yunnan, tang to Ming Periods 228
21. Hoisting of brine at the deep-drilled wells of Zigong 自貢
(Ziliujing 自流井 and Gongjing 貢井), Sichuan, ca 1880 281
22. the Langjing 琅井 saltworks in Chuxiong Prefecture 楚雄府, Yunnan Province, about 1712 283
23. Salt production at the big Well (dajing 大井) of the
Yunlongjing 雲龍井 salt works in Yunlong department
雲龍州, Yunnan, about 1707 284
24. Mouth of an inclined salt well in the saltworks of Ho-boung Village, near Pu’er 普洱, Yunnan Province, late 1860s 285
25. A bar of salt used as currency in Ethiopia 287
26. the Alou-Houjing 阿陋猴井 saltworks in Yunnan, early
eighteenth century 310
27. A salt boiling house (zaofang 灶房) at the Langjing 琅井
saltworks in Chuxiong Prefecture 楚雄府, Yunnan,
about 1707 311
28. inside of a boiling house in the saltworks of Ho-boung
Village, near Pu’er 普洱, Yunnan Province, late 1860s 312
29. Shape of a gui jade and thus the form of salt produced
at the Yunlongjing saltworks, Yunlong department of dali
Prefecture 314
30. Carrying the ashes and pouring them into the leaching basin, Xiasha saltworks 下沙場 of Huating district 華亭縣 in
Zhexi 浙西, about 1334 335
31. Straining and removing salt from the large iron pan, Xiasha
saltworks of Huating district in Zhexi, about 1334 336
32. the salt production process in Changlu, French illustration
of the early sixteenth century 337
33. Production of salt by basin solar evaporation at the Salt Lake
of Xiezhou 解州, Shanxi, twelfth to thirteenth centuries 338
Trang 1334. tranquillo Cremona’s (1837–1878) Marco Polo davanti al
Gran Khan dei Tartari, 1863 352
35. the collection of large revenues in Kinsay, French mediaeval illustration of about 1412 366
36. Venetian grosso, piccolo and ducato of the thirteenth
century 473
37. A Yuan sliding weight of 2 jin for a 55-jin-steelyard, 1304 481
38. Silver ingot of 1 ding or 50 liang from the Mongol era 485
Maps
1. Places in China with paper money as mentioned by
Marco Polo, 1275–1291, compared with relevant references
to paper money institutions in Chinese sources, ca 1303 208
2. the Southwest Silk Road during the late thirteenth to
nineteenth centuries 240
3. Production of gold, silver, copper and tin in Yunnan,
ca first century bC to fourteenth century Ad 247
4. Places with cowry and cowry currencies, Yunnan,
late thirteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries 254
5. Salt production places in Yunnan, eighth to fourteenth
centuries 277
6. Saltworks in Yunnan, seventeenth to early twentieth century 278
7. Sources of salt in Ming China, 1368–1644 279
8. Locations with mentioning of salt money or salt barter in
Southwest China, late eighth to mid-twentieth centuries 302
tables
1. denominations of main Yuan paper currencies in Chinese
sources as well as the denominations mentioned by
Marco Polo 98
2. Coverage of paper money topics by Marco Polo and other
mediaeval Western, Persian and Arabic authors 119
3. Measures of surviving specimens of Yuan paper notes or
paper money printing plates 529
4. Number of Yuan Stabilisation Storehouses and Circulation
Storehouses by region, ca 1303 186
Trang 145. Uses of silver, copper cash, paper money and paper money
denominations in North China as mentioned on Yuan stele
inscriptions, organised by period and social classes 194
6. Uses of silver, copper cash, paper money and paper money
denominations in Jiangnan as mentioned on Yuan stele
inscriptions, organised by period and social classes 197
7. Places in China with paper money as mentioned by
Marco Polo, 1275–1291, compared with relevant references to paper money institutions in Chinese sources, ca 1303 199
8. Amounts of issued paper money and estimates of the total and per capita values of paper money in circulation in Mongol
China, 1260–1324, according to Peng Xinwei’s approach 218
9. Amounts of issued paper money and estimates of the total
and per capita values of paper money in circulation in Mongol China, 1260–1324, according to Wu Qi’s parameters 221
10. Hypothetical estimates for the mean annual inflation rate of prices expressed in Yuan paper money, 1260–1287 224
11. Chinese and East Asian regions with cowry currency
mentioned by Marco Polo 232
12. Yunnan salt production places mentioned for the tang and
Nanzhao periods, eighth to ninth centuries 274
13. Yunnan salt production places mentioned for the Yuan
dynasty 275
14. Production and taxation of the Yunnan saltworks, second half
of the seventeenth century 276
15. Liangzhe 兩浙 annual salt production quotas, general official
price per yin of salt, and Liangzhe total salt revenue as well
as amount of salt received per 1 g of gold at government
saltworks, 1261–1343 320
16. Annual salt production quotas (in yin) especially of
Lianghuai 兩淮 and Liangzhe 兩浙, 1277–1330 332
17. the salt production quotas of Huaidong Route 淮東路 based
on the Zhongxing huiyao 中興會要 (State Regulations
of the First two [Southern Song] Reign-periods),
about 1127–1162 345
18. the administrative organisation of the Salt distribution
Commission ( yanyunsi 鹽運司) of Lianghuai 兩淮 in the
early Yuan period up to 1294 348
19. Administrative structure of the Pacification Commission
of Huaidong Circuit 淮東道 in the 1280s and 1290s 355
Trang 1520. Approximate average salt revenues of Kinsay in gold and
paper money according to the exchange rates of 1282–1286
and from 1287 onwards 375
21. Lowest possible salt revenues of Kinsay in gold and paper
money according to the exchange rates of 1282–1286
and from 1287 onwards 375
22. Highest possible salt revenues of Kinsay in gold and paper
money according to the exchange rates of 1282–1286 and
1282–1286 and from 1287 onwards 382
25. Highest possible revenues of Kinsay (except salt) in gold and paper money according to the exchange rates of 1282–1286
and from 1287 onwards 382
26. Lowest possible revenues of Kinsay (except salt) in gold and paper money according to the exchange rates of 1282–1286
and from 1287 onwards 382
27. Preserved data of annual revenues of various tax categories
in monies, metals and kinds and expenditures in paper
money in Mongol China, 1263–1329 542
28. Share of Jiangzhe 江浙 in various tax items in 1328 385
29. Annual salt production and salt tax revenues of the Yuan
dynasty, about 1285–1330 386
30. Estimate of the Jiangzhe and empire-wide paper money tax
revenue on the basis of the lower saggi figures mentioned
by Marco Polo 387
31. Estimate of the Jiangzhe and empire-wide paper money tax
revenue on the basis of the higher saggi figures mentioned
by Marco Polo 388
32. Average weight of a Venician groat (grosso), 1205–1311 472
33. Average weight of a Venetian ducat (ducato), 1343–1400 473
34. Weights of Venetian weight measures according to various
sources 474
35. System of imperial monetary units-of-account in the Mongol empire 477
36. Weights of weight measures of the Yuan period, 1295–1306 479
37. Weights of silver ingots of the Yuan period 481
Trang 17Authenticity of evidence has become the bedrock of distinctively modern history the event that best symbolizes this aspect of modernity, though i
suspect not necessarily its first appearance, is probably the well-known De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio written in 1440
by the great italian humanist Lorenzo Valla Several of the key words in his title have multiple connotations, most likely deliberately, but perhaps the
translation that best conveys its tone at the time would be A notification of protest concerning the erroneously trusted but forged Gift of Constantine.1 in
his polemic Valla showed that it was extremely implausible that the ebrated alleged donation of temporal power over most of western Europe, and many other privileges for the Catholic Church, to Pope Sylvester by the Emperor Constantine, was authentic in addition to a rhetoric that at times more resembled the outburst of a human Vesuvius than civilized scholarly discourse as we now understand it, he nonetheless used the dex-terity of a master to mobilize historical philology, historical plausibility, and the need to respect the consistent pattern conveyed by the majority
cel-of well-regarded close-to-contemporary late-imperial sources, and indeed even the evidence of physical objects, such as the total absence of coins asserting or implying papal secular suzerainty over the western half of the old empire, to reveal that the donation was virtually certainly a forgery
made in the eighth century.2 Above all, though, the Declamatio was an innovation in methodology it was the first master-class that showed how
such a demolition could be done
Yet for all the difficulty of his enterprise—and, we should add, the sonal danger he risked in such a seemingly sacrilegious assault—Valla still had a relatively simple task in the intellectual sense the present volume by Professor Hans Ulrich Vogel of the University of tübingen, with its cautious erudite sobriety, massive detail and informational den-
per-sity, and its multilingual and multicultural maîtrise, undertakes the even more demanding positive inverse that is to say it demonstrates by specific
1 On the term declamation see Jan Frederik Niermeyer and C van de Kieft, revised by
J burgers, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, brill: Leiden, 2002, p 404.
2 See Christopher Coleman, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of
Constan-tine: Text and Translation into English, Yale University Press: New Haven Ct, 1922.
Trang 18example after specific example the ultimately overwhelming probability
of the broad authenticity of the greatest of all works joining premodern
European and Chinese history, Marco Polo’s late medieval Le devisament dou monde3 on his travels in East Asia, and above all China, in the later
years of the thirteenth century it is a work with often significantly fering versions: the coverage given by the manuscripts is not always the same; there are some critical divergences in terms used—for example did Marco exert at least a measure of political authority for a time in the
dif-city of Yangzhou (seignora) or merely sojourn (séjourna) there a while;
and there are at least a few apparent gaps in descriptions, though most
of these turn out to be easily explicable Care is manifestly needed, and those who have in the past, and even recently, raised fundamental doubts
of various sorts about the book, though mistaken, were not always being casual or foolish
Vogel uses, where appropriate, all the analytical techniques deployed
by Valla, while sparing us the rhetoric, but his core method is to compare, item by item, what is in the main Polo manuscripts with the contents
of the most authoritative Chinese official and privately authored texts
dealing with the same matters, the majority of them put into the lic domain some years after Polo had dictated his text in Europe, and so broadly independent as far as can be told Polo did not, in any case, read Chinese in many cases the precision of fit is to all intents and purposes perfect, rarely anything but good in some of those items to do with sta-tistics, Vogel is at times obliged to be circumspect, and restricts himself to
pub-showing that in nearly every case the general magnitude is the same in a
handful of exceptionally complex cases, notably those involving multiple
translations of long-extinct units of value and weight, at least the ranges
of estimated maximum and minimum magnitudes virtually all overlap
in other words, differences are usually more sensibly seen as cies than exaggerations either up or down A further major feature is that Vogel shows how accurately Polo, in the broad majority of cases, described physical objects, such as Mongol-dynasty printed paper money notes, that have often only quite recently been discovered by archaeologists While great respect is owed to some shrewd pioneering observations by igor
discrepan-de Rachewiltz, the doyen of Western Mongolists, in the journal Zentral- asiatische Studien (above all, issue 26 in 1997), notably on Marco’s star-
tlingly accurate knowledge of the matrimonial diplomatic policy of the
3 the Franco-italian form of the title
Trang 19Mongol rulers, no study other than the present one else drives home so remorselessly the point that, when the available material, which is gath-
ered and presented in these pages, is evaluated as a whole, it is
incon-testable that most of the Venetian traveler’s knowledge must either have been first-hand or come to him from informants personally very close to Chinese events and Chinese realities the case as a whole has now been closed
Speaking personally, as an economic and environmental historian of China, the key service that this work does for those of us who have worked
or are still working in these two fields, is to strengthen our confidence that Polo’s book is, in essence, authentic, and, when used with care, in broad terms to be trusted as a serious, though obviously not always final, witness the second, and only marginally less important, service is that it puts at our disposal an unprecedented wealth of detail, much of it new, about the currencies circulating in the Mongol economy and fiscal system, the production of salt in this period and its prices and areas of sale, and in addition gives us a picture of the revenues of the Mongol state analyzed
to a new sharpness of resolution
Written with clarity and great care, it is a well of information from which serious students of the past who care profoundly about recon-structing both the broader expanses of mediaeval Chinese history, and the significant minutiae that sustain their reconstructions, right, will—necessarily—be drawing on with grateful appreciation for a long time to come
And, i would add, it is a new master-class in historical method that, if i
am permitted for a moment to engage in an exercise of the imagination, would surely have impressed even Valla himself had he been still with us
to see it
Mark Elvin
St Antony’s College
Oxford
Trang 21M Hans Ulrich Vogel, Professeur à l’université de tübingen, s’est déjà signalé à l’attention des médiévistes par beaucoup d’articles sur l’économie
et les monnaies de la Chine impériale, et aussi par un important travail
Salt Production Techniques in Ancient China (Leiden, brill, 1992) Le sent ouvrage Marco Polo Was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues, apporte des éléments d’information nouveaux et considéra-
pré-bles pour l’interprétation du livre de Marco Polo il est excellent pour les
médiévistes qu’un sinologue confirmé reprenne l’examen du Devisement
du monde et nous apporte une masse de faits et de réflexions sur ce texte
célèbre En 2006 Stephen G Haw, qui connaît la langue chinoise, a publié
une étude Marco Polo’s China, portant surtout sur les régions traversées,
les produits du sol et les animaux évoqués par le voyageur Mais il utilise deux traductions (celle de Cordier et celle de Hambis), sans se reporter aux versions originales, et ses remarques s’avèrent brèves Elles ne concernent nullement les problèmes financiers il faut féliciter M Vogel d’avoir pris la peine d’examiner les versions authentiques du texte de Marco Polo.dans cet ouvrage d’environ 600 pages M Vogel enrichit singulière-ment notre connaissance des réalités économiques à l’époque de Marco
Polo On n’avait jamais exploré dans plusieurs versions du Devisement du monde avec autant de soin et de science les références faites à la monnaie
de papier, mais aussi au sel et aux coquillages nommés porcelaine, qui vent également de monnaie d’échange dans certains endroits reculés de la province du Yunnan et dans des régions limitrophes Le voyageur vénitien fournit des précisions remarquables sur la production et la circulation de ces diverses monnaies il a été surpris et admiratif en assistant à la fabrica-tion du papier monnaie à partir de l’écorce de murier M Vogel démontre que tous les détails donnés dans le texte sont parfaitement vrais
ser-Le présent livre nous offre, dans une vaste section intitulée “Paper Money in Yuan China,” une très large étude sur l’emploi du papier mon-naie entre 1275 et 1291, c’est-à-dire à l’époque de Marco Polo Les billets de banque constituaient une invention chinoise plus ancienne, déjà attestée
à l’époque Song, mais l’empereur Khoubilai Khan l’a encore perfectionnée
en édictant une prohibition absolue de l’usage de toute monnaie que Les marchands étrangers devaient s’y plier L’empereur détenait seul l’or et l’argent
Trang 22métalli-Ce livre est enrichi d’appendices nombreux et utiles: publication des
pages de Marco Polo concernant le papier monnaie, compilation des sages relatifs aux questions monétaires chez divers écrivains occidentaux (les textes de Jordan Catala de Severac et d’Odoric de Pordenone sont justement mentionnés), répertoire des monnaies propres à Venise, équi-valences entre les systèmes monétaires persan et chinois, informations sur le sel et les coquillages employés comme monnaie de nombreuses illustrations, presque toujours peu connues, voire inconnues, complètent les analyses Elles constituent un apport nouveau et considérable L’exa-men des revenus perçus par le Grand Khan et mentionnés de manière assez détaillée par Marco Polo montre que le voyageur vénitien est par-faitement informé il a peut-être été inspecteur et contrôleur (c’était une idée de Luciano Petech), ayant eu entre les mains des documents officiels sur les redevances payées au Khan pour le commerce du sel, des épices
pas-et de la soie Nul ne peut inventer des chiffres pour étayer ses dires, sans avoir eu, au préalable, les comptes financiers sous les yeux il faut avoir
eu connaissance des relevés établis par l’administration concernant les grandes villes du sud de la Chine (notamment Hangzhou) pour pouvoir
commer-ne se contente pas de procéder à un examen approfondi des questions
monétaires évoquées dans le Devisement du monde il a opéré aussi des
dépouillements considérables à travers plusieurs versions du texte de Marco Polo et il publie, en outre, une bibliographie très importante, qui inclut non seulement les recherches faites dans les grandes langues de l’Europe, mais aussi les travaux réalisés par des érudits chinois et japonais
il est important de savoir qu’au plan monétaire le texte de Marco Polo est
en parfait accord avec les sources conservées et les documents officiels chinois Comme l’auteur le déclare justement, à n’en pas douter, Marco Polo est bien allé en Chine
Philippe MénardUniversité de Paris-Sorbonne
Paris
Trang 23Le père Martini qui donne le détail de ce fourni à que province au trésor Royal faire monter ces revenus
cha-à de plus grandes sommes Les exagérations ont autre fois attire a M Polo le surnom de le mesme Marco Millioni.1
because this book deals with currencies, salts and revenues and thus, as
we will see, with huge amounts of money, it is appropriate to start with
a remark on the origin of Marco Polo’s (1254–1324) nickname “il Milione.” Several explanations have been offered for it in the early nineteenth cen-tury Giovanni battista baldelli boni (1766–1831) derived it from the name
of the province of Emilia and hence from “Emilione,” a nickname that served to distinguish Marco Polo from many other Marcos among his rel-atives.2 boleslaw Szceśniak thought that the nickname belonged to one
of the uncles of the traveller Marco Polo, namely Marco Polo lo grando
of Soldachia, and was transferred from this Marco to his son Nicolo lo grando Moreover, he held that the nickname was attributed wrongly by
Jacopo d’Acqui and others to Marco Polo the traveller.3 in a recent article Marco Pozza could, however, show that the nickname “Milion” was indeed used for Marco Polo the traveller, namely in a list of the confraternity
of Santa Maria della Misericordia already in August 1, 1319 While indeed
both Marco Polo lo grando as well as his son Nicolo lo grando carried this
sobriquet, the mentioning of “Marco Polo Milion” in the confraternity list
of 1319 could only refer to Marco Polo himself, because his uncle, Marco
Polo lo grando, had already died in 1305 or 1306.4
1 bibliothèque Nationale de France, Nouvelles Acquisitions (NAF), 7482, Collection
Renaudot Sinica (unknown author(s) of Jesuit testimonies from the seventeenth to the
eighteenth centuries), Fol 91v i am indebted to beatriz Puente-ballesteros for bringing this passage to my attention.
2 Cf boleslaw Szceśniak, “Marco Polo’s Surname ‘Milione’ According to Newly
discov-ered documents,” T’oung Pao, 48.4/5 (1960), pp 447–449; Folker E Reichert, Begegnungen
mit China: Die Entdeckung Ostasiens im Mittelalter, Sigmaringen: thorbecke Verlag, 1992,
p 143.
3 Szcesniak (1960), p 452, and also igor de Rachewiltz, “Marco Polo Went to China,”
Zentralasiatische Studien, 27 (1977), p 69.
4 See Marco Pozza, “Marco Polo Milion: An Unknown Source Concerning Marco Polo,”
Mediaeval Studies, 68 (2006): 285–301, especially pp 288–289 the paper of Marco Pozza
was pointed out to me again by beatriz Puente-ballesteros.
Trang 24Apart from these more sober explanations, there exists a probably parallel tradition of a more denigrating nature, which relates “Milione”
to the aspects of wealth and money For instance, Fra Jacopo d’Acqui,
an obscure author of the chronicle Imago mundi, thought that it arose
because the Polos that had travelled to the East (Matteo, Niccolò, Marco) were millionaires Giovanni battista Ramusio (1485–1577) explained it as coming from the incredibly huge revenues of the Great Khan which were
so vividly described by Marco Polo.5 As is made clear by the anonymous quotation above, “Milione” was indeed used as a not very flattering sur-name for Marco Polo, because he was believed to have exaggerated the amounts of revenues levied and collected by Khubilai (1215–1294), the Great Khan.6
in this book dealing with the specific topics of currencies, salts and revenues i will show, among other things, that Marco Polo did not earn this denigrating sobriquet As a matter of fact, one important issue to be clarified in this work was indeed Marco Polo’s indications of the Great Khan’s revenues derived from the territory of Hangzhou (Kinsay) by mak-ing use of data derived both from textual sources and physical relics and
by conversions carried out between different currencies i am able to onstrate that Marco Polo’s figures make sense and are not the product of fantasy prone to exaggerate the revenue of the Great Khan and to blow
dem-it up to “millions.”
this book is the result of some side-line research started a few years ago While originally planned to be published as a paper dealing “only” with the aspects of salt administration, salt production, salt money and
salt revenue as mentioned in Le devisament dou monde,7 its content grew
in volume over the years when it became more and more clear that for a more complete and more convincing picture, other currencies―cowries and Yuan paper money—and other types of revenue had to be taken into
5 See Giovanni battista Ramusio, Navigazioni e viaggi, ed by Marica Milanesi, torino:
Giulio Einaudi, 1980, vol 3, p 30: “E perché nel continuo raccontare ch’egli faceva piú e piú volte della grandezza del gran Cane [. . .] riferiva tutte a milioni, lo cognominarono messer Marco Millioni.”
6 See also Marina Münkler, Erfahrung des Fremden: Die Beschreibung Ostasiens in
den Augenzeugenberichten des 13 und 14 Jahrhunderts, berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2000,
pp 123–124.
7 Le devisament dou monde is the name of the Franco-italian manuscript, usually
abbreviated as F it is considered to be the oldest and in many respect most complete version of Marco Polo’s account because the arguments brought forward for this conclu- sions are convincing to me, i basically refer in this book to the Franco-italian manuscript,
if not otherwise indicated.
Trang 25account Fuelled by a growing fascination for, and feverish enthusiasm about, the topic, the original outlay of the investigation was considerably expanded, thanks to a one-month research stay in beijing in August 2009 and by dedicating part of my sabbatical in Leuven in 2010 to the expan-sion and completion of this book to achieve this was, no doubt, facilitated
by my long-standing research work in the history of monies, finance, salt and metrology in imperial China Experience gathered in these fields over many years allowed me to take a fresh look at Marco Polo passages related
to the complex topics of Yuan monetary and fiscal history the result is presented in this book, which is intended not only to be a contribution to Marco Polo research and thus, more generally, intercivilisational encoun-ters in a historical perspective, but which hopefully will also stimulate further critical investigations that will incorporate both data provided by textual sources and physical relics and research achievements obtained
in Japan, China and the West the fruitfulness of such a comprehensive approach based on a solid mastery in working with primary sources and secondary literature of different origins and cultural backgrounds will no doubt yield novel and surprising results even in a field as time-honoured
as Marco Polo research
Trang 27Letters from the Fathers who were living at the Royal Court of Mogor, to their brethren in india, made men-tion of the famous Empire, which the Saracens called Cathay this name was formerly known in Europe from the writings of Marco Polo, the Venetian, but through several centuries it was forgotten to such an extent that scarcely anyone now believed in the existence of such a place [. . .]1
the first results of my research were presented in a number of workshops, conferences or public lectures in chronological order these were: Work-shop i.4 of the dFG Research Group 596 “Monies, Markets and Finance
in China and East Asia, 1600–1900: Local, Regional, National and tional dimensions,” department of Chinese and Korean Studies, Univer-sity of tübingen, May 19–20, 2006; University of Science and technology
interna-of China, Hefei, April 9, 2007; Workshop “Visit Monetary History interna-of a Quarter of Human beings and Revisit what Monies actually are,” tōyō bunka kenkyūjo, University of tokyo, Sanjo Hall, May 21–22, 2007; “Lange Nacht der tübinger Asien- und Orientwissenschaften,” institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of tübingen, October 26, 2007; Sympo-sium zum 50-jährigen bestehen der deutschen China-Gesellschaft im Jahr 2007, industrie- und Handelskammer Karlsruhe, November 10, 2007; Panel 142 “Chinese Monetary History and the Perils of Conventional Mon-etary theory,” 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, April 3–6, Atlanta, Georgia; Linden-Museum Stuttgart, Juli 9, 2008; Ostasi-atisches Seminar, Universität Zürich, dezember 4, 2008; “Von der Lust des Forschens und Lehrens zwischen China und Europa,” Symposium in hon-our of the last teaching term of Prof dr Rudolf G Wagner, Karl Jaspers Center, University of Heidelberg; Lecture for the German-Chinese Friend-ship Association tübingen, december 6, 2010, Salzstadel tübingen i am indebted to the participants and discussants of these meetings for their constructive and helpful comments which have been taken into consider-ation in this book as far as possible i would also like to thank my students
1 Louis J Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583–
1610, translated from the Latin by Louis J Gallagher, S.J., with a foreword by Richard J
Cushing, d.d., L.L.d., Archbishop of boston, New York: Random House, 1953, p 499.
Trang 28in their active and productive participation in the Marco Polo seminar in the winter term 2010/11 and in the Yuan seminar in the summer term 2011
at the department of Chinese and Korean Studies, tübingen University.Special thanks go to a number of institutions for their financial support
of this research work First of all, the German Research Foundation has
to be mentioned, which, within the framework of their generous support
of the Research Group 596 “Monies, Markets and Finance in China and East Asia, 1600–1900: Local, Regional, National and international dimen-sions,” also granted a special sabbatical research semester to me which
i partly used for expediting my Marco Polo research and for working on the book manuscript during my stay in Leuven from March to October
2010 i am especially grateful to Professor Nicolas Standaert at the Catholic University of Leuven for having me provided with office space and facili-ties which allowed me to push ahead with my work efficiently, freed from any of the usual, numerous obligations and chores in administration and teaching For a one-month research stay in beijing in the summer of 2009, where i had access to important Chinese primary sources and secondary literature, i gratefully acknowledge the financial support of both the Max-Planck Society, Munich, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, beijing brill Publishers, in the persons of Alfred Hoffstädt, Patricia Radder and Rachel L Crofut, were a constant source of encouragement, especially in the process of editing and typesetting the manuscript, while for the index
i likewise could rely on the professional help of Anne Holmes and Rod Rudnick (Nobleboro, Maine) Moreover, the baden-Württembergische China-Gesellschaft (baden-Württemberg Association for the Advance-ment of Cooperation with the People’s Republic of China) and the Univer-sitätsbund tübingen—Vereinigung der Freunde der Universität tübingen (University band—Association of the Friends of the University of tübin-gen) kindly supported me to cover the major part of the costs for the index
A number of friends, colleagues and collaborators have supplied me with important additional material or gave me invaluable advice for further reading these were Peter M Kuhfus, Achim Mittag, Alexander Jost, Chen Hailian, Cao Jin, Ulrich theobald (department of Chinese and Korean Studies, tübingen University), Matthias Niedenführ (European Centre for Chinese Studies at Peking University) as well as beatriz Puente-ballesteros, Ad dudink and Noel Golvers (Sinologie, Faculteit Letteren, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) Alexander Jost also checked for me, as far as possible, a number of entries on Yuan paper money written by Per-sian and Arabic authors and supplied me with the original texts that are
Trang 29included in this book two of our department’s student helpers, Johann Wong and Patric dujardin, and our librarian, thomas Gaiser, were very supportive in providing me relentlessly with copies of articles and books not available in our tübingen institute or university library At my home institution i could also count on two other graduate students, Katharina Markgraf and Ailika Schinköthe, in supporting me by carrying out edito-rial work on the manuscript as well as providing me with illustrations of good quality and the relevant copyrights Stefan dieball and Hans-Joachim Rosner, from the tübingen department of Geography, dressed up a num-ber of beautiful and instructive maps for this volume For the revision
of the English of chapter iV, Nanny Kim (institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg) assisted me in the beginning, a task, which for all the other chapters as well as the final manuscript, was then taken over by Anthony Green (Christchurch, New Zealand) Special thanks go
to Kuroda Akinobu (institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University
of tokyo), Arturo Giraldez (School of international Studies, University of the Pacific), Peter bernholz (Center of Economics and business, Univer-sity of basel), Morris Rossabi (Weatherhead East Asia institute, Columbia University), Philippe Ménard (Université de Paris-Sorbonne), and Mark Elvin (St Antony’s College, Oxford, and Australian National University) who read and commented extensively on the manuscript, thus offering
me important suggestions and proposals for further reflections and rations both Professor Elvin and Professor Ménard were also willing to contribute a preface to this volume in which they elucidate the continued importance of Marco Polo research from their own disciplinary perspec-tives Where feasible and possible, i did my best to take all the suggestions offered by the above-mentioned colleagues into account during the final stage of the manuscript revision
Trang 31elabo-For Chinese the Pinyin system was adopted, and for Japanese the burn transliteration For Persian and Mongolian terms i basically followed
Hep-the convention of Morris Rossabi in his Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times
(berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), adopting for the former the Royal Asiatic Society system and for the latter Antoine Mostaert’s scheme as modified by Francis W Cleaves and adapted by Morris Rossabi the adaptation by Professor Rossabi refers to the follow-ing deviations: č is ch, š is sh, γ is gh, q is kh, and �̌ is j For the translitera-tion of the Arabic—with the exception of quotations or quotation-like passages—i have largely followed the system of the deutsche Morgenlän-dische Gesellschaft, but omitted diacritical points and length indicators thus i have replaced ǧ by j, ġ by gh, ḫ by kh, and ṯ with th With regard
to the transliteration of the texts in different Marco Polo manuscript sions i did my best to keep as close as possible to the diacritical conven-tions and pecularities of the relevant editons that i have used
ver-For the English rendering of Chinese official titles and names of
admin-istrative units i followed Charles O Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles
in Imperial China (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1985),
basically because of his comprehensive approach in dealing with this ficult issue all over China’s long history it goes without saying that i also consulted the standard reference work for the Yuan period in this respect,
dif-namely, david M Farquhar’s The Government of China under Mongolian Rule: A Reference Guide (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner (Münchener Ostasiatische
Studien; 53), 1990) in the translation of designations of Yuan paper notes and monetary institutions i adopted, however, my own logic and ter-minology in order to do justice to the fine variations in terminological change from one monetary reform to the next
As to place names and personal names mentioned in Marco Polo’s
account, i mostly use the transcriptions as indicated in Henry Yule, The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition (1903, repr New
York: dover Publications, 1993), because they are quite widespread, at least
in the Anglo-Saxon literature in more specific contexts, however, i may indicate proper names as rendered in the Franco-italian manuscript, or add these in parentheses For technical terms i refer to the Franco-italian
version, as transcribed in Gabriella Ronchi, Marco Polo, Milione Le
Trang 32divisament dou monde: Il Milione nelle redazioni toscana e franco-italiana,
with a preface of Cesare Segre (2nd ed Milano: Mondadori (i meridiani), 1988) A convenient reference work for the different renderings in the
most imporant Marco Polo manuscripts is Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo (Paris: imprimerie Nationale, Librairie Adrien-Maisonneuve, vol 1,
1959; vol 2, 1963; vol 3, 1973)
Trang 33curren-sources—sources which, as for example the “history of the Yuan” shi 元史), were compiled only after the Venetian had left China or even
(Yuan-long after his death.2 this is even more true for historical relics, such as
1 Suzanne Conklin akbari, “Currents and Currency in Marco polo’s Devisement dou
monde and The Book of John Mandeville,” in Suzanne Conklin akbari and amilcare
Ian-nucci, with the assistance of John tulk (eds.), Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and
West, toronto, Buffalo, and London: university of toronto press, 2008, p 123.
2 the Yuanshi was compiled in 1369/70 and printed in 1370 under the newly established Ming dynastie See herbert Franke, Geld und Wirtschaft unter der Mongolen-Herrschaft:
Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Yüan-Zeit, Leipzig: harrassowitz, 1949, p 17; rolf
trauzettel, “die chinesischen Quellen,” in Michael Weiers (ed.), Die Mongolen: Beiträge zu
ihrer Geschichte und Kultur, darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986, p 11; and
especially Francis Woodman Cleaves, “the Memorial for presenting the Yüan shih,” Asia
Major, third series, 1 (1988): 59–69 Large parts of the monographic chapters of he Yuanshi,
including those on money and salt, were based on the Jingshi dadian 經世大典
(State-craft encyclopedia), the compilation of which was completed in 1331, but which was never
printed Only about five percent of the Jingshi dadian text survived in the Guochao wenlei
(Categorized documents of the dynasty) compiled by Su tianjue 蘇天爵 in 1342 and the
Yongle dadian 永樂大典 (Great encyclopedia of the Yongle reign-period) completed in
1408 See Franke (1949), pp 25–34 the Da Yuan shengzheng guochao dianzhang 大元聖
impor-tant source for Yuan economic, fiscal, and legal policies, was compiled after 1322 Cf erich haenisch, “Steuergerechtsame der chinesischen Klöster unter der Mongolenherrschaft . . .,”
Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig . . .,
Leipzig: hirzel, 1940, p 8 the first european to have used this compilation was pjotr owitsch Kafarow (1817–1878), a russian archimandrite and sinologist, also known under his monastic name palladius Cf Franke (1949), pp 11–12 another relevant collection of
Iwan-documents from the period 1270–1332, the [Da Yuan] tongzhi tiaoge [大元]通制條格
Trang 34Yuan paper notes, which were discovered and intensively used in cal research only since the last decades of our own time, or in the case of modern research undertaken by Chinese, Japanese and Western histori-ans who, centuries after Marco polo, have brought to light many findings
histori-that are perfectly compatible with the descriptions given in Le divisament dou monde.
Marco polo’s account is also unique in the sense that it represents, in
my view, an attempt at an overall depiction of the monetary conditions in Mongol China It makes clear that in the Chinese empire of the Mongols paper money did by no means circulate in the same intensity in the dif-ferent regions, nor was it current everywhere, but that there were areas, such as present-day Yunnan and southern Sichuan, in which gold, silver, cowries, and salt monies were predominantly current no other Western, persian or arabic writer of whom we so far have knowledge was as pre-cise, reliable and comprehensive as the Venetian in the treatment of the topics which I will discuss here therefore it seems indeed strange to me
to assume that Marco polo, of all other mediaeval authors reporting on the Far east, would have been just the one not to have been in China, while all the other, often much less precise writers are credited with hav-ing gone there In other words, much more speaks for it that the Venetian really had been in the Great Khan’s empire than against it In view of this overall evaluation at which I arrived during my investigations, I eventu-
ally decided to choose the label “Marco polo Was in China” for the title
of this monograph
1. Structure and Contents of this Book
I Ci comancent le lobrique de cest livre qui est appelé le divis[a]ment dou monde
Seignors enperaor et rois, dux et marquois, cuens, aliers et b[o]rgio[i]s, et toutes gens que volés savoir les
chev-(regulations of the [Book of the] Comprehensive rules [of the Great Yuan]), was piled after 1332 It appears that the German sinologist erich haenisch was the first euro- pean to have made use of it See Franke (1949), p 12 On primary and secondary sources for the Yuan in general see Frederick W Mote, “a note on traditional Sources for Yüan
com-history,” in herbert Franke and denis twitchett (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368, Cambridge: Cambridge university press (1994a), pp 689–726, who for the [Da Yuan] tongzhi tiaoge gives, however, 1321 as the date
of compilation (p 718) instead of 1332.
Trang 35deverses jenerasions des homes et les deversités des deverses region dou monde, si prennés cestui livre
et le feites lire et qui trovererés toutes les grandismes mervoilles et les grant diversités de la grande harminie
et de persie et des tartars e ‹de› Indie, et de maintes autres provinces, sicom notre livre voç contera por ordre apertemant, sicome meisser Marc pol, sajes et noble citaiens de Venece, raconte por ce que a seç iaus meisme il le voit Mes auques hi n’i a qu’il ne vit pas, mes il l’entendi da homes citables et de verité; et por
ce metreron les chouse veue por veue et l’entendue por entandue, por ce que notre livre soit droit et ver-tables sanç nulle ma‹n›songe.3
this book starts with the introduction, in which the reader finds, in the first sub-chapter, a laying out of its structure and contents and, in the second sub-chapter, a short description of the methods and approaches that have guided me during my research Moreover, this first introduc-tory chapter contains a rather lengthy third sub-chapter in which I have attempted, for the reader’s convenience, to list all the major cons and pros adduced in the debate as to whether the Venetian was in China or not although not aiming at being exhaustive, it was designed to provide extensive information on the state of the field as far as I became aware of
it, including such topics as authorship, manuscript transmission, nature,
3 See Gabriella ronchi, Marco Polo, Milione Le divisament dou monde: Il Milione nelle
redazioni toscana e franco-italiana, with a preface of Cesare Segre, 2nd ed Milano:
Mon-dadori (I meridiani), 1988, p 305 the prologue to the Franco-Italian version of Marco polo’s book reads in henry Yule’s translation as follows: “Great princes, emperors and Kings, dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights and Burgesses! and people of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the sundry regions of the World, take this Book and cause it to be read to you For ye shall find therein all kinds of wonderful things, and the divers histories of the Great hermania, and of per- sia, and of the Land of the tartars and of India, and of many another country of which our book doth speak, particularly and in regular succession, according to the description
of Messer Marco polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice, as he saw them with his own eyes Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but these he heard from men of credit and veracity and we shall set down things seen as seen, and things heard
as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our Book, [. . .].” See henry
Yule, The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition, 1903, repr new York:
dover publications, 1993, vol 1, p 1 On the prologues in different Marco polo manuscripts
see now philippe Ménard, “réflexions sur le prologue des différentes versions du
Devise-ment du Monde de Marco polo,” in Monique Léonard, Xavier Leroux and François roudaut
(eds.), Le lent brassement des livres, des rites et de la vie: Mélanges offerts à James Dauphiné,
paris: Champion, 2009c, pp 97–113.
Trang 36style, intentions and receptions of the book,4 itinerary and data, persian rendering of Chinese place names, aspects of Mongol and Chinese civili-sation and culture, “Latins” at Khubilai’s court, the Xiangyang siege, gov-ernorship of Yangzhou, the missions of the polos, the polos and Chinese sources, their return to europe, as well as the golden tablets of authority.after this introduction, in the second chapter I investigate the Venetian traveller’s account of paper money used in wide parts of the Chinese ter-ritories under the control of the Mongols Because a number of Chinese, Japanese and Western scholars have already undertaken substantial and comprehensive research on the famous Yuan paper money, this chapter focuses on the relevant details provided by Marco polo’s account and elu-cidates them in the light of textual sources and historical relics after a discourse analysis of the Marco polo text(s), I first compare his topical ele-ments with those transmitted by other Western, persian and arabic medi-
aeval authors In a second step, the information contained in Le divisament dou monde is juxtaposed with data provided by Chinese sources—not only
historiographical works, but especially the many specimens of Yuan paper notes that have survived into our present time all this will show that Marco polo’s is by far the most complete and accurate account among all the occidental and oriental mediaeval writers, as it deals with such diverse topics as the production, size, colour and denominations of paper notes, the institutions involved in their production, distribution and demoneta-rization, coercive monetary laws and regulations, the use of paper money
in private and governmental transactions, as well as the payment of paper notes against delivery of gold, silver, pearls and gems (thus accumulating
in the ruler’s treasury) and, vice versa and in exceptional cases, the supply
of these precious materials against payment of paper notes
In the third chapter, concentrating on Marco polo’s passages on cowry money circulating in Yunnan as well as in regions of Southeast asia, basi-cally the same approach is applied as in the second chapter—namely, to take into account, as comprehensively as possible, all primary sources and secondary literature dealing with the topic of cowry currency during the Yuan period a wide number of themes are discussed, such as denomina-tions and exchange rates, cowry imports, and the use of cowry in both private sectors and public finance In this chapter, too, the veracity and
4 here and there I will speak of “Marco polo’s book.” the reader may be assured that this is mostly for convenience’s sake and that I am well aware of the great variety of manu- scripts and the complexities of their transmission
Trang 37uniqueness of Marco polo’s account will be one of the conspicuous clusions resulting from this investigation.
con-One of the main thrusts of this book and thus perhaps the most tive aspect for Marco polo research is to be found in the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters dealing mainly with the administration, production, trans-portation, consumption and use of salt in China during the Yuan period
innova-In the fourth chapter, I will start with a critical discussion of relevant sages in Frances Wood’s book in which she claimed that Marco polo did not go to China.5 this will be then followed by an investigation of the references to salt production in Yunnan and the use of salt currency in
pas-5 See Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo Go to China? London: Secker & Warburg, 1995
doubts about the veracity of the Venetian’s report have a long history In the second half
of the fourteenth century, when contacts with the Far east were basically cut off, Marco polo’s account was increasingly disbelieved See, e.g., the case of the Florentine patrician
amelio Bonaguisi podestà in the village of Cerreto Guidi, who in 1392 did not give faith to
it the first public denunciation of the book as fiction was pronounced in Astley’s Voyages
published 1747 in London, where doubts were raised as to whether Marco polo had really
been in tartary and in China (John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World, new
haven and London: Yale university press, 1999, pp 133, 174–175) Before Wood, other ars, especially Karl dietrich hüllmann in the nineteenth century and hans O h Stange,
schol-Fr Streicher, herbert Franke, John W haeger, Craig Clunas, and rolf trauzettel in the twentieth century, had already expressed doubts of various degrees as to whether Marco polo had been in China (hüllmann, Stange, Streicher, Clunas) or had ever gone beyond
Beijing (haeger) Cf dietmar henze, Enzyklopädie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde,
Graz: akademische druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 2000, vol 4, pp 353, 365–368, 375, on mann, Streicher, and Stange; herbert Franke, “Sino-Western Contacts under the Mongol
hüll-empire,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch), 6 (1966): 53–54, reprinted
in his China under Mongol Rule, aldershot: Variorum, 1994; John W haeger, “Marco polo
in China? problems with Internal evidence,” Bulletin of Sung and Yüan Studies, 14 (1978):
22–30 (being of the opinion that the polos only stayed near Khubilai in dadu and Shangdu, but did not visit other places before their passage to Quanzhou in order to depart by
sea for persia); Craig Clunas, in the China Supplement of the Times, april 14, 1982; rolf
trauzettel, “die Yüan-dynastie,” in Weiers (ed.) (1986a), p 233 (suspecting that Marco polo went not beyond Karakorum and obtained his knowledge about China mainly from merchants who had been there) among all these authors the cautious and open-ended statement of the late herbert Franke is one that has especially to be singled out: “[. . .] all this [Marco polo’s boasting of having been governor of Yangzhou, his boasted claim of having taken part in the siege of Xiangyang, his questionable assertion of the polos having been the first europeans at Khubilai Khan’s court, and his blanks in mentioning tea and the Chinese script] has cast some doubt on the contention that the polo family spent a long time in China But however that may be, until definite proof has been adduced that the polo book is a world description, where the chapters on China are taken from some other, perhaps persian, source (some expressions he uses are persian), we must give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was there after all [. . .]” In other words, the words of this eminent sinologist and Mongolist do not warrant to be adduced for rejecting the veracity of Marco polo’s stay in China.
Trang 38this province and in Tebet,6 both in Marco polo’s account as well as in
Chinese sources this fourth chapter, like the previous third chapter on cowry currency, will make clear that while Marco polo is the only one among the Western, persian and arabic mediaeval authors mention-
ing salt money in Yunnan and Tebet, a number of Chinese sources from
before and after the Yuan period do exist corroborating polo’s tions together with Marco polo’s report, these Chinese sources provide
observa-invaluable insights into Yunnan and Tebet’s particularities of salt
produc-tion as well as their monetary condiproduc-tions and customary practices these particularities comprise the kinds and forms of solid salt used as monetary substitute, the characteristics of the monetary functions of salt curren-cies vis-à-vis other small and large monies, and the role of governmental and private actors in the production, standardization and distribution of salt monies By analysing and comparing the information obtained, both from Marco polo and Chinese sources, it can be demonstrated that these two types of source materials of basically different origin do complement and corroborate each other surprisingly well apart from being a specific contribution to Marco polo research, the elucidation of the history of salt
money in Yunnan, Tebet and other parts of Southwest China provides,
moreover, interesting material for the study of the history of small cies and monetary substitutes hence, as far as possible, examples of the adoption of salt currency in other parts of the world have been integrated into this investigation in order to throw some light on the systemic and functional characteristics of salt and other types of monetary substitutes from a more global point of view
curren-Marco polo not only mentioned the salt and salt currency of Yunnan
and Tebet, but also presented a detailed description of the salt production
in Changlu in southeastern hebei and made more general remarks on the production, taxation and trade of salt in the famous Lianghuai salt zone this is the topic of the fifth chapter in which I show that his information
on Changlu and Lianghuai is perfectly in agreement with what we know from Chinese sources about the salt industry and administration in the maritime regions of China during and around the Yuan period the Vene-tian’s account, however, is not only accurate in details concerning salt production, taxation and trade, but also in a more general sense, because
6 In Marco polo’s report Tebet, Thebeth etc rather referred to eastern tibet or what today is western Sichuan than to present-day tibet See Stephen G haw, Marco Polo’s
China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan, London and new York: routledge, 2006,
pp 98–99 hence I opted to mark the difference by name and by using italic script
Trang 39his many references to the “white gold” adequately reflect the dous importance of salt production and, especially, salt revenue in China under the Mongols apart from this revealing topic, in this chapter I will also shortly deal with the contention that Marco polo held an office in Yangzhou and will weigh the pros and cons for this assumption.
tremen-this is then followed by the sixth chapter, which not only discusses the figures given by the Venetian for the salt revenue of the hangzhou (Kinsay)7 region, but also his indications about the total annual revenue levied in the hangzhou territory It is quite surprising to see that these fig-ures are not outrageously exaggerated or inflated when being interpreted
on the background of the data we can cull from Chinese sources fore, in the light of the result of this investigation it is quite undeserved that Marco polo was nicknamed “il Milione,” one reason for this being, as
there-had been mentioned in my preface, the millions of saggi of gold indicated
by him as annual government salt revenue collected in hangzhou’s diction Moreover, in this chapter I will also shortly discuss the Venetian’s correct specifications on commercial taxes in general and on levies raised for overseas trade activities in Quanzhou
juris-In the seventh chapter, I will highlight another aspect of the preciseness
of Marco polo’s report during my research on monies, salts and revenues
I became increasingly aware of the Venetian’s many correct statements regarding the administrative-geographic structures of the Yuan empire
In many instances the relevant descriptions and observations contained
in Le devisament dou monde are amazingly correct and precise, a fact
which so far has not yet been appreciated to its full extent this ally prompted me to add this special chapter in support of the assertion that the polos indeed had been in the Far east
eventu-this book, moreover, contains a number of appendices which discuss some special, but fundamental, technical topics, such as the coins of Ven-ice, different weight and measures current in Venice, persia, and China, or which contain passages on Yuan paper money, salt currency, salt produc-tion and salt revenue from a variety of Marco polo manuscripts, including the most important ones
7 I have to admit that I am perhaps not totally consistent in the transcription of place names and personal names as they were used in different renderings of Marco polo’s account In a more general context, I mostly use the transcriptions of Yule (1903) because they are quite widespread in the literature In more specific contexts I indicate the proper names as rendered in the Franco-Italian manuscript, or add them in parentheses
Trang 40Finally, apart from the index, this work ends with a Marco polo liography, divided into “Marco polo editions,” “Other primary Sources,” and “Secondary Literature.” In the section dealing with Marco polo edi-tions I have added some comments that will help the reader to identify the special characteristics and descent of a given Marco polo manuscript
bib-or printed version In “Other primary Sources” I collected these wbib-orks in Western, Chinese or Japanese languages that are important for a proper contextualisation of Marco polo’s book or which were relevant for my research on Mongol China and intercivilisational encounters during that period the long bibliography on secondary literature is noteworthy in several respects First of all, I have made an attempt to include all impor-tant Marco polo research that has been carried out in the West, China and Japan from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century Moreover, I have endeavoured to be as exhaustive as possible in the fields of Yuan cowry and salt currencies as well as salt production and administration under the Mongols I was, however, selective with regard to research carried out
on Yuan paper money, as publications—especially Chinese ones, though
of widely different quality, are extremely numerous in this field
2. approaches and Methods
LX Ci devise de la provence de [G]hin[g]hintalas
[. . .] et en ceste montagnes meisme se trouve une voine de la quel se fait la salamandre; et sachiés que sala-mandre ne est pas beste come ue‹n› dit, mes est tes choses com je dirai desout [. . .]8
My investigation undertaken for this work is characterized by four specific approaches First, I wanted to make a new contribution to Marco polo research by taking a fresh, systematic and critical look at both Chinese historigraphical records and surviving physical relics relevant for the main topics explored in this book the relevance of these different types of pri-mary sources, i.e records and relics, for Marco polo research cannot be underestimated as for historiographical records, it has to be highlighted
8 See ronchi (1988), Marco Polo, Milione Le divisament dou monde, p 376 In the
ren-dering of Yule (1903), vol 1, pp 212–213, this passage in the Franco-Italian manuscript reads
as follows: “Chapter XLLL Of the Province of Chingintalas [. . .] and you most know that
in the same mountain there is a vein of a substance from which Salamander [asbestos] is made For the real truth is that the Salamander is no beast, as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance found in the earth; and I will tell you about it [. . .]”