Il Milione

Il Milione

Throughout the Early Modern period, explorers were inspired by fantastical descriptions of faraway lands, especially through the journals and diaries of Marco Polo. Contact with foreign empires was focused on missionary work and economic expansion. By 1450, there was significantly more European contact with the rest of the world, but plague, violence with indigenous peoples, and loss of funding caused many expeditions to delay. This period was marked by widening geographic horizons and expeditions to the New World led by explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Francisco Pizarro, and Hernán Cortés. Marco Polo’s records of his expedition to China were widely read and provided information about the perceived glories of exploration. The Age of Exploration was riddled with violence against the indigenous peoples of the Americas, but it is important to note that the natives had complex civilizations and societal structures and did not succumb to the European conquerors because of their inferiority as human beings. Many historical accounts of the Spanish conquest depict the natives as disorganized, submissive, and inferior to the European conquerors, but these depictions are biased and inaccurate. In order to understand the Age of Exploration, it is necessary to understand that the Native Americans had societies that were as complex and divided as those of the Europeans and that the conquest of the New World was successful not because of the inferiority of the native populations but because of a combination of factors that worked in the favor of the European conquerors.

Marco Polo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94129697@N00/84422063/

c. 1300