MARCO POLO. One of the greatest Italian travelers, born in Venice in 1254 to Niccolò, a member of a commercial house with extensive trade in the Levant and a flourishing agency in Soldaia in Crimea. From there, Niccolò, accompanied by his younger brother Matteo, had undertaken in 1261 a commercial journey to the lands of the lower Volga, that is, the state then known as the Golden Horde; they had then proceeded to Bukhara, where they stayed for three years. Later, joining a mission sent by the Khan of Persia, Hülägü, to his supreme overlord, the Great Khan (of the Tartars), Qubilai, they reached—traversing Central Asia by a route never before taken by Europeans—the capital Shang-tu. Qubilai, son of a Christian (though not himself a Christian, as has sometimes been said), had received the two brothers very well, and when they set out on their return journey, he provided them with passports and also with a letter for the Pope, in which he requested European masters and artisans and perhaps also some missionaries, but he did not (as some have claimed) send gifts to the Pope, a thing incompatible with the mentality of an Asian monarch of that time.
The Polos, after three years spent on the return journey, were in Venice in 1269, where they remained for two years, awaiting the election of a new pope after the death of Clement IV. They set out again for Asia in 1271, taking with them Marco, who was then seventeen years old. To M. P. we owe the account of the subsequent, much longer journey, of their stay at the court of Qubilai in China, and of their return; this is contained in the famous book commonly called *Il Milione*; and from it we learn also the little that is known—summarized above—of the earlier journey of Niccolò and Matteo. In his book Marco combines descriptions of countries he had seen with information about others gathered from informants; the distinction is not always easy, and therefore the reconstruction of the itinerary presents some uncertainties. From Layazzo, on the Levantine Sea, the travelers crossed part of Armenia as far as Mosul and from there proceeded to Ormuz; then, abandoning the idea of embarking, they crossed all of Persia as far as Balkh on the Amu Darya, skirted the Pamirs to the north, descended into what is now Chinese Turkestan, and after enduring extreme hardships crossed the Gobi Desert, reaching Xianfu and then the new capital Khanbaliq near Beijing (1275). It seems that M. P. soon won the favor of the Great Khan and was entrusted with various confidential missions throughout the vast empire (Cathay and Mangi, names used by P. to designate respectively northern and southern China), but what exact office he held and what regions he traveled through is not entirely certain. It is certain, however, that he came to know through repeated visits all the central provinces, the richest and most vibrant; to the south he went as far as Yunnan, where he gathered information about Tibet, Burma, etc.; to the north he penetrated, perhaps with his uncle, as far as Ganzhou, not far from the borders of Mongolia. A mission to Champa, present-day Cochinchina, is not excluded. Marco obtained indirect information about other more distant countries, among them Cipango (Japan). Their stay in China lasted a full seventeen years. The return of the Polos took place by sea, as they had been attached to a mission conveying the future bride, chosen from among the maidens of the khan’s tribe, to the Khan of Persia. They embarked at the beginning of 1292 and, sailing along the southern coast of China and Indochina, stopped at Sumatra, visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, reached Ceylon and India, where they made frequent stops; then, guided now by Arab pilots, they arrived at Hormuz toward the end of 1293. From there, traveling overland, the Polos reached Trebizond and finally returned to Venice in the course of the year 1295. The romantic details about the reception of the travelers in Venice by their relatives are to be regarded as fanciful; and the tradition that they brought back fabulous riches from their long journey must also be rejected; they probably had only enough to live comfortably, so that they moved from their old home to a palace later known as the Casa Millone. As for the rest of M. P.’s life, of which he survived about thirty more years, dying on 9 January 1324, very little is known. The most notable episode is his imprisonment in Genoa in 1298–99; according to the most commonly accepted tradition, he was captured, commanding a galley, at the battle of Curzola. This period, however, had exceptional importance, because in prison he dictated the account of his travels to a fellow prisoner, Rusticiano or Rustichello of Pisa, who wrote it down in French. The French text bears the title *Les merveilles du monde*; much more widespread are an Italian vernacular version and a Venetian dialect version, both entitled *Il Milione*, a title that, however, has nothing to do with the content but is an epithet of the author, called in some documents Marcus Paulus Milioni, indeed a family epithet also borne by his father Niccolò (probably an apheresis of Emilione).
A Latin version was also widely diffused, made at the instigation of the Dominicans of Bologna by a friar, Francesco Pipino, for use by missionaries.
POLO, Marco – The oldest Venetian redaction of *Il Milione* (first half of the 14th century) – Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, ms. 3999, f. 7r.
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POLAND
1) Present-day state boundary;
2) state boundary in 1939;
3) ecclesiastical circumscription boundary;
4) railways.
Poland is a predominantly agricultural country with rich cereal cultivation and substantial production of potatoes, sugar beets, flax, hemp, rapeseed, tobacco, and hops. Its almost fully reconstituted livestock holdings include, among other things, more than six million head of cattle, about six million pigs, and three million horses; its forest resources (22% of the territory) are likewise considerable. Coal (Silesia) and petroleum (Carpathians) provide the country with the energy necessary for the development of a varied and vital industry, which is already well established and benefits, in the western provinces, from the previous infrastructure. Iron and steel, metallurgical, chemical, and electrical industries all yield substantial surpluses for export. In commerce, the new Poland offers conditions far superior to those of the old: greater access to the sea, where there are now at least four ports (Danzig, Gdynia, Stettin, and Kolberg), a more efficient network of roads and railways, and a broader clientele.
Poland is constituted as a unitary republic, called “People’s” according to communist phraseology, with an elected president and diet (Sejm); a Council of State and a government constituted in different ways, the latter two being organs of the executive power.