Marco Polo was in China

Marco Polo was in China

New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues

By Hans Ulrich Vogel

Planned Publication date December 2012

ISBN 13 9789004231931

Hans Ulrich Vogel, Tübingen University

In Marco Polo was in China Hans Ulrich Vogel offers an innovative look at the highly complex topics of currencies, salt production and taxes, commercial levies and other kinds of revenue as well as the administrative geography of the Mongol Yuan empire. The author’s rigorous analysis of Chinese sources and all the important Marco Polo manuscripts as well as his thorough scrutiny of Japanese, Chinese and Western scholarship show that the fascinating information contained in Le devisament dou monde agrees almost pefectly with that we find in Chinese sources, the latter only available long after Marco Polo’s stay in China. Hence, the author concludes that, despite the doubts that have been raised, the Venetian was indeed in Khubilai Khan’s realm. [^]

Biographical note
Hans Ulrich Vogel, Ph.D. (1983) in Sinology, Zürich University is Professor for Chinese History and Society at Tübingen University. He has published monographs, articles and translations mainly on the history of society, economy, science and technology in premodern China.

Readership 
All those interested in Marco Polo research, intercivilisational encounters between China and the West, and the economic, monetary and financial history of the Mongol Yuan empire.

Table of contents
Preface from Mark Elvin
Préface de Philippe Ménard
Preface from the Author
Acknowledgments
Transliteration and Conventions

I. Introduction
II. Paper Money in Yuan China
III. Cowry Monies Circulating in Yunnan and Southeast Asia
IV. Salt Production and Salt Monies in Yunnan and Tebet
V. Production, Revenue and Trade of Salt in Changlu and Lianghuai
VI. Tax Revenue of Hangzhou and its Territory
VII. Administrative-geographical Divisions in Yuan China
VIII. Conclusions

Appendices
Bibliography
Index