Copy of Latin Christendom's Contact with Asia
Seminar Questions
- Was Latin Christendom's contact with Asia largely a result of the spread of international trade?
- Why were Western Europeans so eager to make contact with the Mongols?
- Were European attitudes towards Asians primarily built on fictions?
Documents
- [Description of the Great City of Kinsay and Further Particulars Concerning the Great City of Kinsay]
Introductory Reading
Barber, , 458-461
Bartlett, , 236-242, 269-314
Waley and Denley, , 280-291
E-Resources
- (an extensive collection of documents and images as well as an interactive map)
- (includes films)
- In Our Time. BBC Radio programme, Thursday 1 February 2007.
- . BBC Radio programme, Friday 3 June 2005. See also .
Further Reading
Asia
Abulafia, David, , in M.M. Postan et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2: Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 402-473.
Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, and David O. Morgan, (eds), The Mongol Empire and its Legacy (Leiden, 2000)
Franke, H., and Twitchett, D. (eds.), Cambridge History of China, vol. 6, Alien Regimes and Border States 907-1368 (Cambridge, 1994)
Franke, H., China under Mongol Rule (Aldershot, 1994)
de Hartog, Leo, Genghis Khan: Conqueror of the World (London, 2004)
Larner, John, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven, 1999)
Levathes, Louise, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne (New York, 1994)
Menzies, Gavin, 1421 : the Year China Discovered the World (London, 2002) [See also ]
Polo, Marco, The Travels, trans. Robert Latham (Harmondsworth, 1965)
Russell, Peter, Prince Henry 'the Navigator': A Life (New Haven, 2000)
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge, 1998)
Turnbull, Stephen, (London, 2003)
Wood, Frances, Did Marco Polo Go to China? (London, 1995) [See also Igor de Rachewiltz, '']
European Views of the Wider World
Allen, John L., , in Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy, ed. David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden (New Yorks, 1976), pp. 41-61.
Campbell, Mary B., (Ithaca, NY, 1988)
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, , Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 no. 1 ( 2001), 113-46.
Friedman, John Block. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1981) []
Lomperis, Linda, , Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 no. 1 ( 2001), 147-164.
Mandeville, Sir John, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C.W.R.D. Moseley (Harmondsworth, 1983)
Mandeville, John, , ed. Tamarah Kohanski and C. David Benson (Kalamazoo, MI, 2007)
Polo, Marco, The Travels, trans. Robert Latham (Harmondsworth, 1965)
Strickland, Debra Higgs, , History Today 50 (2000), 45-51.
Wittkower, Rudolf, , Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 159-197.
Wood, Frances, Did Marco Polo Go to China? (London, 1995) [See also Igor de Rachewiltz, '']
