The Travels of Marco Polo — Early European Documentation of Asian Gem Sources
The Travels of Marco Polo — Early European Documentation of Asian Gem Sources
The late-13th-century Venetian account that introduced European readers to Burmese rubies and the Asian gem trade
The Travels of Marco Polo — also known by its Italian title Il Milione and various Latin and French versions — is the late-thirteenth-century account of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo's journeys through Asia, including extensive descriptions of the gem-mining regions and trading networks of South and Southeast Asia. The text is one of the earliest substantial European documentations of the Asian gem trade and includes references to the ruby mines of Burma, the diamond fields of India, the pearls of the South China Sea, and the broader Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade in precious materials. While the historical accuracy of specific passages has been debated by scholars, the text's overall picture of Asian gem wealth shaped European perceptions for centuries and influenced subsequent European exploration and trade patterns.
The author and the text
Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324) was a Venetian merchant from a family active in the eastern Mediterranean trade. He travelled to the court of Kublai Khan in the late thirteenth century with his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo, spending approximately seventeen years in service to the Mongol emperor across Asia before returning to Venice in 1295. The text of his travels was dictated to Rustichello da Pisa, a writer of romances, while both men were imprisoned in Genoa following Marco Polo's capture in a naval battle between Venice and Genoa in 1298. The resulting work circulated in multiple manuscript versions and translations through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, becoming one of the most widely read travel accounts of the medieval period.
The text combines first-person observations with second-hand reports collected during Polo's travels and from other Mongol-empire sources. The mixture of direct experience and reportage, combined with the Rustichello literary collaboration, has produced a text whose factual reliability varies passage by passage. Modern scholarship has confirmed many of the more remarkable claims through independent sources, while questioning others and debating the extent of Polo's actual presence at specific locations he describes.
Gem-related content
Polo's account includes substantial material on the gem trade and gem-mining regions of Asia. The descriptions of Burmese rubies are among the most cited passages, with Polo describing the ruby mines of the kingdom of Mien (the Burmese kingdom of Pagan and its successors) in terms that established European awareness of Burma as a major source of fine rubies. The descriptions emphasise the size and quality of the stones, the wealth of the local rulers, and the trade routes that brought the rubies to broader Asian markets.
The text also includes descriptions of the Indian diamond fields, particularly the Golconda region whose alluvial diamond deposits supplied many of the great historical Indian diamonds. Polo's account of pearl fishing in the Indian Ocean — including references to the Mannar pearl banks between Sri Lanka and India — provides early European documentation of one of the world's most important historical pearl sources. The descriptions of the spice trade, the silk trade, and other Asian luxury commerce contextualise the gem trade within the broader Indian Ocean and Silk Road economic systems.
Historical accuracy and scholarly assessment
The historical accuracy of Polo's account has been debated since shortly after the text's first circulation. Some sceptics have questioned whether Polo himself reached all the locations he describes, suggesting that some passages may reflect reports collected from other travellers rather than first-hand observation. Other scholars have defended the substantial accuracy of the account, citing independent confirmation of many specific claims through Chinese, Persian, and Arabic sources contemporary with Polo's travels.
Specific gem-related claims in the text have generally been assessed as broadly accurate, with the descriptions of Burmese ruby mining, Indian diamond extraction, and Mannar pearl fishing all consistent with what is now known of these industries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The wealth and scale of the trade Polo describes are also broadly consistent with the documentary and archaeological evidence for Asian luxury commerce in the period.
Influence on European exploration and trade
The Travels of Marco Polo had substantial influence on European perceptions of Asian wealth and on the subsequent ambitions of European explorers and trading companies. Christopher Columbus owned a heavily annotated copy of the text and cited it as inspiration for his westward voyages seeking direct sea routes to the Asian markets Polo described. The Portuguese exploration of African and Indian Ocean routes in the fifteenth century was similarly motivated in part by ambitions to reach the gem and spice sources Polo had documented.
The European luxury trade that developed through the Portuguese, Dutch, and British East India companies from the sixteenth century onward built directly on the awareness of Asian gem and luxury sources that Polo's text had helped establish. The flow of Burmese rubies, Indian diamonds, Mannar pearls, and other Asian gems into European markets through these trading networks fulfilled, on a much larger scale than Polo could have imagined, the trade he had described.
Manuscript tradition and modern scholarship
The text survives in numerous manuscript versions in Italian, French, Latin, Catalan, German, and other languages, with significant variations between versions reflecting both the medieval manuscript tradition and the active editorial intervention of subsequent translators and copyists. Modern critical editions, including those edited by Sir Henry Yule, A.C. Moule and Paul Pelliot, and others, have attempted to reconstruct the closest approximation to an authentic original text from comparison of the surviving versions.
Modern scholarship continues to examine the text's reliability, sources, and significance, with ongoing debate about specific passages and broader interpretive questions. The text remains one of the most important medieval European sources for understanding Asian commerce, geography, and culture in the thirteenth century, and the gem-related passages are routinely consulted by historians of the gem trade.
In the trade
For the gem trade and gem historians, The Travels of Marco Polo is the foundational European text documenting the Asian gem-source regions that have continued to dominate the international gem trade for the seven centuries since. The references to Burma, India, Sri Lanka, and other Asian gem sources in Polo's text establish the historical depth of these trading relationships and provide a reference point for understanding the long history of European engagement with Asian gem production. The text is part of the basic historical literature that any serious gem-trade education should include.