"A Teacher's Lament : Marco Polo" Topic
10 Posts
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Tango01 | 06 Jun 2017 9:22 p.m. PST |
"As an Asianist, teaching world history can be very frustrating. Most world history textbooks are written by Western historians, mostly the same Europeanists who write the Western Civ texts, but they usually add an Asianist to the group, usually a China or India person. Sometimes they get it right, but a lot of the time you can tell that the Asia chapters were written by someone who picked up one or two basic textbooks. You can sometimes even tell which textbook (I love Mikiso Hane's work, but it has to be read in context!), and they're often out-of-date (Asia textbooks don't get the kind of semi-annual polishing now current in the trade, and there are some really creaky old classics still being used by thousands of people; that's a subject for another post). So I spend a fair bit of time in class correcting and contextualizing the textbook material. Maybe the experience is the same for Europeanists, or Americanists? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that material is much better served by the distillation process than the Asian material. The worst, the most consistently annoying thing, though, is Marco Polo. Let me say this clearly and plainly: Marco Polo did not go to China, Marco Polo did not work for the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. Yes, it was possible to make the journey, and yes, some non-Chinese did serve the Yuan. But the errors in his Travels cannot be glossed over as"a traveler's tendency to exaggerate (especially in regard to numbers)" and his absence from Yuan records (which were pretty well kept) cannot be slipped by with"may have been employed" and the distinct likelihood that Polo was simply embellishing translations of Chinese gazetteers he picked up in Persia is not clearly expressed by"Scholars have long regarded Marco Polo's book, if used carefully, as an important historical document."…" Main page historynewsnetwork.org/blog/6746 Amicalement Armand |
LostPict | 07 Jun 2017 3:27 a.m. PST |
So is what you are saying is that he did not invent Spaghetti after a visit to a Peking noodle shop? |
Cacique Caribe | 07 Jun 2017 5:25 a.m. PST |
Some of these people need to take a chill pill. With the Yuan dynasty covering most of Asia, almost anywhere he went was "China". Just like the entire Mediterranean was once "Rome". Dan |
troopwo | 07 Jun 2017 7:01 a.m. PST |
The chinese consider anywhere that sent tribute or a mere gift once, as beimng in their empire. |
robert piepenbrink | 07 Jun 2017 7:08 a.m. PST |
I used to pick out shockingly bad US and European history in my son's textbooks. Sometimes I just had to tell him "learn it for the test, but don't believe any of it." Not only are history textbooks usually written by committee, sometimes the committees don't have any historians, let alone a shortage of Asianists. But the vastness of human history defeats everyone. The running joke of years of college-level history was the professor who would announce something as absolutely modern because he didn't know much classical history, or uniquely Asian because she didn't know much Western history. And those professors had mostly graduated from programs which insisted on a core curriculum. What it's like today with smorgasbord PhD programs doesn't bear thinking about. |
robert piepenbrink | 07 Jun 2017 7:16 a.m. PST |
Trying to remember. There is a Chinese account which must have gotten more or less to the borders of the Roman empire and describes the fountains and parks of the city of "Lei Gen." Generally, it's passed off as a garbled description of Rome, though no one could account for the odd name. After a while, I realized I was hearing at an interval of thousands of miles and some centuries some poor Roman soldier on a border outpost describing to the locals how soft the headquarters staff back at Legion had things. I've heard similar things said of the staff pukes at Division myself. Might even have said some of them. |
Tango01 | 07 Jun 2017 10:45 a.m. PST |
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rmaker | 07 Jun 2017 12:22 p.m. PST |
Read "Marco Polo didn't go to China because the almighty People's Republic says he didn't". Columbian University is a CP-USA front institution. |
Cacique Caribe | 07 Jun 2017 5:55 p.m. PST |
Aren't most of them these days? Dan |
uglyfatbloke | 08 Jun 2017 1:32 p.m. PST |
What's a smorgasbord Ph.D. programme? Do Ph.D.s have a different structure in the US? Mine was utterly focused on early 14th Century Scottish war – a bit of English history (mostly work on record material) was involved for obvious reasons. |
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