Chapter summary:
Sea traffic in the Middle Ages between Egypt and Europe was determined by the geography of the Mediterranean. The three major seafaring powers of Europe — Aragon, Genoa and Venice — exploited this geography to conduct trade with the east through Alexandria and Cairo. Cairo’s contact with Europe was through Venice, which had entered a commercial treaty with the Mamluks giving them exclusive trading rights. The link with Cairo opened up additional possibilities of trade with China and new ways of reaching that distant land. A stream of merchants and Franciscan missionaries left Venice for China. Venice was intimately acquainted with China and her merchants, the Polos, in particular, made fortunes trading exotic Chinese silks and Trappi Tartareschi. Popes and Emperors were buried wrapped in Chinese silk.
Small wonder, given their centuries of trade with China, that Venetians were the first Europeans to obtain world maps from their trading partner. Di Virga’s map of the Eastern Hemisphere was published in 1419 and Pizzigano’s map of the Caribbean appeared in 1424. Today, you can see on the wall of the Doge’s palace a world map published prior to 1428 that includes North America. As the roundels on the Doge’s Palace walls testify, this pre-1428 world map was created from evidence brought back from China by Marco Polo and Nicolo da Conti. The Venetian Giovanni Forlani’s map shows Oregon and the Bering Straits before Bering or Vancouver. Zatta’s map shows Vancouver Island also before Cook or Vancouver and places on it “Colonia Chinesi” (Chinese Colony).
It seems to me beyond argument that the world map on display today in the Doge’s Palace is, as the Venetians claim, based upon information that reached Venice from Marco Polo and Nicolo da Conti and that this was the same world map taken to Portugal by Don Pedro in 1428. Consequently, both the Venetians and the Portuguese knew the contours of the whole world before the Portuguese voyages of exploration even started. We know that da Conti was in Calicut the same time as Zheng He’s fleets – for he describes the junks and his description tallies with those of Ma Huan, who was in Calicut in 1419.
Once ashore in Venice, the Chinese sailors could have been excused if they thought they were back in Quanzhou – their Mongolian counterparts were everywhere. Venice was the gateway to Tuscany and the funnel through which slaves reached Europe.
Further reading:
Columbus and Croatians, by Adam S. Eterovich
http://www.croatians.com/columbus_and_croatians_by_adam_s.htm
Y-chromosomal heritage of Croatian population and its island:
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v11/n7/full/5200992a.html
Vincentius Bune:
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputatio:Vincentius_Bune
3000 years of solitude: extreme differentiation in the island isolates of Dalmatia, Croatia: http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v14/n4/abs/5201589a.html
Chinese portraits, by Reitz:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3253853
Carnival rites as vehicles of protest in Renaissance Venice:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2541222
The Forlani Map of North America
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1151185
