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It's fairly amazing that goods managed to get from China to Europe, and vice versa, without any Chinese people visiting Europe for hundreds or years, or any Eur

It's fairly amazing that goods managed to get from China to Europe, and vice versa, without any Chinese people visiting Europe for hundreds or years, or any Europeans visiting China. This was not just in the middle ages, but reaching as far back as the Roman Empire.

benbreen 8y ago
I agree, I love thinking about the journeys that these objects made, like the Roman coins that ended up in a 12th century Japanese castle. [1] There were a handful of individuals who made similar trips though - aside from the famous ones like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, there's also a few envoys sent on behalf of the Franco-Mongol alliance.[2] Or the Spaniards who went to the court of Timur: “Timour Beg turned to the knights who had seated around him… and said, ‘Behold! here are the ambassadors sent by my son the king of Spain, who is the greatest king of the Franks, and lives at the end of the world.’” [3] [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/28/495821834/coins-from-the-roman-empire-are-found-in-ruins-of-japanese-castle https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/28/495821834... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance [3] https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-samarkand-1404.html https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-samark...
- twic 8y ago
  One of my favourite historical surprises: > Clavijo recorded his entrance to the capital in great detail, noting the stores of “silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb” carried from China Today, to me, rhubarb seems so mundane, and so British. And yet just a few hundred years ago, it was an exotic wonder from the east. Rather than from Yorkshire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    I wasn't aware of it being British either. It was just something that grew in the backyard of the house I grew up in, in upstate New York.
    - dreen 8y ago
      The UK supplies much of world's Rhubarb, most of it from the so called Rhubarb Triangle in Yorkshire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle where it is "forced", it apparently grows so quick you can hear it!
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        I didn't know it needed "supplying" because it just grew year after year by our back porch, with no special encouragement. Wikipedia says it was known simply as "pie plant" in the US in the 19th century. Although strawberry-rhubarb pie is a common combination, I recall pies of my childhood being rhubarb alone.
    - twic 8y ago
      I don't think it is particularly British. It's just so commonplace here that i assumed it was - in much the same way as i imagine the Irish feel about potatoes, and the Italians about pasta!
niftich 8y ago
It's more widespread to be wary of people than goods. Goods could be handed off at trading posts and in fact were rarely carried end-to-end in one go. There might have been a flow of goods, but it's doubtful there was free of movement of people, both as a practical matter of surviving a long journey, and having to explain oneself to authorities. The few documented adventurers and ambassadors travelled with an entourage, and news of their arrival often preceded them -- which was often necessary to avoid hostilities.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  In Chinese history, free flow of goods was often prohibited -- notionally, if foreign goods were going to come in, they had to be given to the emperor as tribute. (And the emperor would make return gifts.) There was a robust black market of tributaries coming in but not quite making it all the way to the palace.
ngcc_hk 8y ago
I guess unless you know where you go to, leaving your home places are hard. The question is Middle man. And in this disintermediation getting rid of middle man has means. But if the middle man is really in the middle, not sure you want to do it too openly. They would be in the way. But if the middle man visits both sides ... Mongolian whilst you do not think they are tradesman (army is a kind of export actually but). They do not go to both sides. In fact it seems the famous one go to the other side is actually via Mongolian empire.
zhdc1 8y ago
There may have been a lot more cross-culture communication than you think. Examples include Venetian and Florentine trading posts in Beijing/Dadu and other cities in the Mongol Empire, Caucasians living in Xinjiang, and so on. The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else. Given how little we know about contemporary kingdoms and empires in other parts of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if there were significantly more Europeans in China and SE Asia, and at least a handful of East Asians in Europe and the Near East, during that time.
- toyg 8y ago
  > The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else. Exactly. Until 300 years ago, unless you were a nobleman or a religious scholar, you likely didn't know how to write (bar a few numbers you might have required for trading activities). Long trips were tiring and extremely dangerous; travellers were, more often than not, hard men doing a hard job, mercenaries, fugitives, "rolling stones", and so on. These people didn't care for poetry, so to speak. Even Marco Polo didn't actually write anything -- he dictated to a fellow inmate who (somewhat miraculously) happened to be a professional writer, when they really had nothing else to do while imprisoned.
acjohnson55 8y ago
This article has a lot of info on what contacts we have evidence to support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations And I'm sure we'll only ever know at best maybe a tenth of what happened. (Wild guess.)

benbreen 8y ago

I agree, I love thinking about the journeys that these objects made, like the Roman coins that ended up in a 12th century Japanese castle. [1] There were a handful of individuals who made similar trips though - aside from the famous ones like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, there's also a few envoys sent on behalf of the Franco-Mongol alliance.[2] Or the Spaniards who went to the court of Timur: “Timour Beg turned to the knights who had seated around him… and said, ‘Behold! here are the ambassadors sent by my son the king of Spain, who is the greatest king of the Franks, and lives at the end of the world.’” [3] [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/28/495821834/coins-from-the-roman-empire-are-found-in-ruins-of-japanese-castle https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/28/495821834... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance [3] https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-samarkand-1404.html https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-samark...

twic 8y ago
One of my favourite historical surprises: > Clavijo recorded his entrance to the capital in great detail, noting the stores of “silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb” carried from China Today, to me, rhubarb seems so mundane, and so British. And yet just a few hundred years ago, it was an exotic wonder from the east. Rather than from Yorkshire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I wasn't aware of it being British either. It was just something that grew in the backyard of the house I grew up in, in upstate New York.
  - dreen 8y ago
    The UK supplies much of world's Rhubarb, most of it from the so called Rhubarb Triangle in Yorkshire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle where it is "forced", it apparently grows so quick you can hear it!
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      I didn't know it needed "supplying" because it just grew year after year by our back porch, with no special encouragement. Wikipedia says it was known simply as "pie plant" in the US in the 19th century. Although strawberry-rhubarb pie is a common combination, I recall pies of my childhood being rhubarb alone.
  - twic 8y ago
    I don't think it is particularly British. It's just so commonplace here that i assumed it was - in much the same way as i imagine the Irish feel about potatoes, and the Italians about pasta!

niftich 8y ago

It's more widespread to be wary of people than goods. Goods could be handed off at trading posts and in fact were rarely carried end-to-end in one go. There might have been a flow of goods, but it's doubtful there was free of movement of people, both as a practical matter of surviving a long journey, and having to explain oneself to authorities. The few documented adventurers and ambassadors travelled with an entourage, and news of their arrival often preceded them -- which was often necessary to avoid hostilities.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
In Chinese history, free flow of goods was often prohibited -- notionally, if foreign goods were going to come in, they had to be given to the emperor as tribute. (And the emperor would make return gifts.) There was a robust black market of tributaries coming in but not quite making it all the way to the palace.

ngcc_hk 8y ago

I guess unless you know where you go to, leaving your home places are hard. The question is Middle man. And in this disintermediation getting rid of middle man has means. But if the middle man is really in the middle, not sure you want to do it too openly. They would be in the way. But if the middle man visits both sides ... Mongolian whilst you do not think they are tradesman (army is a kind of export actually but). They do not go to both sides. In fact it seems the famous one go to the other side is actually via Mongolian empire.

zhdc1 8y ago

There may have been a lot more cross-culture communication than you think. Examples include Venetian and Florentine trading posts in Beijing/Dadu and other cities in the Mongol Empire, Caucasians living in Xinjiang, and so on. The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else. Given how little we know about contemporary kingdoms and empires in other parts of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if there were significantly more Europeans in China and SE Asia, and at least a handful of East Asians in Europe and the Near East, during that time.

toyg 8y ago
> The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else. Exactly. Until 300 years ago, unless you were a nobleman or a religious scholar, you likely didn't know how to write (bar a few numbers you might have required for trading activities). Long trips were tiring and extremely dangerous; travellers were, more often than not, hard men doing a hard job, mercenaries, fugitives, "rolling stones", and so on. These people didn't care for poetry, so to speak. Even Marco Polo didn't actually write anything -- he dictated to a fellow inmate who (somewhat miraculously) happened to be a professional writer, when they really had nothing else to do while imprisoned.

acjohnson55 8y ago

This article has a lot of info on what contacts we have evidence to support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations And I'm sure we'll only ever know at best maybe a tenth of what happened. (Wild guess.)