Did Marco Polo go to China?

Frances Wood, a renowned Sinologist and former head of the Chinese department at the British Library, published this provocative study to challenge the long-held consensus surrounding Marco Polo’s famous travels. First appearing in the mid-1990s, the work was born out of Wood’s archival research, during which she noted a peculiar absence of Polo’s name in contemporary Chinese records and a lack of specific cultural details in his accounts, such as the Great Wall or the practice of foot binding.

The book is a piece of historical skepticism that suggests Polo may have never traveled further east than the Black Sea, proposing instead that his narrative was a compilation of Persian guidebooks and anecdotes gathered in the merchant communities of the Mediterranean. Upon its release, the text sparked a vigorous international debate among historians and medievalists, effectively serving as a catalyst for a more critical, evidence-based re-evaluation of travel literature from the thirteenth century.