During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries European notions of the wonders and wealth to be found in East Asia continued to be shaped in large part by the extremely popular accounts of the thirteenth-century Venetian traveler Marco Polo. He was only a teenager when he set out from Venice with his father and uncle in 1271 on a journey through Asia which would last twentyfour years. After more than three years of perilous travel, the Polos reached the court of the great Chinese emperor Kublai Khan. The emperor took a special interest in the young Venetian, and soon Polo found himself employed as a diplomat and ambassador in the service of the powerful Chinese empire. Polo remained in this post for seventeen years, traveling on a variety of missions for the emperor and in the process becoming a wealthy and well-respected man...