Remember the butterfly effect? If you don’t, here is a quick refresher: The butterfly effect is an incredibly popular theory used to explain the importance of small changes in initial conditions and how they can drastically change processes and outcomes. The train of thought goes something like this: A butterfly flapping its wings will directly effect the parameters of distant tornado that is formed several weeks later.
Why do i bring this up? It is not purely because i think the theory is cool (which it is). It’s also because John Mandeville(an individual who very well may have never existed in the first place) is my favourite example to use when talking about the butterfly effect. So, who was John Mandeville? He is the alleged author of, arguably, one of the most influential travel books of all time. Mandeville wrote a book ( filled with fabrications), primarily as a means to make his criticisms of european society known. Little did he know when publishing this manuscript was that his book’s impact would play a huge part in the creation of the British Empire. To understand its influence and popularity at the time, note that roughly 300 copies of “Mandeville’s Travels” survive till date. That is 4 times more than the number of Marco Polo’s books that survive. It had the entirety of Europe in a stranglehold when it came to information about far away lands and geography.
So exactly what are the facts we know about John Mandeville?
Well, the book claims that he was an English knight, who set off from St. Albans around 1322, and returned after 34 years to publish the book. However, there is no evidence whatsoever that Sir John Mandeville actually existed, and there are differing claims on who was the actual author of this book, but looking at the big picture, this aspect of the debate is somewhat irrelevant, as we are aware of the more important pieces of information about whoever the author was:
- He had access to a really really great library
- He possibly didn’t even travel outside of England
Coming to the book itself, its an extremely cleverly plagiarized text, and one can find almost 30 texts which directly supplement the book’s content, foremost being 2 works by actual travellers to the east: the German monk William of Boldensele’s Liber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus (1336), an account of its author’s pilgrimage to Egypt and the Holy Land and the Relatio (1330) of Odoric of Pordenone, a Franciscan friar who spent a decade in China and India as a missionary. These 2 provide most of the content of the book, while Mandeville adds a lot of seasoning to the source material. And although it presents itself as a travel guide for future pilgrims, Mandeville doesn’t really give a lot of practical information for travelling, and instead describes the places he visited, their lore, etc.
Now, I don’t want to write a 20 page synopsis of the book, so lets go over the contents of the book BRIEFLY, to get an idea of what he was talking about.
The book starts by talking about the importance of the holy land i.e. Jerusalem and criticizing European rulers disinterest in its conquest; basically asking for more crusades, which as we will see is directly at odds with Mandeville’s usual open mindedness. We are then introduced to a first person narrator, ‘I John Mandeville, knight’, who probably didn’t exist (the chances of him being one of the voices in your head is more than him actually having existed).
The first part of the book guides us from England to Jerusalem, and is primarily based on William of Boldensele’s account of his pilgrimage from Constantinople to the Holy Land via Egypt, however Mandeville heavily alters his source, and gives it an entirely new twist. Instead of detailing routes and places, he take a more encyclopedic approach and writes about local lore and biblical history. For example, the description of Constantinople talks very little about the geographic location of the city and more about ancient relics, followed by differences between Greek and Latin Christianity, and one of the most accurate representations of the Greek alphabet at the time. He then continues onwards to Egypt, again heavily altering his source. Intertwining religious beliefs and geographic descriptions is a very common theme throughout the book.
Then there are some stories about John and the sultan of Babylonia meeting (looks like john had some voices in his head as well), using the sultan as a mouthpiece of immorality and political infighting.
Moving forward, it was time to go beyond Jerusalem. On moving further east, he becomes really creative with his chief source: the Itinerario of the Franciscan missionary Odoric, . He describes a wish-granting fairy at the Castle of the Sparrowhawk in Armenia, the story of a monk’s journey to recover a relic from Noah’s Ark, and a brief treatise on the virtues of the diamond in rapid succession.
Details are of less importance than flashy stories and lore, following the theme of the rest of the book. And it is at this juncture where we go even further east and find descriptions of monstrous races, pagan religions. However, and this is really interesting, he isn’t critical of any of these things. Not even the monstrous races. The dog-headed Cynocephali, described by Pliny as vicious and barbaric, are praised as rational beings of good understanding and pagan religions in India are which were criticized for wicked idolatry by Odoric are praised for their devotion. And there are other discussions such as St. Thomas, who was believed to have brought Christianity to India in the middle ages and Mandeville stresses on the diversity of eastern customs, unlike most of his contemporaries. Why? Well, remember why he wrote the book in the first place? He was unhappy with the way Europe was being ruled, and using eastern cultures to undermine Europe’s supposed moral superiority sure sounds like an effective strategy. More than certainly whoever wrote this book does not actually *think* all of this ( not that hard to believe considering the involvement of dog-headed people).
This section of the book also contains a lot of geographical and science talk, such as the earth being round and the possibility of circumnavigation, followed by the most extensive description of any eastern land in the book, of the great khan (Genghis khan), who is described as the most powerful ruler the world has ever seen, and unlike how Odoric describes Mongols as barbaric, Mandeville goes to great lengths to praise their civility and loyalty, and Khan is lauded for his just rule. ( Again the intention of “Mandeville” here is to undermine European moral superiority rather than provide his actual opinions or facts).
Going even further east, we find another imperial power, Prester John, and this guy is an absolute baller. See, my boy Prester was a mythical Christian king who was supposedly the ruler of what would be modern day India, and he was already a pretty well known figure in England back from the 12th century. We are given a lot of information regarding Prester Johns wealth, power and military might, and Mandeville praises him as a Christian king who leads his army under the cross and leads a simple lifestyle.
After some more local legends and myths the book finally concludes with the timeline of Mandeville’s travels and asking readers to pray for his soul.
So one might ask, how was this possible? How did a semi-well crafted lie completely overturn the travel world so quickly? It all comes down to one thing: cartography. So lets look the map making situation of the time. Cartography was not really flourishing in Europe at the time, in contrast to the Arab world, albeit their maps weren’t that accurate as well. For example al-Idrisi drew a map that used his knowledge and that of ptolemy, and although not accurate, one of the reasons it was widely accepted was that it showed the Indian ocean as landlocked, which suited Arab interests by discouraging european’s to try to find any route to the east for trade.
The only masters of map making at the time were the Chinese, who had extremely well detailed and advanced maps of shipping routes through south east Asia and even the east African coast. Maybe we will talk about them later.
All of this was going on while Europe was in an information blockade and even the works of classic geographers were forgotten. This led to the rise of garbled information and blatant liars such as John Mandeville and its widespread acceptance.
In a case of extreme irony however, due to the lies popularized by Mandeville, european travellers actually started looking for the lands described in the book and in that process eventually became the leading map makers in the world towards the beginning of the 16th century. And even after Mandeville’s work started being labelled, rightfully, as garbage, empty spaces in maps were simply filled with drawings of the creatures he talked about( a lot of which i did not mention here), cementing his position as one of the most influential ( influence can be both positive and negative) travel authors of all time.
I think it is fair to say that this might be the most influential rant of all time, or at least the most influential one that i know of.
Peace out for now, see you next time.
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