EARLY EUROPEAN EXPLORERS IN INDONESIA: MARCO POLO, NICOLÒ DEI CONTI, MAGELLAN'S CREW

MARCO POLO IN INDONESIA

Marco Polo

On his journey home from China to Italy in 1291, Marco Polo was forced to spend five months on “Java the Less”—Sumatra—waiting for the monsoon winds to change direction so he could sail to Ceylon and India. His accounts of the island mixed keen observation with sailors’ tales and exaggeration: he described the sago palm, an important staple food, Marco Polo reported described accurately that cannibals lived in Sumatra but then went on to describe strange beasts, including enormous unicorns, in size “not all by any means less than an elephant.” These were probably Sumatran rhinoceroses. On Sumatra, Polo said: “I tell you quite truly that there are men who have tails more than a palm in size.

Marco Polo's account of the major ports, products, and trade routes is remarkably accurate, despite some understandable geographical confusion and unreliable distance estimates. Above all, he conveys a sense of wonder and enthusiasm for a world where "everything is different"—a phrase he repeats frequently. His awareness of human, linguistic, and zoological diversity is what gives his book its great charm. [Source: Paul Lunde, Saudi Aramco World, July-August 2005 ]

“The number of islands in the Indian Ocean, Marco Polo wrote, is 12,700, “as shown by the maps and writings of the practiced seamen who ply in these waters.” He added the disclaimer: “There is no man in all the world who could tell the truth about all the islands of the Indies.” He is also perhaps the first European writer since classical times to mention the monsoon: “I must tell you that it takes a full year to complete the voyage, setting out in winter and returning in summer. For only two winds blow in these seas, one that wafts them out and one that brings them back; and the former blows in winter, the latter in summer.”

Marco Polo’s Journey to Indonesia

Marco Polo began his homeward voyage by sailing from Zaitun (Quanzhou) to the kingdom of Champa in present-day southern Vietnam, a journey he estimated at about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles). Champa was a major source of aloeswood—‘ud in Arabic—highly prized throughout the Islamic world for its fragrance, as well as ebony, which was used to craft items such as chess pieces and pencases. [Source: Paul Lunde, Saudi Aramco World, July-August 2005 ]

Marco Polo's travels in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and India

From South Vietnam, Polo continued to the Malay Peninsula, which he described as a place where gold was so abundant that “no one who did not see it could believe it,” and where elephants, game, and valuable brazilwood were plentiful. He even attempted, unsuccessfully, to bring brazilwood back to Venice for textile dyeing.

Sailing onward through the Strait of Malacca—being the first person known to describe it—Polo reached Sumatra, which he called “Java the Lesser.” He wrote that the island was divided into eight kingdoms, each with its own language. One of these, “Ferlec” (likely Periak in northern Sumatra), had recently converted from Hinduism to Islam through contact with Muslim merchants, though Polo noted that this applied only to the urban population, while mountain communities remained animist and, according to his account, cannibalistic. His observations capture an early stage of Islamization in the Indonesian archipelago—this being the earliest known reference to a Muslim sultanate there. Polo remained in Samudra for five months waiting for the northeast monsoon before continuing westward toward Sri Lanka.

Marco Polo’s Observations on Indonesia

Sumatran city-dwellers, Marco Polo wrote, used to be Hindus, but had converted to Islam through contact with Muslim merchants from India and mainland Southeast Asia.Java did not, of course, produce all the spices he lists: the cloves and nutmegs came from the Moluccas; the pepper may have been imported from Malabar. But all were available in its markets.

Although Marco Polo never traveled to the larger island of Java, his descriptions of it—based on hearsay from Chinese merchants—emphasized its great size and wealth. He mentions it is “the biggest island in the world,…a very rich island, producing pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale, cubebs and cloves and all the precious spices…. It is visited by great numbers of ships and merchants who buy a great range of merchandise, reaping handsome profits and rich returns…. It is from this island that the merchants of Zaitun and Manzi [southern China] in general have derived and continue to derive a great part of their wealth, and this is the source of most of the spice that comes into the world’s markets.”[Source: Paul Lunde, Saudi Aramco World, July-August 2005 ]

According to Marco Polo: “ When you sail from Chamba [Champa, Vietnam], 1500 miles in a course between south and south-east, you come to a great Island called Java. And the experienced mariners of those Islands who know the matter well, say that it is the greatest Island in the world, and has a compass of more than 3000 miles. ... The Island is of surpassing wealth, producing black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale, cubebs, cloves, and all other kinds of spices. This Island is also frequented by a vast amount of shipping, and by merchants who buy and sell costly goods from which they reap great profit. Indeed the treasure of this Island is so great as to be past telling [Source: Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa, “Book Second, Part III, Chapter LXXXII: Of the City and Great Haven of Zayton” and “Book Third, Part I, Chapter VI: Concerning the Great Island of Java,” in The Book of Ser Marco Polo: The Venetian Concerning Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, translated and edited by Colonel Sir Henry Yule, Volume 2 (London: John Murray, 1903). This book is in the public domain and can be read online at Project Gutenberg. The excerpted text is from pages 220-221 and 252 of this online text]

Marco Polo says Khubilai Khan had never been able to conquer Java. In fact, he attacked the year after Marco’s visit, following attempts against Burma, Champa and Annam. The Yuan sought to impose their power at sea as well as on land, but they were dogged by failure, beginning with the destruction of the great fleet sent against Japan in 1274. Their persistent and costly attempts at naval domination nevertheless show their determination to control not only the overland routes to China, but the maritime ones as well—an ambition encouraged by Muslim traders in the Yuan empire, who would have welcomed the elimination of non-Muslim competition in Japan and South and Southeast Asia.

Polo’s travelogue, written by Rustichello da Pisa, became one of Europe’s earliest detailed sources on the Indonesian archipelago, shaping later explorers’ expectations even as it blended fact with myth. His name survives in Indonesia today through hotels, water parks, shipyards, and even map series that continue to trade on the legacy of one of history’s most famous travelers. [Source: Google AI]

Nicolò dei Conti

One of the first Europeans to reach Indonesia and suggest that it was possible to reach Asia by sailing around Africa was a Venetian merchant named Nicolo de' Conti who traveled for 25 years in the Middle East and South Asia beginning in 1419. At the end of the 15th century maps began showing a sea route around Africa for the first time. Conti resided in coastal port of Pasai (Samudera) on Sumatra for a year but never ventured inland out of fear of being “torn to pieces and devoured by the natives." (Hirosue, 2005)

Nicolò dei Conti traveled extensively around the Indian Ocean between 1414 and 1439. His route ran from Baghdad to Hormuz, Qalhat, and Cambay, then down the Malabar Coast to Madras and Malapur, across to Sumatra, Burma, Ava, Pegu, Java, Borneo, and Champa, before circling back through Quilon, Cochin, Calicut, Cambay again, and finally Aden, Berbera, Jiddah, Makkah, Cairo, and Venice. He spent nine months in Borneo, where traders told him of the distant Moluccas—the Spice Islands—known to early Arab geographers only as bilad manbit al-‘atar, “the country where the spices grow.” Nicolò is also the first known writer to mention the bird of paradise, whose feathers were prized in China and the Ottoman Empire. [Source: Paul Lunde, Saudi Aramco World, July-August 2005 ]

On his journey back to Europe, he encountered a caravan led by the Christian knight Pero Tafur near Mount Sinai. Nicolò told Tafur that he had left home at 18, lost his inheritance, spent a year at Tamerlane’s court in Samarkand, and then departed for India. There, he claimed, he had been warmly received by Prester John, who bestowed favors on him, arranged his marriage, and became the grandfather of Nicolò’s children. Prester John, Nicolò said, ruled over 25 kings and had twice sent failed expeditions to find the sources of the Nile.

When Nicolò finally reached Italy, he dictated the story of his travels to the papal secretary and humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini, whose efforts preserved many important classical texts. The resulting account was a measured, informative summary of Nicolò’s experiences. Much of his geographical knowledge was incorporated into Fra Mauro’s celebrated 1459 map, which clearly represented Africa as a peninsula. Yet his more fantastical conversation with Pero Tafur reveals the lingering medieval worldview of a man fascinated by Prester John and the mysteries of the Nile—obsessions shared by the Portuguese, who would soon launch their grueling voyages of exploration.

Nicolò reached what is now Indonesia because political upheaval had made the land routes between Europe and Asia unsafe. While Tamerlane lived, passage across Central Asia was relatively secure. But after the conqueror’s death in 1404, his empire fractured, overland travel became dangerous, and Nicolò was forced to return to Italy by sea—one of many travelers who turned to maritime routes as a result of the empire’s collapse.

European Explorers and the Spice Islands

Early maps of Indonesia showed the archipelago as the place "Where Dragons and Leviathans be." In 1510, a Bolognese traveler named Ludovico di Varthema returned to Italy after a six year trip in the East. He published an account of his journey that drew considerable attention. Among other things he was the first to European to describe nutmeg trees growing in the Banda Islands in what used to be called the Spice Islands and what are now called the Moluccas. They were the only places in the world that nutmeg grew.

The Spice Islands that Columbus was looking for were the Moluccas. After Magellan was killed in the Philippines his crew loaded up with spices in the Moluccas for the journey home. Sir Francis Drake visited the islands of Indonesia and turned an offer of cheap and valuable cloves because his ship was so full of stolen Spanish goods. When he returned on his trans-global voyage one of the items he brought back that caused the biggest stir was a mermaid from Sumatra that looked an awful lot alike the upper half of a monkey glued to the tail of a fish.

Captain Cook lost several men in a fight with Asmat cannibals in what is now the West Papua Province of Indonesia on New Guinea. East Timor was the first landfall for Captain Bligh, of “Mutiny on the Bounty” fame, after spending 41 days adrift in the South Seas.

Magellan's Crew in Indonesia

During the round the world voyage by his ships and crew, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521. Afterwards his crew continued on to the Spice Island. At this point in the voyage Magellan's crew still had 17,770 kilometers (11,000 miles) to go to get home. By this time only 100 of the 250 men that left South America remained, and one the three remaining ships was so filled with worm holes that these men decided to squeeze onto to the remaining two ships.

Instead of sailing the short distance between Cebu and the Spice Islands the ships took a more circuitous route, stopping first in Borneo where they encountered an Arab outpost near present-day Brunei. This was their first contact with a race of people of which the new since they left Brazil.

A couple of months later they reached the Spice Islands where the two ships loaded up with cloves. At that time nutmeg and cloves were worth more than gold. "When the cloves sprout," wrote Pigafoote, "they are white; when ripe, red; and when dried, black...Nowhere in the world do good gloves grow except on five mountains of those five islands."

One of the overfilled ships sprang a leak and had to be unloaded again for repairs. The other ship, captained by Juan Sebastián del Cano, decided to leave on its own while the monsoon winds were favorable. The other ship later tried to sail back across the Pacific to Panama, but was forced back and eventually was wrecked.

Drake in the Spice Islands

The English adventurer Sir Francis Drake sailed across the Pacific ocean from present-day California to Indonesia via Palau in 1579. The journey from California to Palau took 68 days. Drake reportedly used charts captured from the Spanish to navigate his way across the vast ocean. His objective was the Spice Islands (the Moluccas). Drake only stayed on Palau for three days. After a Palaun stole a dagger from a sailor’s belt, Drake ordered his men to open fire on group of Paluans, killing an estimated 20 of them. Drake named Palau the "Island of Thieves."

After loading up with six tons of spices in the Mollucas, the “Golden Hind “ran aground "upon a desperate shoale" somewhere west of Celebes (the Indonesian island of Sulawesi). Cannons and crates of gloves were thrown overboard but that wasn’t enough. Just as Drake's men were preparing for a slow, agonizing death, a wind and high tide lifted them from the shoal and miraculously the ship sustained so little damage it was able to sail on.

In Java, the “Golden Hind “loaded up with food and supplies. According to one account Drake commented on the "just dealing people": “We trafficked with them for hens, goats, coccas, plantains, and other kind of victuals, which they offered us in suchrplenty that we might have laden our ship if we had needed.” Drake voyage from Java to Sierre Leone was longest nonstop ocean passage made to that time. The 118 day non-stop journey covered 9,700 miles

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Global Viewpoint (Christian Science Monitor), Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, NBC News, Fox News and various books and other publications.

Last updated December 2025