THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MARCO POLO STUDIES

INTRODUCTION

EUROPA and ASIA between them constitute the greatest landmass on the globe. Our combined population embraces the majority of people in the world. Our history has been conjoined for the past 2,000 years, much of which has been written in the blood of military conflict and the poison of cultural hostility. Today, as we stand on the threshold of a new millennium, the prospect of such conflict being repeated has receded, while the hostility of old is being replaced with a friendship arising out of an understanding that co-operation, not conflict, is the key to a golden future for all our peoples, Easterners and Westerners alike.

But co-operation at the material level feeds only the body, not the mind and soul. Only cultural exchange - the sharing of ideas, the joining of minds in a quest for greater understanding of our world and of ourselves, the blossoming of friendships between those engaged in this quest, and the weaving together of those different strands of our individual cultural heritage to produce a richer and more colourful tapestry of civilisation for a new, 21st Century -- has the power, and the magic, to transmute the drudgery of everyday life into the gold of social enhancement, cultural enrichment, and personal fulfilment.

"Only connect!" said the American educational philosopher Marshall McLuan. But to connect, a bridge is needed. Not a physical bridge built of marble and steel, but a cultural bridge built of an idea; for as academics, ideas are our business, not goods and physical possessions. In fact, such a bridge already exists, stretching from Europe across to Asia, first built some 7 centuries ago when a certain European emissary and adventurer knelt at the feet of a certain Asian ruler, in a place called Xanadu set at the crossroads of legend and history. That bridge bears a name whose power and magic has echoed across the centuries ever since that first seminal encounter between East and West. That name is MARCO POLO.

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Any comments on the above will be most welcome, if communicated to:

james.gilman@virgin.net