There are books of popular history. There are academic histories. And then there are books that straddle that divide. Venice and the Mongols attempts to do that and almost succeeds. Its success comes through the authors, despite being eminent professors, almost entirely escaping the usual word salad of academic writers, and the excellent translation by Sylvia Adrian Notini. The failure lies in the very specific focus of the book, which is both its strength and its weakness.

As a history of the trade relations between Venice and the Mongol Empire, it will surely become required reading; this is the best sort of forensic historical work, with not only qualitative investigation of the trade in goods as varied wax, dried fruit, wine and slaves, but detailed charts showing the equivalence of various weights and measures between Venice and the Mongol Empire.

However, the detail of the examination, and the breadth of the Mongol Empire, requires of the reader a reasonably thorough understanding of the politics and history of the region from the time of the Mongol invasions through to the rise of the Ottomans – and that’s a long time, a lot of people and quite a few fairly short-lived realms.

One myth that the book lays to rest is the recent notion that Marco Polo fabricated his memoirs, never having travelled further east than Persia. However, Polo’s knowledge of Chinese trading practices, down to specific details of areas as specific as Hangzhou’s tax revenue offices, proves that Polo was, indeed, what he claimed: a confidant and officer of the Great Khan.

This book is also what it claims to be: the best history yet written of Venice and the Mongol Empire.