Niccolò de' Conti (1385–1469) was a Venetian merchant and explorer, born in Chioggia, who traveled to India and Southeast Asia, and possibly to Southern China, during the early 15th century. After the return of the Polos, there is no record of Italian traders returning from China until the return of Niccolò de' Conti by sea in 1439.

Niccolò departed from Venice about 1419 and established himself in Damascus, Syria, where he studied Arabic. Over a period of 25 years, he traveled as a Muslim merchant to numerous places in Asia. His familiarity with the languages and cultures of the Islamic world allowed him to travel to many places, onboard ships owned by Islamic merchants.

Niccolò's travels occurred around the same time and in the same places as the Chinese expeditions of Admiral Zheng He. His accounts are contemporary, and fairly consistent with those of the Chinese writers who were on Zheng He's ships, such as Ma Huan (writing in 1433) and Fei Xin (writing in about 1436).

Travels

thumb|190px|Le voyage aux [[East Indies|Indes de Nicolò de' Conti (1414-1439)]]
Niccolò de' Conti first crossed the desert to reach Baghdad and from there sailed down the Tigris to Basra. He then sailed through the Persian Gulf and went to Iran where he learned Persian.

He then crossed the Arabian sea to Cambay, in Gujarat. He travelled in India to "Pacamuria", "Helly" and Vijayanagar, capital of the Deccan before 1555. It was in India that he coined the phrase 'Italian of the East' to refer to the Telugu language, which he found had words ending with vowels, similar to Italian. He went to "Maliapur" on the east coast of India (probably modern-day Mylapore, in Chennai), where he visited the tomb of St. Thomas, who in Christian tradition is recorded to have founded a Christian community there.

About 1421, Niccolò crossed to "Pedir" in northern Sumatra, where he spent a year, gaining local knowledge, particularly on the gold and spice trade. He then continued after sailing 16 days to Tenasserim on the Malay peninsula. He then sailed to the mouth of the Ganges, visited Burdwan (in West Bengal, India), then went overland to Arakan (in Burma). After traveling through Burma, he left for Java where he spent nine months, before going to Champa (in modern Vietnam).

Niccolò de' Conti described South-East Asia as "exceeding all other regions in wealth, culture and magnificence, and abreast of Italy in civilization".

Around 1440 he sailed back to India (Quilon, Kochi, Calicut, Cambay) and then to the Middle-East (Socotra, Aden, Berbera in Somalia, Jidda in Egypt), from where he travelled overland via Mt. Sinai to Cairo.

He had been traveling all along with his family. However his wife, whom he had met in India, and two of his four children died in Egypt during an epidemic. He continued to Italy with his remaining children.

Niccolò de' Conti returned to Venice in 1444, where he remained as a respected merchant.

Account of his voyages

Throughout his travels, he had presented himself as a Muslim, for security; in Florence he was requested by Pope Eugene IV, as a penance for his seeming apostacy, to relate his travels to the papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini. Poggio's recording of Niccolò's account, made in 1444, constitute one of the best accounts of the East by a 15th century traveler. They were included in the Book IV of his "De varietate fortunae" ("On the Vicissitudes of Fortune").

Niccolò de' Conti's travels, which first circulated in manuscript form, are said to have profoundly influenced the European geographical understanding of the areas around the Indian Ocean during the middle of the 15th century. They were the first accounts to detail the Sunda Islands and Spice Islands since the accounts of Marco Polo, and there is reason to believe that some of the new information on Fra Mauro's map was gleaned from conversation with Niccolò. His accounts probably encouraged the European travels of exploration of the end of the century.
thumb|The accounts of Niccolò de' Conti influenced the maker of the 1457 Genoese map, in the form of geographic conceptions and several quotes and names taken directly from Conti.Conti also influenced 15th century cartography, as can be seen on the Genoese map (1447-1457), and in the work of the mapmaker Fra Mauro, whose influential Fra Mauro map (1457) offered one of the clearest depiction of the Old World. In these two maps, many new location names, and several verbatim descriptions, were taken directly from Niccolò's account. The "trustworthy source" whom Fra Mauro quoted in writing in his map about the travels of a Zoncho de India. a "junk from India", beyond the Cape of Good Hope into the Atlantic Ocean around 1420, confirming that it was possible to sail around Africa through the south, is thought to have been Niccolò de' Conti himself. In his descriptions of East Asia, Niccolò matter-of-factly describes huge junks of about 2,000 tons, more than four times the size of 16th century Western galleons:

It has also been suggested that the man "from Cathay" described to have visited Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447) by Paolo Toscanelli in 1474 letter to Christopher Columbus, may have been Niccolò de' Conti, who was returning from the east and is known to have met with Pope Eugenius in 1444:

Niccolò de' Conti's book was used by several explorers and travels writers, such as Ludovico di Varthema (1510), and Antonio Pigafetta, who traveled around the world with Magellan's expedition.

Editions

The first printed edition of Niccolò’s account was made in 1492 in the original Latin by Cristoforo da Bollate and dedicated to Pietro Cara, who was going on a journey to India. Various translations followed, into Portuguese (1502) and Spanish (1503). The first Italian-language edition appears to have been translated from the Portuguese edition, and was made a part of the collection of travellers’ accounts published in 1550 by Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The first English edition was translated from the Spanish, and printed in 1579 by John Frampton, using a combination of Marco Polo's and Da Conti's narrations.