There’s a semi-recent book out called 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies, of which I’ve read the introduction. The book’s website summarizes its content with the following:
Unfortunately, the book is somewhere in the middle of my “to read” list, which seems to be getting longer and longer. Also, I’m no history whiz, and I’m unsure that I would have the critical reading skills to know if I’m being hoodwinked or not.
So, I would very much appriciate it if any history buffs out there could offer some insight into how legitimate this author’s claims are.
If China did discover America in the early 1400’s, they failed to do anything useful with the information.
Just like the Vikings around 1000-1100. They, too, did nothing to take advantage of their discovery.
Christopher Colombus gets credit for ‘discovering’ America because he & his backers followed up on their discovery by sending additional ships, starting import-export trade, establishing trading colonies, etc. This brought the American continents to the attention of Europe, radically changed the way Europeans thought of the world, and had a significant effect on history from that point forward.
Credit for “discovering” something is generally only given to those who do something with their ‘discovery’.
No doubt many people had an apple fall on their head prior to Issac Newton, but he is given credit for “discovering” gravity because he thought about it and wrote an important book explaining it to the rest of the scientific world.
According to my world civilization professor, the Chinese most likely did not discover America. He dismissed Menzies’ book as a good yarn, but not much more.
However, the Chinese certainly did have the technology to do this. Their “star rafts” were larger than European ships, and they had navigational tools like the magnetic compass and astrolabe. However, there is little evidence beyond that to demonstrate that the Chinese crossed the Pacific and landed on the West Coast of America.
OK, in the author’s thesis the Chinese discovered America, Antartica, Australia, and how to calculate longitude, and then all the records were destroyed, the ships rotted at the piers, and China was isolated for centuries.
How does this guy know if “all the records” were destroyed?
If these large sea-faring junks were sailing all over, why is there no Arab or European record of it? Surely they were reaching India routinely, where seafaring Arabs and Europeans were inevitably met…
Tell us why they solved the problem of longitude. After two millennia afloat Europe finally developed an accurate enough chronometer to take to sea, but the Chinese nautical explosion lasted only about three generations. Why would they bother? It’s not exactly trivial.
Why were the records destroyed?
What difference does it make? They had no influence on the Americas, Australian or Antartica at all, and left behind no clues to the longitude problem. Even if all that this guy says is true, it answers no challenges to or mysteries in history whatsoever. History first of all has to have some practical application if it’s not just going to be a simple recitation of facts. If this rather radical thesis is correct, what does it change? I submit it means nothing more than in interesting story even if it was true, which is doubtful for the above reasons.
While true, its sort of irrelevant. Every culture since the EGyptions built reed boats, and maybe before, has had the etchnology to get to America.
IIRC, He’s taking some really flimsy evidence from some people he claims are descended from the CHinese in South America (a load of hooey) and says there’s a building in New England that’s Chinese-built. He’s also not in any way trained in any field of archeology or whatnot.
Oh, they did, and we do have good accounts that the large Chinese fleet reached into the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. They were involved in some pointless reciprocal gift giving and interefered in local politics a bit. But the Chinese then left and nothing came of it. Admiral Zheng He was a Muslim, though non-arab. The fleet had a lot of people on it - 20,000 by some standards, which was as much as the population of many cities they cam across.
A lot of the court mandarins didn’t want to try and control the world. They were anti-imperialists, and believed that China would fritter away its strength in pointless attempts to control the world for little gain. They weren’t really enamored of the goods of other peoples, either. Court politics went back and forth from their Confucianist faction to more expansionistic ones (generally the eunuchs, like Zheng He), and the Confucian elite arranged for the records to be destroyed. They didn’t want the Emperors getting any foolish ideas and lust for wealth. However, we still have some of Zheng He’s accounts.