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China Discovers the New World by Hsing Lee
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Was China first
to the Americas?
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There are many varying opinions on who first ‘discovered’ the Americas.
First contact with Native Americans has been at times attributed to
Columbus, to the Vikings, to Irish Monks or Templars, and to Africans.
The prevailing viewpoint for many years in North American schools
and textbooks was that Columbus got here first. That view has been
put to the test by one Gavin Menzies, a former British Submarine Commander,
in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered America.
Menzies, using old charts and historical records, has traced the voyages
of the Chinese fleets during their age of exploration in the early
15th century. Menzies puts forth a compelling argument that decades
before Columbus, Cook, and Magellan, a Chinese Admiral named Zheng
He and his fleet circumnavigated the globe, mapping the coastlines
of the Americas, Africa, Europe, India, Polynesia, Australia, and
the Caribbean.
Admiral Zheng’s junks were so large that Columbus’ Santa Maria, seen
alongside one of the treasure ships, would look like a dinghy. The
highest mast of the Santa Maria didn’t’t even make it up to the stern
of the nine-mast Chinese junks, as can be seen in the illustration
accompanying this article. The Chinese treasure ships were the 15th
century equivalent of today’s cruise ships or aircraft carriers. They
were designed for long sea voyages, and had their own desalination
plants and gardens on board to combat dehydration and scurvy.
Zheng He had an entire fleet of these ships. His sponsor, the Son
of Heaven, Emperor Zhu Di, was fanatical about expanding the influence
of China, about discovery, and about finding new trading partners
in far off lands. After becoming Emperor, he created shipyards at
Longjiang (near Nanjing) to build his fleet. Seven dry docks were
built, each capable of building three ships at once. Zhu Di commissioned
1,361 new ships to be built, and hired tens of thousands of workers
to complete the project.
Such ambition didn’t come without a heavy economic and political price.
By 1405, the Mandarins, who were Confucians and responsible for tax
collection, didn’t think the fleet and voyages of exploration were
worth the effort. They favoured isolation over Imperial expansion.
Fortunately for Zhu Di, Admiral Zheng returned from a voyage to Africa
in 1405 with a giraffe, which they passed off as the legendary Quilin
(Kirin), a Unicorn like beast. It was enough to sufficiently, "ooh"
and "ahh" the public so that the fleet was allowed to continue growing.
In the end, the fleet of 3,500 ships included 250 giant Treasure ships,
1,350 patrol ships, 400 freighters and at least 400 large warships.
Over the next two decades, under the command of Admiral Zheng, the
Chinese fleets set out on an adventure for the ages. Between 1421
and 1423, the Treasure ships circumnavigated the globe, decades before
Magellan. There is evidence that they may have even established a
small colony on the West Coast of the Americas. In Chapter 9 of 1421,
Menzies describes the archeological and biological evidence at length.
His evidence is convincing. The irony of the tale is that when Zheng
He returned to China in 1423, he was in for a surprise. The Mandarin
Confucians had taken over. China was done with exploration. The Mandarins
ordered the fleet destroyed, along with all of Zheng’s records. That’s
why until now, historians have had such a hard time understanding
the origins of many maps the Europeans explorers had in their possession
prior to their voyages of ‘discovery’.
The actions of the Mandarins reminded me of Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s
Guide To the Galaxy series. China sends out a grand fleet to explore
the world. Thousands of man-years of labour are spent on discovery.
But when the explorers return home, the jaded Mandarins scoff, and
write off the entire planet as, "mostly harmless". And they never
looked back.
This book could have been a very dry read. But in the hands of Gavin
Menzies, the story becomes a detective novel. At times, I found myself
marveling at Menzies’ ingenuity in exploring leads. His was a visionquest
a work of passion and discovery as impressive as the work of the explorers
of the 15th century. I came away convinced that the explanation in
Mr. Menzies’ preface of why he was able to piece together a puzzle
no scholar had been able to solve was correct. His life experiences
living in China, becoming a submarine commander, and his passion for
charts and astronomy gave him a perspective uniquely suited to this
task.
Menzies has already given presentations to prominent historical and
adventurer’s societies in England and elsewhere. According to Mr.
Menzies, who sent out 300 copies of his book to scholars and historians
prior to publication, his account is being accepted widely, by about
85% of scholars.
Some feel he overemphasized the importance of the 1421 voyages, as
there’s ample evidence that the Chinese had made previous voyages
to the New World prior to these dates, which Mr. Menzies himself discusses
in the book. Others take issue with his estimations of the size of
the Treasure ships and the translation of Chinese cartography to a
Western standard. But overall, there appears to be agreement that
Mr. Menzies research is thorough, well documented, and essentially
correct.
Admiral Zheng He himself was an interesting character, which is part
of the book’s charm. Not only was he a Chinese Eunuch, but there’s
also another side to Admiral Zheng which makes the book of importance
to these interesting times in which we live.
He was not a Confucian, nor was he a Buddhist. There are only two
words on the tomb of Admiral Zheng He ALLAH AKBAR!
The man who first mapped the West Coast of America from an oceangoing
perspective, finding common ground with the peoples of the Americas,
was a Muslim. Interesting indeed.
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