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1421: The Year China Discovered America by…
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1421: The Year China Discovered America

by Gavin Menzies

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1,998663,053 (3.3)45
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Heavy going in places purely because of the mass of evidence but fascinating and convincing reading. ( )
  nwdavies | May 8, 2013 |
Heavy going in places purely because of the mass of evidence but fascinating and convincing reading. ( )
  nwdavies | May 8, 2013 |
This book is totally fascinating. Unfortunately most of it is wild conjecture. The historical background about the Chinese fleets is pretty solid. They traded around the Indian Ocean and its not too farfetched they could have gone to Australia. The case for reaching America is tenuous but still intriguing. The supposed exploration of Greenland is just crazy talk.

By the way recent scholarship points to the Polynesians as responsible for bringing chickens to South America. ( )
  clay.blankenship | Apr 30, 2013 |
Menzies makes a pretty compelling case for the Chinese fleets discovering America. Not only did I learn about the Chinese fleets but I also learned more about cartography, sailing, and Chinese politics at the time.

Even if Menzie's theory ends up being wrong the book is well worth the read. ( )
  finalcut | Apr 2, 2013 |
A very interesting premise, but the evidence becomes more and more suspect the farther away from China the author goes. And for all his talk about navigational skill and maritime experience, the author conveniently neglects to mention that he crashed a destroyer. ( )
  HadriantheBlind | Mar 30, 2013 |
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This book is dedicated to my beloved wife Marcella, who has travelled with me on the journeys related in this book and through life.
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On 2 February 1421, China dwarfed every nation on earth.
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 006054094X, Paperback)

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.

When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed was how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted in America and other countries the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world.

Unveiling incontrovertible evidence of these astonishing voyages, 1421 rewrites our understanding of history. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be reconceived due to this landmark work of historical investigation.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:35:59 -0500)

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"On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built from the finest teak, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was "to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. Their journey would last more than two years and circle the globe." "When they returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships, now considered frivolous, were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed were how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted to America, Australia, New Zealand and South America the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world." "Now, in a landmark historical journey, Gavin Menzies, who spent fifteen years tracing the astonishing voyages of the Chinese fleet, shares the remarkable account of his discoveries and the incontrovertible evidence to support them. His compelling narrative pulls together ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators to prove that the Chinese had also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years ahead of the Europeans. 1421 describes the artifacts and inscribed stones left behind by the emperor's fleet, the evidence of wrecked junks along its route - discovered in locations ranging from the middle of the Mississippi River to tributaries of the Amazon - and the ornate votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, in honor of Shao Lin, goddess of the sea."--BOOK JACKET.… (more)

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