1421

[Lucas]

Anyone read this? I'm about half way through. It is a great read. If you like explorative history, you better read this or you will be missing out on some PRIME GOLD!

1421 (http://www.1421.tv/)

[GeneChing]

I started it, but got distracted and put it down.

It was discussed somewhat on our A Case for the influence of the Ming Dynasty Navy on Shaolin Martial Arts thread (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39057).

[Lucas]

omg gene pick it back up! it gets good as soon as the great treasure fleet sets sail !!!!

its the Straight of Hong Bao now. F that other guy, M-something...

[Xiao3 Meng4]

Zheng He's fleet was real. It may have sailed much further than traditionally expected. However, I now strongly doubt that the fleet made it to the North-East coast of North America. Some of the evidence used to make the case for a Chinese presence (such as the Cape Breton settlement (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2006/07/27/capebreton-chinese.html)) has been debunked. Evidence points way more towards Medieval Pre-Columbian Scandinavians having left traces in the Great lakes/North Atlantic Seaboard region, including within the native oral traditions of the areas in question (especially the Mi'kmaq.)

There's better evidence pointing to Medieval Chinese presences along the West coast, Mexico, South America and Australia.

Menzies is a speculator. Granted, he's made some great observations regarding old navigational maps, but his interpretation of some of the non-maritime "evidence" is sometimes pure speculation which discounts actual, verifiable facts.

Other than that, it's a fun read, and it certainly brings up interesting questions regarding Chinese Naval hand-to-hand combat and its influence on Kung Fu, especially Shaolin.

[solo1]

finished it about 2 weeks ago. The first half of the book was riveting the second half, not so much. But overall a good read.

[Lucas]

im about halfway through, so far its been a fun read. interesting stuff

[ghostexorcist]

I haven't read the book for a reason. It's basically a big joke in the scholarly community. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1421:_The_Year_China_Discovered_the_World#1421:_Th e_Year_China_Discovered_the_World

[Lucas]

Finished reading the book. There is really an astounding amount of research done. He does also have a lot of backing you know. For all the people that critisize, there is the other side as well. Of course a lof of whats in the book is speculation, but there is a ton of verifiable facts, and a plethora of evidence. You really should read the book first before coming to any conclusions.

I dont put too much weight on wiki opinions. lol...

So far from what i read of people disputing it boils down to "NUH UH, DIDNT HAPPEN"

i would like to see one person go point by point on his book with an actual debate for every peice of evidence and every claim. With stronger evidence to discount what he's found. He had help from HUNDREDS of scholars, professors, archeologists, so there are HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of professionals that do agree with him.

Also take into account the CHINESE scholars that were developing this very trail before him.

Seriously there are some forms of evidence you would have to be completely retarded to refute, or just bone headed and blind.

No i dont buy all the claims or speculations in the book, that would be silly, but there is quite a bit of proven evidence laid out in the book as well. To ignore some of these things would be just as silly.

So, show me a source debating point by point every piece of evidence, otherwise his argument is much more solid than any ive seen against his.

Id suggest to read the book for yourself and form your own opinion. For all the 'scholars' that joke, there are serious scholars taht back him up too. its a he said she said and your forming an opinion based on one side of the he said she said without doing your own research....I know some people that approach kungfu the same way....

He has all the hundreds, yes, hundreds, of names of people who back him and helped him with his years of research and compiltion of data, facts, evidence, and hypothosis. All his sources are listed, and you can verify a lot of the claims and evidence yourself.

im half and half on it basically.

[ghostexorcist]

Finished reading the book. There is really an astounding amount of research done. He does also have a lot of backing you know. For all the people that critisize, there is the other side as well. Of course a lof of whats in the book is speculation, but there is a ton of verifiable facts, and a plethora of evidence. You really should read the book first before coming to any conclusions.

I dont put too much weight on wiki opinions. lol...

So far from what i read of people disputing it boils down to "NUH UH, DIDNT HAPPEN"

i would like to see one person go point by point on his book with an actual debate for every peice of evidence and every claim. With stronger evidence to discount what he's found. He had help from HUNDREDS of scholars, professors, archeologists, so there are HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of professionals that do agree with him.

Also take into account the CHINESE scholars that were developing this very trail before him.

Seriously there are some forms of evidence you would have to be completely retarded to refute, or just bone headed and blind.

No i dont buy all the claims or speculations in the book, that would be silly, but there is quite a bit of proven evidence laid out in the book as well. To ignore some of these things would be just as silly.

So, show me a source debating point by point every piece of evidence, otherwise his argument is much more solid than any ive seen against his.

Id suggest to read the book for yourself and form your own opinion. For all the 'scholars' that joke, there are serious scholars taht back him up too. its a he said she said and your forming an opinion based on one side of the he said she said without doing your own research....I know some people that approach kungfu the same way....

He has all the hundreds, yes, hundreds, of names of people who back him and helped him with his years of research and compiltion of data, facts, evidence, and hypothosis. All his sources are listed, and you can verify a lot of the claims and evidence yourself.

im half and half on it basically.
The reason I pointed towards the wikipedia article is because the section is sourced with works that present counter arguments against the author's theories. One such work is "How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America". If you have access to JSTOR you should be able to give it look.

I'll pass on the book.

[Lucas]

Yep, ive read that. plus other review articles. i agree with a lot of what they say. however there are some things that are pretty difficult to refute, though..you wouldnt know that. just as much as menzies speculates, the critics gloss over the evidence that is verifiable and hard.

im sure being made an honorary professor at the university of (i believe)bejing and giving regular lectures is because they think hes full of it lol

[ghostexorcist]

Yep, ive read that. plus other review articles. i agree with a lot of what they say. however there are some things that are pretty difficult to refute, though..you wouldnt know that. just as much as menzies speculates, the critics gloss over the evidence that is verifiable and hard.

im sure being made an honorary professor at the university of (i believe)bejing and giving regular lectures is because they think hes full of it lol

It doesn't really matter to me either way. I'm just pointing out that not everyone has a positive view of the book.

[Lucas]

oh ya definately, thats a given for anything controversial. a lot of his book is pretty far fetched...

[Xiao3 Meng4]

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90782/90873/7041564.html

http://www.people.com.cn/mediafile/pic/20100626/56/17270217255078282260.jpg



A recently excavated tomb in Nanjing has been confirmed to be the grave of Zheng He, a eunuch from the early Ming Dynasty who led historic voyages to Southeast Asia and eastern Africa. The tomb was discovered accidentally on June 18th by workers at a construction site near Zutang Mountain that also holds the tombs of many other Ming Dynasty eunuchs, the Yangtse Evening News reported.

The tomb was 8.5 meters long and 4 meters wide and was built with blue bricks, which archaeologists said were only used in structures belonging to dignitaries during the time of Zheng He.

But experts believed his remains were not placed in the tomb because of the long distance between Nanjing and India, where he died during a visit in 1433.

[GeneChing]

500 years ago, China destroyed its world-dominating navy because its political elite was afraid of free trade (http://www.businessinsider.com/china-zhenge-he-treasure-fleet-elite-free-trade-2017-2)
Jim Edwards
Feb. 26, 2017, 3:00 AM

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/58b28b0bdd089506398b4cac-2400/nanjingtreasureboat-p1070978.jpeg
A full-size replica of a "middle-sized treasure boat" (63.25 m long) of the Zheng He fleet at the Treasure Boat Shipyard site in Nanjing. Vmenkov / Wikimedia, CC

In the 1400s, China owned the greatest seagoing fleet in the world, up to 3,500 ships at its peak. (The U.S. Navy today has only 430). Some of them were five times the size of the ships being built in Europe at the time.

But by 1525, all of China's "Treasure Fleet" ships had been destroyed — burned in their docks or left to rot by the government. China had been poised to circumnavigate the globe decades before the Europeans did, but instead the Ming Dynasty retracted into itself and entered a 200-year-long slump.

Few people in the West realise how economically and technologically advanced China was by the 1400s. The Treasure Fleet was vast — some vessels were up to 120 metres long. (Christopher Columbus's Santa Maria was only 19 metres.) A Chinese ship might have several decks inside it, up to nine masts, twelve sails, and contain luxurious staterooms and balconies, with a crew of up to 1,500, according to one description. On one journey, 317 of these ships set sail at once.

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/58b28b0bdd089506398b4cae-1001/admiralzhenghe.jpg
Admiral Zheng He. jonjanego, Wikimedia, CC

Under the command of the eunuch admiral Zheng He, the Chinese were routinely sailing to Africa and back decades before Columbus was even born. Yet they did not go on to conquer the world. Instead, the Chinese decided to destroy their boats and stop sailing West.

In the 1470s the government destroyed Zheng's records so that his expeditions could not be repeated. And by 1525 all the ships in the Treasure Fleet were gone.

Why?

Historians have a variety of explanations. The Yongle Emperor was distracted by a land war against the Mongols, a conflict in which the navy was irrelevant, for instance. Others argue that the vast cost of the Treasure Fleet's expeditions far outweighed the actual treasure they came back with.

But Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economist, prefers a different theory. In his book "The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality," he argues that the Chinese burned their boats (almost literally) in an attempt to control foreign trade.

The Treasure Fleet was abandoned at the urging of the political elite inside the Emperor's civil service who had become alarmed at the rise of a newly rich merchant class. "The emperors of China, worried about threats to their power from merchants, banned oceangoing voyages in 1430, so that Admiral Zheng He’s explorations were an end, not a beginning," Deaton writes.

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/58b28b0bdd089506398b4caf-1138/zhenghestreasureship1.jpg
A model of one of Zheng he's ships. Mike Peel, Wikimedia, CC

China retracted into itself and the industrial revolution sprouted first in Western Europe, three centuries later. China's influence on the world got smaller until the 1600s. And only in the last 10 years or so has China fully caught up with the West.

Over coffee at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, I asked Deaton if he thought the Treasure Fleet story was newly relevant, given the sudden desire in the US and the UK to withdraw from international free trade agreements in favour of protectionist policies. I also wanted to know whether he thought the fear of trade might also be a function of increasing inequality in the West. When society becomes extremely unequal, elites tend to gain enough power to use the government to secure artificial advantages that shield them from competition.

In other words, are we looking at another Treasure Fleet moment right now, and failing to see the danger of elite-driven rentier mercantilism?

British-born economist Angus Deaton of Princeton University speaks in a news conference after winning the 2015 economics Nobel Prize on the Princeton University campus in Princeton, New Jersey October 12, 2015. Deaton has won the 2015 economics Nobel Prize for his work on consumption, poverty and welfare that has helped governments to improve policy through tools such as household surveys and tax changes. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the microeconomist's work had been a major influence on policy making, helping for example to determine how different social groups are affected by specific changes in taxation.

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/585e2ee1dd08951c208b4a0a-1400/undefined
Economist Angus Deaton. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter

"A lot of inequality comes from that sort of rent-seeking, you know, from going to Washington and saying 'protect my industry, or let me charge whatever I want for pharmaceutical prices, and pass a law which says that everything that's approved by the FDA must be covered by government health schemes,' and that's basically legalised theft," Deaton said.

"So you've got a big number of people in banks, pharmaceutical companies, the military, and so on in the US who are getting fabulously rich by stealing stuff essentially, and I think that ****es off [people]."

"The bank bailout gave hundreds of billions of public money to people who were already probably the richest people the planet has ever seen, right? Now it doesn't make you 'deplorable' if you resent that. I think that's the truth of where inequality is really hurting us. These people are being rewarded for hurting us."

OK, so tracing a direct link from the Treasure Fleet of the 1400s to Trump and Brexit might be a stretch.

But it's more than a little ironic that 500 years after Zhenge He set sail, the Chinese empire is now begging the West to keep trade routes open. The West, meanwhile, wants to put up new barriers. At the same time as Deaton and I discussed the fate of the Treasure Fleet, Chinese president Xi Jinping went on stage at Davos to castigate Trump and the US for being scared of international trade. He used nautical terms to do so:

"If one is always afraid of the sea he will get drowned in the ocean sooner or later. So what China did was to take a brave step forward and embrace the market. We have had our fair share of choking in the water and we have encountered choppy waves. But we have learned how to swim in this process. It has been the right strategic choice ... whether you like it or not the global market is the big ocean you cannot escape from," Xi said.

No doubt Admiral Zhenge He would have approved.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Yeah, it's a stretch. But an interesting point in history, nonetheless.