1421 The Year China Discovered America -by Gavin Menzies

Key people

• Emporer Zhu Di -2nd in Ming Dynasty and initiated the grandiose intellectual and exploratory agenda. Built the Forbidden City. Relocated the capital from Nanking to Beijing. Conceived and initiated the Yong-Le-Dadian, the largest scholarly enterprise ever undertaken in history which resulted in an encyclopedia of four thousand volumes. (Compare: Henry V had 6 handwritten books).
• Admiral Zheng He -Top court eunich. Moslem. Taken prisoner in the sacking of Mongolian stronghold Kun Ming, in which all adults were killed and boys not in puberty were castrated. Original name Ma He.

The Chinese Fleet

• 250 "Treasure" Ships -480 feet long , 180 feet wide, made of teak with silk sails.
• 1350 Patrol Ships
• 1350 Combat Vessels
• 400 War Ships
• 400 Freighters -for transporting grain, water and horses.
• 30,000 men went on the expedition of 1421

Compare with Europe. Henry the V invaded France in 1421 by transporting his troops across the Channel with four fishing boats, carrying 100 soldiers on each crossing, and could only sail in daylight hours.

Food and Drink

• Staples:
  • Soya beans -the soya bean sprouts were good for ascorbic acid.
  • Wheat
  • Millet
  • Rice -brown and the husk has Vitamin B1 which prevents beri-beri.
  • Carried by specialized grain ships.
• Citrus for prevention of scurvy
  • Limes
  • Lemons
  • Oranges
  • Pomelos
  • 3 month supply for each man
• Meat
  • Frogs
  • Dogs
  • Fish -caught by trained otters working in pairs to herd shoals into nets.
• Drink
  • green oolong tea
  • red tea
  • rice wine
  • fresh water was carried in huge tanks -replenished at rivers
  • desalinated sea-water was also available via a technology unique to China.

Compare this to Magellan's trip a century later -"We ate only old biscuits turned to powder, all full of worms and stinking of the urine the rats had made on it". And scurvy was a mainstay of European ocean going centuries beyond when the Chinese had acheived prevention by gardening fresh produce onboard their ships.

The concubines on the treasure ships

• Recruited from the floating brothels of Canton
• "Tanka" ethnic group -descendents of emigrants from remote interior China who settled on the coast for pearl fishing.
• Spoke a peculiar dialect.
• Refused to have their feet bound. (you go girl!)
• They attended the sumptuous banquets on ship, taught to hold their drink, and consumed huge amounts of wine, liqueurs and brandy.
• Were well educated, expected to play cards and chess, and participate in theater performances.
• Most were Buddhists.

Why did it end? Why did the Chinese navy cease to exist before the 1420's were over?

The navy was designed for trade and and intellectual discovery of the world outside of China. The Mandarin class, the educated bureaucrats in charge of economic management, were Confucian. Confucianism esteems farmers as the bedrock of society. Merchants, and trade, were perceived as antagonistic to the interests of the farmers and to stability and harmony in society. Trade and intellectual discovery of the world at large introduces change, flux, and a lack of harmony.

When the great fire of 1421 ruined the newly built Forbidden City, the Emperor fell on the hardest of times. His grandiose schemes of world exploration, intellectual discovery, and the like all became dirty words in Chinese view. The Mandarins and Confucianism took control of the government with a vengeance. The next two Emperors would dismantle the navy, forbid ocean sailing, destroyed almost all of the records of the 1421 expedition, and relocated the coastline dwelling population to 30 miles away from shore to enforce the inward isolationism even more.

The Chinese were centuries ahead of Europeans in every aspect of ocean travel. A certain opposite structure of Chinese as compared to European Middle Ages society would be the determining factor in how history unfolded from 1421 to the present. China was centrally controlled, it was one country with one Emperor. A decree, such as "burn all the records and dismantle the navy", is carried out thoroughly and quickly over the whole land. Europe is to this day plagued by tiny diverse nations with opposing social agendas. A decree by one idiotic or mad ruler does not carry force thoughout the whole land. For all of it's technological and social backwardness, Europe won the mantle of world exploration (and unfortunatley exploitation) not by superiority in any area but by the strange but powerful results of political diversity.