1421: The Year China Discovered the World
About the Book
On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di’s loyal eunuch admirals. Their orders were ‘to proceed all the way to the end of the earth’.
The voyage would last for two years and by the time the fleet returned, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot, and the records of their journey destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook.
The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies’ enthralling account of this remarkable journey, of his discoveries and persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy, surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind – from sunken remains to votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea.
Revised and updated with new material – including evidence of an entire Chinese fleet wrecked on New Zealand’s South Island – 1421 is a brilliant, epoch-making work of historical detection that radically alters our understanding of world exploration and rewrites history itself.
CONTENTS
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
LIST OF PICTURES
CHINESE NOMENCLATURE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EPIGRAPH
MAP
INTRODUCTION
I: Imperial China
1. THE EMPEROR’S GRAND PLAN
2. A THUNDERBOLT STRIKES
3. THE FLEETS SET SAIL
II: The Guiding Stars
4. ROUNDING THE CAPE
5. THE NEW WORLD
III: The Voyage of Hong Bao
6. VOYAGE TO ANTARCTICA AND AUSTRALIA
IV: The Voyage of Zhou Man
7. AUSTRALIA
8. THE BARRIER REEF AND THE SPICE ISLANDS
9. THE FIRST COLONY IN THE AMERICAS
10. COLONIES IN CENTRAL AMERICA
V: The Voyage of Zhou Wen
11. SATAN’S ISLAND
12. THE TREASURE FLEET RUNS AGROUND
13. SETTLEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA
14. EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE
VI: The Voyage of Yang Qing
15. SOLVING THE RIDDLE
VII: Portugal Inherits the Crown
16. WHERE THE EARTH END
17. COLONIZING THE NEW WORLD
18. ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
EPILOGUE: THE CHINESE LEGACY
POSTSCRIPT
PICTURE SECTION
APPENDICES
1. CHINESE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE WORLD 1421-3: Synopsis of Evidence
2. THE DETERMINATION OF LONGITUDE
NOTES
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
This book is dedicated to my beloved wife Marcella, who has travelled with
me on the journeys related in this book and through life.
LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
1. Voyages of the Treasure Fleets, 1421–3
2. East Asia, c.1421
3. The voyage to Sofala
4. The circulatory winds and currents in the South Atlantic Ocean
5. i) The Kangnido map showing Africa
ii) The Kangnido map corrected for longitude
iii) Modern Africa
6. The journey to the Cape Verde Islands
7. The journey to Tierra del Fuego
8. The Piri Reis map compared to modern Patagonia, showing the Straits of Magellan
9. The Falkland Islands on the Piri Reis, compared to a modern map
10. The journey to Antarctica
11. Locating the Southern Cross
12. Hong Bao’s journey to Australia
13. Zhou Man’s journey to Australia
14. Evidence of the visit of the Chinese treasure fleet to Australia
15. Auckland and Campbell Islands, as shown on the Jean Rotz map
16. The journey around New Zealand
17. The routes of Hong Bao and Zhou Man around Australia
18. Hong Bao’s journey home and Zhou Man’s journey through the Spice Islands
19. The San Francisco Bay area, showing the winds blowing into the Sacramento River
20. Evidence of the visit of the Chinese treasure fleet to the Americas
21. Zhou Wen’s journey through the Caribbean
22. Guadeloupe shown on the Pizzigano map, compared with a modern map
23. Puerto Rico shown on the Pizzigano map, compared with a modern map
24. The bays and inlets of Puerto Rico, depicted on the Pizzigano map
25. The Cantino map showing the Caribbean and Florida, compared with a modern map
26. Locations of unidentified wrecks on the route to Bimini
27. The junks’ approach to Bimini and the Bimini Road
28. Zhou Wen’s journey up the east coast of Florida
29. The journey to Rhode Island
30. The locations of standing stones in Massachusetts
31. The voyage to the Azores and Cape Verde Islands
32. The journey around Greenland
33. Greenland shown on the Vinland map, compared to a modern map
34. Chinese bases across the Pacific Ocean
Diagrams
1. Solar eclipse
2. Lunar eclipse
3. The progression of a lunar eclipse across the Earth’s surface
LIST OF PICTURES
Ming Emperor Ch’êng-tsu (Zhu Di), anonymous painting on silk, Ming period. National Palace Museum, Taipei.
The Gate of Heavenly Purity, the Forbidden City, Beijing, early 15th century. Werner Forman Archive; the Hall of Harvest Prayer, the Temple of Heaven, early 15th century. Getty Images/Image Bank; the Great Wall near Beijing. Getty Images/Telegraph Colour Library; general view of the Forbidden City from Coal Hill Park, Getty Images/Tony Stone.
Taoist ceramic shrine from Longquan, Zhejiang province, 1406. British Museum; quilin, the Spirit Way. Jane Taylor/Sonia Halliday Photographs; military dignitary, the Spirit Way, Ming tombs, near Beijing. Jane Taylor/Sonia Halliday Photographs; civil dignitary, the Spirit Way. Christine Pemberton/Hutchison Picture Library; kneeling elephant, the Spirit Way. Jane Taylor/Sonia Halliday Photographs.
Blue and white porcelain dish with melon decoration, Ming, Yongle (Zhu Di) period (1403–24), Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province. British Museum; blue and white porcelain flask with lychee decoration, Ming, Yongle (Zhu Di) period (1403–24), Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province. British Museum; jade recumbent dog, 14th or 15th century. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; mallet-shaped lacquer vase, probably early 15th century. Christie’s Images; woven silk textile with climbing boys motif, 13th to 15th century. The Textile Gallery, London.
The Tribute Giraffe with Attendant by Shen Tu (1357–1434), ink and water-colour on silk. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Given by John T. Dorrance.
Fra Mauro’s map, 1459, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. Foto Toso.
Kangnido map by Ch’uan Chin and Li Hui. 1402. Ryukoku University Library; the Cape of Good Hope on a stormy day. © Nik Wheeler/Corbis.
Galle stele. Dominic Sansoni; straits of Malacca, Malaysia. Chris Caldicott; Chinese fishing nets at Cochin, Kerala, India. Ancient Art & Architecture Collection; coast of Zanzibar. Chri
s Caldicott; the fort at Kilwa, Tanzania. Werner Forman Archive; pillar tomb at Kunduchi, Tanzania. Werner Forman Archive.
The Piri Reis map, 1513. Topkapi Museum, Istanbul.
View of the South Orkney Islands, Antarctica. John Noble/Wilderness Photographic Library; a tabular iceberg, South Ocean, Antarctica. John Noble/Wilderness Photographic Library.
Fourteenth-century blue and white porcelain bowl with a phoenix and a quilin cavorting between lotus scrolls, recovered from the Pandanan wreck, Palawan, Philippines. Courtesy of the National Museum of the Philippines.
The Jean Rotz map, 1542. British Library, Department of Maps.
Lacquer chest by Dámaso Ayala Jiménez, 1997, from the collection of Fomento Cultural Banamex, A.C.; Rosa laevigata. © Dr Koonlin Tan; bronze cannon; Chinese bronze mirror; coin of Zhu Di (1403–24); two Central American grinding stones. All recovered from the Pandanan wreck, Palawan, Philippines. Courtesy of the National Museum of the Philippines.
The Waldseemüller map, 1507. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The Pizzigano chart, 1424. James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Guadeloupe: La Souffrière, Basse Terre, and Les Saintes from the sea. Both courtesy Gérard Lafleur.
The Vinland map. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven; diver above the Bimini Road. Lynne Sladky/Associated Press; underwater view of the Bimini Road. Wade Pemberton; pyramid, Guímar, Tenerife, Canary Islands. Courtesy Casa Chacona Museum.
Cantino world chart, 1502. Biblioteca Estense, Modena.
Sixteenth-century engraved view of Calicut. Ancient Art & Architecture Collection; detail of a 14th-century Catalan atlas, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Christopher Columbus by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561), Museo Navale di Pegli, Genoa. Photo Scala; Vasco da Gama, from a Portuguese manuscript, c. 1558, the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Photo Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource/Scala; contemporary anonymous portrait of Ferdinand Magellan. Photo Scala; Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich and two others by John Hamilton Mortimer, c. 1771, National Library of Australia, Canberra. © Bridgeman Art Library; A View of the ‘Endeavour’s’ Watering Place in the Bay of Good Success, 1769, British Library. © Bridgeman Art Library.
Henry the Navigator, from The Monument to the Discoveries, Belèm, Lisbon. © Dave G. Houser/Corbis
The line illustrations appearing on the opening pages of the chapters are taken from The Illustrated Record of Strange Countries (I Yü Thu Chih), c. 1420, and are reproduced by courtesy of the Cambridge University Library.
Sources of other line illustrations are as follows: 152: Bridgeman Art Library; 204: from Science and Civilisation in China, Joseph Needham, 1971, Cambridge University Press; 287: from Nova typis transacta navigatio by Honorius Philoponus, 1621; 329: The Newport Historical Society (P2278); 367: Mark Horton/Debbie Fulford, from Shanga, the archaeology of a Muslim trading community on the coast of East Africa by Mark Horton, 1996, British Institute in East Africa; 404: Heritage-Images/© the British Library; 436: the British Library, Department of Manuscripts.
The illustration here, the maps here and here were drawn by Neil Gower; the remaining maps were compiled by Jerry Fowler and Julia Lloyd.
CHINESE NOMENCLATURE
MOST NAMES ARE rendered in Pinyin, which is now standard in China – for example, Mao Zedong is the modern spelling, not Mao Tse-tung. For simplicity, however, I have retained the older form of romanization known as Wade-Giles for names that have long been familiar to Western readers. The Wu Pei Chi, for instance, is more readily recognized than the Wu Bei Zhi. I have also kept the more established spellings of Cantonese place names, writing of Hong Kong and Canton rather than Xianggang and Guangdong. Inscriptions on navigational charts have been left in the older form, as have academic texts in the bibliography.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A BRIEF OUTLINE of some of the more important maps, documents and other pieces of evidence I have used to form the conclusions presented in this book has been included in the Appendices, and the primary and secondary sources I have used are cited in the Bibliography. However, this is a book for the general reader, not the academic; three-quarters of the evidence has had to be omitted for lack of space. For that reason much of the detail of my proofs and calculations and a large amount of other supporting material have been placed on the internet at www.gavinmenzies.net. In addition, I am happy to answer any specific queries and to make my research notes available to any bona fide researcher. Contact should be made in writing, via my publisher in the first instance.
Although my name appears on the cover, this book is a collective endeavour and would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many more people than I can possibly name in the limited space available. My sincere thanks to all those who have helped me with advice, guidance and support, and to those who have been inadvertently omitted my sincere apologies – corrections will follow in the next edition.
I am indebted first to those in the Royal Navy who educated me in seamanship, cartography and astro-navigation. The discoveries on which the book is based could never have come about without that knowledge. I visited over nine hundred museums in the course of my researches, but must single out the wonderful collections of the British Museum, the Shaanxi Historical Museum in Xian, China, and Lima’s Museum of History. I am also grateful to the Biblioteca Marciana and the Museo Correr in Venice; Barcelona’s Museu Marítim; the Fornsals Museum, Visby, on the island of Gottland; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; the Smithsonian Institution; the James Cook Museum in northern Australia; the Waikato Museum of Art and History, Auckland, New Zealand; the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, Oregon; the Natural History Museum of North California; the Zihuantanejo Museum, Michoacán, Mexico; the National Museum of Australia; and the Warrnambool Art Gallery.
In England, my sincere thanks go to the British Library, particularly the staff of the Map Library and Humanities I, with its matchless collection and superb service. The School of Oriental and African Studies, the School of Slavonic Studies, and the School of Islamic Studies of the University of London; the Royal Asiatic Society; the Public Record Office; the Hakluyt Society; the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Cambridge University Library and the Eastern Art Library, Oxford, have also been very helpful.
All the distinguished experts I asked to read and comment on my draft have generously given of their time. I am grateful for their help but must stress that responsibility for the opinions expressed in this book and for any errors and omissions rests with me alone. First and foremost, my thanks go to Professor Carol Urness, curator of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; and also to Dr Joseph McDermott, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge; Professor John E. Wills Jr, Professor of History at the University of Southern California; Professor G. R. Hawting, Professor of Medieval and Islamic History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London; Dr Konrad Hirschler; John Julius Norwich; Dr Taylor Terlecki of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature, University of Oxford; Dr Ilenya Schiavon of the Venice State Archive; Dr Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson; Professor Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford; and Admiral Sir John Woodward GBE KCB.
Among other individuals, I must mention Dr Linda Clark at the History of Parliament Offices; Professor Mike Baillie of the Palaeoecology Centre of the School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast; Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich; Ms Helen Stafford and Professor Philip Woodworth of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Birkenhead; Bob Headland of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge; Shane Winser of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers); Brian Thynne of the Caird Library of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; Dr Piero Falchetta, librarian of the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice; Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum; Professor Bryan Syke
s, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford; Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McIntosh KBE CB DSO DSC; Dr Fernanda Allen; and Ron Hughes.
My thanks also go to Dr Johan de Zoete, curator of the Museum Enschede, Haarlem; Dr Muhammad Waley, curator of the Persian and Turkish Collection at the British Museum; Stuart Stirling; Professor Timothy Laughton, Department of Art History, University of Essex; Professor Sue Povey, a human geneticist at the Department of Biology, University College, London; the late Dr Josie Hicks; Professor Christie G. Turner II, Regent’s Professor of Anthropology, Arizona State University; Professor John Oliver, Department of Astronomy, University of Florida; Marshall Payn; Alan Stimson, formerly Keeper of Navigation, Royal Observatory, Greenwich; and Dr K. Tan.
Professor João Camilo dos Santos of the Portuguese Embassy, London; the curator of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon; Daphne Horne, curator of the Gympie Historical Society Museum, Queensland; Brett Green; Vanessa Collingridge; Michael Fitzgerald, curator of the Tepapa Museum, Tongarewa; Catherine Mercer, librarian at the Waikato Museum; Robin J. Watt; and Professor Roderich Ptak of Munich University have all been very helpful to me too, and my thanks must also go to Steven Hallett of Xanadu Productions; Professor Yingsheng Liu, Nanjing; Dr Eusebio Dizon, Director of Underwater Research, Museum of Manila, Philippines; Madam Wenlan Peng, formerly Head of English Language Broadcasting for Central China Television; Captain Richard Channon; Commander Mike Tuohy; Christine Handte, the captain of the sailing junk RV Heraclitus; the curator of the Macao Maritime Museum; Dr Wang Tao of the School of Oriental and African Studies; Miss Viviana Wong; Professor Kenneth Hsu; Dr John Furry; David Stewart and the Reed and St Louis families; Robert Metcalf; Commodore Bill Swinley, former Chief of the Bahamas Armed Forces; Monsieur Gérard Lafleur; David Borden; Kirsten and Professor Paul Seaver; Professor George Maul, Florida Institute of Technology; Professor Maude Phipps; and Dr K.K. Tan.
I am indebted to the following Chinese experts. For reconstructing junks of Zheng He’s fleet, Rear Admiral and Professor Zheng Ming, Professor Yuan-Ou (president of the Chinese Marine History Researchers Association) and Associate Professor Kong Ling-Ren; for ancient Chinese maps, Professor Zhu Jianqu; for Ming foreign policy as it related to Zheng He’s expeditions, Professors Shi Ping, Chen Xiansi, Zhu Yafei, Chao Zhong Chang, Chen Qimao and Vice-Admiral Liu Ta Tsai; for Sino-African relations, Professor Zheng Yi-Jun; for Sino-Sri Lankan relations, Dr Tao Jingyi; for Sino-Malaccan relations, Professor Liao Dake; for Sino-Thai relations, Professor Li Dao Gang; for Sino-Indian relations, Professors Zhu Wei and Cheng Bei Bei; for Nanjing’s garrison, Professor Xu Yuhu; for provisioning Zheng He’s fleet and the role of Taicang, Shouping Huang (director of the Zheng He Memorial Hall of Liu He), Huiming Cheng (secretary of the Taicang Municipal Committee of the Communist Party) and Yao Ming Sun (vice-secretary); for Zheng He’s treatment of foreign envoys, Professors Yang Zhao, Yang Suming, Yang Hong Wei and Zhou Zhiya; for the aims of Zheng He’s voyages, Professors Chen Xiansi, Du Xiujuan and Yan Xiamei; for Chinese colonies in south-east Asia, Professors Su Haitao, Zhaojijun Duxiujuan, Luo Mi, Zhengyong Tao and Liu Kun; for the Chinese ‘Discovery of America’, Professors Zhu Jianqiu, Luo Zong Zhen and Liu Manchum; for medical support for Zheng He’s fleet, Professor Gong Jinhan; and for astronavigation, Professor Zhang Guo Ying.