Main entry:

Menzies, Gavin.

Title & Author:

1421 : the year China discovered the world / Gavin Menzies.

Publication:

London : Bantam, 2002 (2003 [printing])

Description:

649 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), color maps, color portraits ; 20 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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 -- pt. VI. The Voyage of Yang Qing -- 15. Solving the Riddle -- VII. Portugal Inherits the Crown -- 16. Where the Earth Ends -- 17. Colonizing the New World -- 18. On the Shoulders of Giants -- Epilogue: The Chinese Legacy -- App. 1. Chinese Circumnavigation of the World 1421-3 -- App. 2. Eyewitness Diaries -- App. 3. Key Charts -- App. 4. The Determination of Longitude -- App. 5. Further Information on Website.

Summary:

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 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 world in Confucian harmony. Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe. But by the time the fleet returned home, Zhu Di had lost control and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so these great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their extraordinary journey were 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 over fifteen years research, 1421 - "The year China discovered the wolrd" is Gavin Menzies' enthralling account of the voyage of the emperor's fleet, the remarkable discoveries he made and the incontrovertible 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.

ISBN:

0553815229
9780553815221
0593050789
9780593050781
(2003)
0060537639

Subject:

Zheng, He.
Voyages around the world.
Discoveries in geography Chinese.
Voyages autour du monde.
Entdeckungsreise
Seefahrer
Ontdekkingsreizen.
Chinezen.
Kaarten (geografie)
China History Ming dynasty, 1368-1644.
Chine Histoire 1368-1644 (Dynastie des Ming)
China
Kina historia.

Form/genre:

History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 317097
Call No.: 317097
Copy: 1
Status: Available