Chinese Discovery America in 1421

[Gatekeeper]

It wasn't too long after 1421 that China went into an extended period of isolation, was it? Seems like they cut themselves off from the rest of the world and the admiral of this fleet was made persona non grata or something ...

Gatekeeper

[Sava]

I discovered Uranus the other night

[Ned]

The thing that doesn't ring true is that if the Chinese had really discovered America, why didn't they set up regular exploratory missions and colonization voyages? It seems more likely that if any Chinese did reach America, they never returned to China.

[Sava]

Perhaps they weren't motivated by the desire to exploit and colonize...

[orange]

Originally posted by Ned
The thing that doesn't ring true is that if the Chinese had really discovered America, why didn't they set up regular exploratory missions and colonization voyages? It seems more likely that if any Chinese did reach America, they never returned to China.

Yongle died, and the succeeding Ming emperors found the voyages unprofitable and not in the interests of China. Therefore, they stopped funding people like Zheng He.

Makes sense to me...

[orange]

the Chinese didn't benefit monetarily from their voyages nearly as much as the Western Europeans did...I mean one could make up for his startup costs 100 times over sailing from Portugal to say, India...but what did the west really have to offer the East at that point?

[molly bloom]

Frankly, this is yet another in a long line of St Brendan discovered the Americas, the Celts settled New England, the Phoenicians colonized Brazil, The Egyptians built Meso-American pyramids tales, told in sailors' bars around the world....What's next? The kraken ate my yacht, with interviews and photos at eleven?

I'm surprised nobody's pointed out that you also get jade in New Zealand, so presumably the Chinese were there too....

I'm all for evidence of hitherto unknown or inexplicable trading links/routes/cultural contacts- but only when they're tenable. Large scale evidence of ocean going (rather than coast hugging) Chinese sailing craft would be welcome. As would plausible linguistic connections between Pre-Columbian societies in the Americas and China in any period. A similarity in sound or meaning between two or three words in separate cultures on separate continents does not make for a pattern of emigration or contact between the two. If that were the case, we have, in the Welsh, one of the lost tribes of Israel....

[ravagon]

Originally posted by molly bloom
I'm surprised nobody's pointed out that you also get jade in New Zealand, so presumably the Chinese were there too....

Greenstone s'il vous plait.

Early Chinese voyages of discovery are hardly unprecedented in any case. There are even (reputed) maps of the Antarctic coastline - with a far greater accuracy than should have been possible with the ever-present ice shelf.

[Shadowstrike]

Aside from a lot of dubious claims (species migrations from South America to the CXarribean, Chinese sailors in Greenland, etc), the book does mentions important facts - for instance that of Chinese junk wrecks found near Australia and Nwe Zealand. Its not inconcieveable that the Chinese made it to the Americas, but of course I'd still like to see more conclusive evidence. Then again, people though Viking sagas of Vinland were a myth until the settlement was located in Newfoundland, so we never know. If Viking longboats could cross the Atlantic, it seems all the more plausible that Chinese junks could as well.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Shadowstrike

Then again, people though Viking sagas of Vinland were a myth until the settlement was located in Newfoundland, so we never know. If Viking longboats could cross the Atlantic, it seems all the more plausible that Chinese junks could as well.

You're assuming several things, which you shouldn't- that Chinese junks are/were as seaworthy in open ocean as Viking boats. That Chinese sailors were as familiar with the Easternmost (to them) parts of the Pacific as the Vikings were with the North and West Atlantic.
And moreover- that there were the same driving principles behind the voyages.

The Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows is as yet the westernmost Viking outpost we know of, and is at the end of a series of repeated voyages of emigration and exploration. The Vikings dearly loved to trade- bronze Buddhas from India have been found in Scandinavian grave sites, and Viking voyages for plunder and trade took them to places as far apart as North Africa and Greenland.

[Ned]

The hypthetical is that the Chinese fleet sailed across the Southern Atlantic from Africa. But, I have always wondered why it is not more logical for a fleet to head North. There is only a small gap between Siberia and Alaska that could be bridged with only a few hours sailing.

The Chinese certainly had ocean-going vessels of some type. Otherwise, how did Kubla Khan equip a fleet to invade Japan in the 1200's?

[orange]

the distance between the Korean peninsula and the south coast of Japan (where his fleets were headed) is hardly a voyage...

[Drake Tungsten]

the distance between the Korean peninsula and the south coast of Japan (where his fleets were headed) is hardly a voyage...

If it's such an easy jaunt, why was the Mongol fleet destroyed... twice?

[orange]

Protestant Wind?

[orange]

it was two typhoons. The Japanese regarded them as sent from Gods, since it saved them from invasion both times...but they did prepare for the second invasion a bit, so who knows how successful it would have been anyway...