Admiral Zheng He’s Voyages
I visited an exhibition here in Singapore that celebrated the 600th anniversary of Zheng He’s first voyage. This famed Chinese explorer set voyaged through the South China Sea, Straits of Malacca and to India and Africa. He represented a brief period of Chinese exploration that preceded the Portuguese and Spanish. The exhibition presented details about his life (he was born a Muslim in the province of Yunnan), his ascendancy (as an eunuch in the service of the emperor) and the enormous fleets that he commanded (over 100 ships and hundreds of thousands of sailors).
The interesting part of this exhibition was that it based much of it’s material on the recent bestseller from Gavin Menzies titled 1421: The Year China Discovered America. It was a theory put forth that part of Zheng He’s fleet had continued his journeys and crossed the Atlantic and Pacific hundreds of years before the Europeans did.
It was based on cartographic evidence that early explorers were armed with maps that indicated the possible presence of land to the West of the Azores prior to Columbus’s voyage. The author started his search at the James Ford Bell library, where the earliest dated maps had references to unknown islands on the far end of the Atlantic.
His theory is thinly supported by archaeological finds of possible Chinese artifacts around the world, as well as through etymological comparison of the names given in the maps. Unfortunately, the most important evidence - details from Zheng He’s journeys - were burnt by the Emperor when China decided to shut itself to the outside world. Even then, rumours abound that perhaps some writings were salvaged and still remain hidden somewhere in China.
The theory and evidence are documented in the 1421, and there is much controversy surrounding the conclusions that Menzies reached. Some of the journeys that he postulates (such the circumnavigation of Greenland by ship) are highly speculative. I am troubled that an exhibition of this magnitude presented such tenous conclusions as facts despite the fact that much work still needs to be done.
This is one book that goes into my reading list!