This book is not a frivolous stunt.
The early history of the European Age of Discovery, as many already have suspected, is largely legendary. Columbus did not discover America. Magellan did not discover "his strait." And yes, Marco Polo did not go to China. In this book, the lost history is reconstructed from extant documents, mostly European, and their analyses thereof, providing irrefutable proofs, shown in over 300 illustrations.
Are all these wild sensational claims? No. They are what evidence shows, and that is what this book is about, the evidence and its analyses. Indeed, Europeans going to sea in the fifteenth century and ushering in the Age of Discovery was the result of coming into geographical knowledge of the world inherited from the Chinese, which infers that the Chinese had explored and charted the world's landmasses before the Europeans. Christopher Columbus went on his ventures with such information in hand. Such are the conclusions arrived at by history researcher/author Chao C. Chien's lifelong work, the entire thesis of which is presented in this definitive volume. With over 300 illustrations of evidence comprising of extant European historical documents and maps, this work challenges European orthodox history of the Age of discovery head on.
Little known in the West, at the very beginning of the fifteenth century, and the infancy of the Ming Dynasty, China endured a civil war that lasted four years. At the end, the Prince of Yan (garrison commander of Beijing) ousted the sitting emperor, his nephew Jianwen, and became the Yongle Emperor, one of the mightiest rulers of Chinese history. Suspecting that his nephew had fled overseas, he commissioned the largest naval squadron the world had seen, to be led by his confidante the eunuch Zheng He, to go after him.
Indeed, the fate of the Jianwen Emperor remains a mystery today. (The possible outcome is addressed in the follow-up volume to this book, The Hunt for the Dragon, 2nd Edition.) Zheng He went to sea seven times between 1405 and 1433. It is generally alleged that he roamed the Indian Ocean for the purposes of spreading the Ming Dynasty culture and promoting trade. China produced upward of one third of the world's GDP at the time, and it needed Zheng He to drum up business? Ridiculous! That tells you how far off base the pedants have been.
Part of the reasons for this kind of historical propaganda is because Zheng He's trips were kept as state secret. Little was documented on it officially. However, while the history of Zheng He is scant in China, evidence of his exploits is found in Western archives. In fact, maps of the Middle Ages show that the Chinese fleet sailed into the Atlantic Ocean, right at the time when the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator began interested in going to sea. All sounds incredible, were it not for the numerous records attesting to the lost history kept in some of the most prestigious institution of the West, including the royal archives of Spain and Portugal, the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Library of Congress, and various private collections in Italy, Germany, and even the Topkapı Palace museum in Istanbul, Turkey.
Now, we should understand that China had been a seafaring nation for ages. During the Yuan Dynasty Mongol occupation of the fourteenth century, Chinese and other conquered seafaring people, including the Koreans and Arabs, were dispatched to map the world for further Mongol conquests. The maps were used by the following Ming Dynasty in the pursuit of the Jianwen Emperor, and these maps fell into European hands. This process is reconstructed in this book. It reads like a meticulous detective report, but it is real history.
At the end, when all is said and done, the "lost" history is restored. However, will you believe it?
