1 Schools in the United States have taught us that Christopher Columbus discovered America, but although Columbus may

have landed in the Caribbean on his search for the special route to Asia, none of his voyages investigated the east coast of land that would become the United States (pg 25-26). His voyages did, however, result in a wave of exploration by the Europeans in the New World. As far as discovery, it is believed that the Norsemen had already made trips to northeastern areas of what is now Canada even before Columbus (pg 26). But recently, there have been discussions about the possibility that it was the Chinese who truly discovered America and it is this very debate that is discussed in the book Taking Sides: Clashing Views in United States History, Volume 1, The Colonial Period to Reconstruction. In the second issue of the book are excerpts from the two opposing sides to the issue of the Chinese discovery of America. Gavin Menzies, a retired British submarine officer is convinced that the Chinese armada explored the pacific coast of America sometime between 1421 and 1423. But Menzies idea is disputed by Robert Finlay, who believes that Menzies has created an unrealistic explanation with no evidence to support his claims (pg 25). After a consideration of the two sides on whether or not the Chinese discovered America, it has been revealed that Menzies appears to rely only on some facts of Chinese history and European cartography along with his personal experiences from being a submariner to support his assertion, while Finlay describes in detail how Menzies misrepresents his facts to create his argument which renders his argument false. In Menzies book 1421: The Year China Discovered America, there is an introduction that tells a rather poetic story about Chinese New Years Day on 2 February 1421. He explains that on this day, people from all over Asia, Arabia, Africa and the Indian Ocean, kings and rulers, came to pay tribute to the emperor (pg 27). A point is made in describing the Chineses sense of superiority in abundant trade goods and scientific knowledge in comparison to many of the European kingdoms of the time. There is provided in the words, a sense of obvious respect for Emperor Zhu Di and his incalculable wealth and influence. Menzies briefly explains Chinas policy to refrain from direct colonization and to send off enormous fleets carrying all manner of exotic items every few years (pg 27). A particular

2 armada directed by an Admiral named Zheng He contained four fleets that were to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from barbarians beyond the seas and Menzies proceeded to laud the power of the ships ability to remain at sea for over three months and cover at least 4,500 miles without the need to stop to replenish anything (pg 28). It is mentioned that many ships were lost on these voyages because they braved perilous, uncharted waters frequently. Some ships contained Chinese roses and other flora and the intro ends with the idea that many of the seamen would never return and would instead be shipwrecked or left to establish colonies (pg 29). After the intro, Menzies begins a personal story explaining his journey in search for evidence that the Chinese had landed on the Pacific coast of North America. He incorporates his understanding of the geological patterns in the north Pacific, speculating that the fleet led by Zhou Man may have reached Canada and sailed along the coast, all the way to Ecuador (pg 29-30). In search for validation, he turns to a map that was charted by Hernando de Alarcon and the Waldseemuller world map; the latter of which had charted ship wrecks that Menzies believed to be circumstantial evidence of one of Zhou Mans junks arrival (pg 30). He goes on to say that evidence of their arrival is also supported in the fact that there were specific plants and animals along the coast of Central and South America that were also found in China, suggesting a biological exchange had occurred when the Chinese landed (pg 31). Further researches led Menzies to announce publicly on the issue which led to people bringing his attention to a wreck on the Sacramento River. He investigated and found it was made of wood found only in China (pg 32) and contained seeds and rice native to China (pg 32-33). After discussing the potential truth to a shipwreck on the sandbank of the Sacramento River, Menzies moves on to discuss the colony of Chinese people that may have settled in California, claiming that some of the Chinese famers who settled in California in the 1870s may be descendants of Zhou Man in 1423 (pg 33). He refers to the writings of Stephen Powers who in 1874 published an article stating that there was linguistic evidence of a Chinese colony on the Russian River in California and the tribe seemed to live a similar cultural lifestyle to the Chinese; sedentary and inventive (pg 33-34). To support the idea, evidence of a settlement made of stone with low walls is presented, backed by an expert from

3 UC Berkeley who asserts that it is undoubtedly the work of Mongolians The Chinese would naturally wall themselves in (pg 34). If they continued down the coast, the ships had to have sailed and landed on the Mexican coast and encountered the Mayan civilization, which Menzies claims, had chickens, lacquer boxes, dye-stuffs, metal work and jewelry, all which seem to have the imprint of China all over them and he believed that the Mayan name for chicken is identical to the one used by the Chinese: Ki (pg 35). In his researches, Menzies could not find many other plants originating in China that were in Mexico, but he insists that the Chinese visit was also evident in the fact that plants indigenous to Central America had found their way across the world and ultimately into China. Historian Robert Finlay, after having read Menzies 1421: The Year China Discovered America, wrote an intense response titled How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America. He starts off with a deriding tone while summarizing Menzies book, explaining how Menzies recounts all the different places the Chinese have traveled to based on proof that is overwhelming and indisputable (pg 36). Finlay also tells the audience about how Menzies is not disheartened by skepticism and how he is in fact extremely certain of himself and there is an account of how the book is organized to incorporate Menzies own search for evidence in the narrative framework (pg 37). To disparage Menzies, Finlay includes information about how much money Menzies made off of his book ($825,000) while he flouts the basic rules of both historical study and elementary logic by misrepresenting Nicolo di Conti (c. 1385-1469) and misinterpreting the technology of Zheng Hes ships which impels him to depict voyages [] no mariner could survive (pg 37). This ultimately renders Menzies evidence baseless. Finlay focuses his opposition on the term the missing years coined by Menzies, which refers to the years between 1421 and 1423 in which a small fleet left to sail on their own by Zheng He is believed to have left the Indian Ocean to seek new lands in the Atlantic and Pacific (pg 38). This idea is fueled by the conviction that the documents which recorded this voyage was destroyed, but Finlay finds this unlikely because there are sources that fill in the gaps, proving the flotilla merely traveled to India and

4 Africa (pg 39). He humors Menzies idea and considers the possibility that the ships made it to America while proving to us that mathematically, the time does not work out with the distance travelled, meaning the suggestion is unrealistic (pg 39). Referring back to Nicolo di Conti, Finlay explains that this Venetian cartographer as a key piece to Menzies case since Conti is the sole vehicle by which Chinese geographical knowledge reached the west (pg 40). It is established that Conti was in Calicut around the same time the Chinese chronicler Ma Huan who traveled with the Chinese vessels was there, but there is no definite proof that they met, shared any information with each other, or traveled together and Finlay claims that Menzies is suggesting all of this, once again disregarding the inconsistencies in time and distance (pg 40). In conclusion, it could not have been possible for Conti to have received any information from the Chinese or created any map while travelling with them that would prompt the age of European exploration (pg 40-41). When referring to the first two chapters of Menzies book, Finlay observes that the groundwork for his claims when describing Zheng Hes fleet before its departure from Nanjing is used as a rhetorical tactic, and although that makes the book appealing, it is full of assumptions about what was stored on the ships that would confirm Menzies thought that the Chinese reached the New World. Finlay mentions the types of items and people that Menzies believed were stored on the ships, which included prostitutes, Asiatic chickens, masons, stone carvers, astronomers, teak, ballast horses, trained otters, and dogs (pg 41-42), but he refutes each and every idea with evidence and a biting attitude. He concludes with a reiteration of Menzies lack of distinction between premise and proof, conjecture and confirmation, continually mocking the man even as he points out the contradictions and information Menzies has chosen to leave out when referring to the Waldseemuller and Piri Reis maps and Finlays only good word to the book is that it serves as an excellent example of how not to (re)write history (pg 43). Much as I am willing to believe that the Chinese really were the first to discover America, I unfortunately have to agree with Robert Finlays assertions that the conclusions presented in the book 1421 are uniformly without substance (pg 38) and I am disappointed that Gavin Menzies could not support many of his fascinating claims. Although I felt that the story he presented in the beginning about

5 the Emperor Zhu Dis call to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the sea (pg 28) was interesting and clearly done only to engage the reader, Finlay was right in that the whole narrative was completely un-cited, lacking any documentation (pg 40). One inconsistency I noticed in the excerpt of Menzies book takes place right in the beginning. He mentions that the Chinese preferred to pursue their aims by trade, influence and bribery rather than by open conflict and direct colonization (pg 27) and yet if this were true, then why does he insist that the Chinese colonized along the pacific coast (pg 30) instead of just traded with the natives? Now there is also the mentioning of the winds and currents which would take Admiral Zhou Mans ships to North America. He doesnt cite these facts, but I assume readers are supposed to accept these specifics as truth since he was once a submarine officer who knows about such things. But then comes the calculations Menzies makes, stating that [a]t an average of 4.8 knots, the voyage would have taken some four months (pg 30). Finlay refers to this detail distinctively, saying that Menzies had no foundation for this approximation since it hurries the ships along by granting them an average speed 52 percent higher than what they generally achieved (pg 39). I find whether Menzies was trying to twist the facts to suit his theories or just making a mistake, Finlay has a point because there cannot possibly be such consistency when travelling the sea and speeds could definitely vary depending on the time of year and the route being crossed (pg 39). One of the biggest parts of Menzies argument lies in the shipwrecks along the pacific coast. He brings up a wreck on the beach at Neahkahnie made of teak with sails made of caeophyllum which was native to south-east Asia and containing paraffin wax, all of which confirms the landing of a Chinese vessels (pg 30). Finlay rejoins with the fact that teak was not used in building Zheng Hes fleets (pg 41) and there is no substantiation for the Chinese knowing how to desalinate seawater (pg 42). Finlays mentioning of the trained otters being used to herd shoals of fish into the nets (pg 42) is not in the excerpt of 1421 provided in Taking Sides, but if Menzies really talked about it, I find him all the more incredible. However, Finlay fails to mention the part about the Chinese junk landing along the Sacramento River, the planting of rice, and the intermarrying of the Chinese with local Indians (pg 33).

6 Menzies, however, uses a lot of speculative language when discussing these possibilities. He conjectures that the Chinese farmers who worked in the fields of Sacramento may not have actually come from the wave of nineteenth-century immigration but could potentially be descendants of the settlers left by Zhou Man, backing his claim from an article written by Stephen Powers in 1874 (pg 33). I personally think that although Powers was an inspector who was collecting data on the languages of the California tribes (pg 33), how does this make him an expert enough to claim there was linguistic evidence of a Chinese colony? Did he know how to speak Chinese? There is no mention that he did and the paragraph in Menzies passage continues, diseases brought by European settlers had decimated this Chinese colony which is basically saying that the colony was destroyed. So how does this prove that the colony existed? Menzies supports himself with Powers description of the Indian descendants have paler skin, were peaceable and inoffensive, and developed a Chinese inventiveness (pg 33-34) which sounds rather vague. If we recall that the Indians were descendants of the first people who migrated from Asia at least 30,000 years earlier and populated the Americas (pg 26), it is not all surprising that the natives may have looked or lived like the Chinese, not to mention there is such a great cultural diversity among the Native American in California that to say the Indians Powers found were unlike other hunter-gatherer tribes of North America (pg 34) isnt saying much. A consideration of the two sides on whether or not the Chinese discovered America has exposed to me that Menzies uses Chinese history and European cartography in a selective manner along with his personal experiences to maintain his allegations. I feel that Finlay is correct in saying Menzies misrepresents his facts to create his case which leaves his argument false. It could be totally possible that the Chinese had discovered America, but based on the ideas presented from Menzies, I cannot yet be completely convinced.