Despite what it looks like, I am not beating a dead horse. Recent threads have discussed the possibility of the Chinese arriving in the Americas before Columbus (don’t quote and reply yet…read on). The goal here is to explore the impact of contact between the Mongols and Pre-Columbian native cultures 200 years before the Europeans. At the POD the Incas and Aztecs do not exist and the Maya, while present, do not dominate the area of initial contact.
There are certain things which need to be accepted in order to move forward here; Accept that the Chinese had ships capable of Oceanic travel. They had long been traveling to India and beyond and were capable seamen and navigators. They had invented the Junk rig (which is more handy than European rigs of the time), the rudder as we know it and watertight bulkheads among other things. Keep in mind that no one denigrated the seamanship and vessels of the Polynesians, who settled the Pacific in open boats, nor that of the Norse who explored the known world in open vessels.
We do not want to get bogged down in a discussion of Could they do it (let’s just accept that they could, even if they did not want to). We want to discuss the ramifications of the event.
It has been pretty convincingly established on this board that the Chinese had little impulse or need to explore. Accepted. It has also been noted that, on the whole, they were not particularly expressionistic. Also accepted.
The Mongols, however, were exceedingly expressionistic and interested in territory. The Yuan Dynasty, at the end of the 13th century, had all the knowledge, technology and wealth of China at it’s disposal.
In 1292, Kublai Khan decided to invade Java in order to redress a slight from the local king. He sent up to 30,000 men and supposedly around 1,000 ships. After some initial success the Mongols (they weren’t Chinese after all) were routed and boarded their ships in order to get back to China before the weather changed and they would be stuck on a hostile island.
· May 31, 1293, Raden Wajaya drives the Mongol invaders back to their ships, ending the Khan’s expedition against Java.
This is the POD.
· 1293 is an El Nino year (Needed to increase the strength of the Equatorial Counter Current and change the wind direction in the West Equatorial Pacific). Unusually early seasonal changes prevent the Mongols from returning to China and they are driven into the strengthening Equatorial Counter Current, finally arriving off Panama in mid-October. (If they were able to make an average of 6 knots or so, +/-145 km per day, it could be done in this amount of time. The current is giving them about a 1.4 knot boost)
· Having arrived in Java with provisions for nearly a year, the combined force of Mongols, Chinese and Uyghurs had suffered at the hands of the elements, but were relatively healthy, although tired. Storms had taken their toll and the original force of over 20,000 sent by Kublai Khan was reduced to about 7,000 mostly Mongols due to the loss of numerous ships. So, on October 10th, 1293, several hundred ships begin arriving at the Gulf of Montijo and drop anchor between Isla Cebaco and Isla Leones.
· Of the three commanders, the Chinese commander Gaoxing had been lost at sea, leaving the Mongol Shi-bi and his subordinate Ike Mese, an Uyghur, as leaders of the party.
· Here they met the Chiriquí, a people who live in a society of tribal chiefdoms and prosper through agriculture, hunting and fishing.
· The Chiriquí are accomplished potters and goldsmiths and part of a trade network that reaches to the Maya in the north and the foothills of the Andes in the south.
· The Mongols have several hundred horses that have survived the voyage as well as some cattle, hogs, and chickens.
How would this encounter go and how would history unfold? The population of the Panama region at this time is thought to be several hundred thousand. While I mentioned the Maya are present, the nearest concentration of population is about 500 km to the west-north-west, on the Golfo Nicoya in present day Costa Rica.
