The Chinese discover the New World first and don't stop

Chinese explorer Zheng He may have reached America before Columbus

Controversial historian Gavin Menzies is claiming that this map from 1418 proves that the New World was discovered by China's Admiral Zheng He some 70 years before Columbus.

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What if the Chinese didn't turned into an isolationist policy
 
Menzies writes poor-quality fiction. He is a genuine fruit-loop, and would need to improve two grades before he is merely at crackpot level.
 
Menzies' fabrications are physically impossible. Knowledge can disseminate, shipwrecks can be carried across the ocean, but there is simply no proof for his theory about Zheng's journey.

Having said that, classical theories of a spherical earth wasn't an idea so outlandish that the Chinese couldn't understand. The Chinese accepted Indian and Arabic theories about continents and oceans fairly easily. You only need a Greek book to be translated into Arabic and Arabic into Chinese.

Now you need a strong motivation to reach Europe, even if it takes a journey across the ocean in the east. Probably religion? Christianity has been in China since Sui Dynasty, all it takes is a shipload of fanatics, prevented from reaching to Rome/Constantinople by the Arabs, to sail to the west.

There can even be a Post-Columbus exploration of the Americas: Matteo Ricci's world map reached China in 1584, by then Wast Coast of North America wasn't yet colonized.
 
Conversely, Tang Dynasty Buddhist Monk Jianzhen attempted for six times to travel to Japan to spread the Darma. A similar missionary zeal might spur explorations to unknown countries as well.
 
I know the Ming Dynasty went after Christians in its early years, so maybe get the idea of potentially reaching Europe from China by sailing East going during the Yuan, and have a group of Christians desperately try to reach Europe and hit the California coast instead. Roman Catholicism was brought to China in the Yuan dynasty by Franciscans, so 聖方濟各市 (St Francis City) ITTL California anyone? As funny as an ATL Chinese San Francisco still named after the same saint would be, in all seriousness would it be more likely for these hypothetical Chinese Christian refuges to wind up in South America or Central America, rather than California if they did make it that far?
 
Even if the Chinese do put colonies on the West Coast, the Europeans still have the edge that a voyage across the Atlantic is shorter and thus they can expect to lose less ships. Also, what are the Chinese going to obtain that they can not obtain nearer to home?. Among the "stuff" that the Europeans initially shipped back was gold-and-silver (Spanish/English privateers), furs (French) and sugar(English/French). The Chinese got the first from trade, Siberia is nearer for the second and the West coast is not renowned for the third.
 
Menzies writes poor-quality fiction. He is a genuine fruit-loop, and would need to improve two grades before he is merely at crackpot level.

I don't know. You gotta respect that, when criticized for having Chinese fleets visit everywhere but Europe, he set out to correct that.
 
This may be me pulling somewhere between a complete destruction of any reputation I have/ looking just stupid...

I read Menzies' books, as well as his Atlantis book. I found them to be intruiging and providing possible historical evidence for such voyages. I... am not an expert in this field (maritime history). I would be curious to hear why in fact he is so wrong according to the entire site. There may have been things I missed.


Edit: Even if the entire theory of pre-Columbian Chinese voyages to America + Chinese Renaissance is wrong, I learned a lot of factually correct naval stuff.
 
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I don't know. You gotta respect that, when criticized for having Chinese fleets visit everywhere but Europe, he set out to correct that.
I'm still waiting for him to publish 1447: The Year China Sailed To The Moon. The proof of which is that there's now an animated series called Sailor Moon.
 
This may be me pulling somewhere between a complete destruction of any reputation I have/ looking just stupid...

I read Menzies' books, as well as his Atlantis book. I found them to be intruiging and providing possible historical evidence for such voyages. I... am not an expert in this field (maritime history). I would be curious to hear why in fact he is so wrong according to the entire site. There may have been things I missed.
The short version is that there's not a shred of evidence to support his wild fantasies. If you want a more thorough debunking, for your reading pleasure, I refer you to www.1421exposed.com.
 
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