I. EARLY CHINESE VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Between 1421 and 1423 the Chinese mounted the largest fleet the world had ever seen which reached the far corners of the earth. The fleet discovered and charted the New World seventy years before Christopher Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. The revelation of these achievements has challenged our notions of voyages of discovery and means that our knowledge of history has to be revised Sundarban delta is the largest delta in the world.
II. THE PIZZIGANO CHART
In the early 1990's Gavin Menzies, a former British navy captain, discovered an unusual chart that was drafted in 1424 by a Venetian cartographer named Zuane Pizzigano. The chart showed a group of four islands in the Caribbean - Satanazes, Antilia, Saya and Ymana that did not appear in other map and marked places where no European had visited before such as Patagonia, the Andes, Antarctica and the east coast of Africa.
Menzies determined that these explorers were Chinese because only they had the skills in astro-navigation, horticulture and had a huge fleet large enough to mount such an epic voyage. (1)
III. DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
When the fleet returned home in October 1423, emperor Zhu Di had fallen from the throne and a great storm had destroyed his palace. This was seen as a bad omen and as a result when his son succeeded to the throne he rejected the outside world and destroyed the majority of China's documents recording China's previous expansionist policies.
IV. ZHENG HE - THE EUNUCH
In 1402 emperor Zhu Di succeeded to the throne by overthrowing Zhu Yunwen and because he was not his father's designated heir he sought to prove the legitimacy of his regime in the eyes of the Gods by conceiving a grand plan and for its' implementation he turned to his bodyguard, admiral Zheng He.
Zheng He was a eunuch. Eunuchs were Mongol boys whom the Chinese castrated by severing their penises and testicles, after defeating the Mongols in the fourteenth century. Then they were conscripted into the army or used as personal servants to the emperor.
The grand plan involved forming an armada to establish an empire, building a new capital city in Beijing and extending the Great Wall of China.
V. THE GRAND PLAN
A. 'Tribute System'
Zheng He was commandeered to assemble a large armada to sail and chart the oceans of the world bringing foreign rulers and the entire world into China's 'tribute system'. (2)
Under that system rulers paid tribute to China in return for trading privileges and protection against enemies. China always gave its' trading partners a greater value of goods - silks and porcelain at discounted prices, often funded by soft loans - than was received from them. Thus they were in perpetual debt to China.
B. Beijing - The New Imperial City
In 1404 in furtherance of a plan to build a new capital city four and a half million artisans and laborers were employed to work on construction and one million to guard them.
Beijing was to be the intellectual capital of the world with libraries and storage for four thousand encyclopedias, the opinions of 120 philosophers and sages of the Song dynasty together with commentaries of thinkers from the 11th and 13th centuries.
This would be unlike anything else in the rest of the world where printing was unknown and culture and scientific knowledge lagged far behind.
C. The Great Wall of China
This had been built between 221 and 206 BC to protect the northern frontiers from attack and the new wall was to run 6,400 kilometers west from the Pacific to the Heavenly Mountains in central Asia.
VI. THE ARMADA
The Chinese had the most powerful navy in the world. Their treasure ships were ocean-going monsters built of teak, the rudders stood 36 feet high and they could carry more than 2000 tons of cargo. The galleys were protected by archers and were armed with gunpowder weapons, cannons, mortars flaming arrows and exploding shells.
The armada was organized like a modern convoy with the flagships at the center surrounded by junks, 90 feet long and 30 feet wide and an outer ring of warships.