Description
Book SynopsisOn 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di''s loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was ''to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas'' and unite the world in Confucian harmony.
Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook...
The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies'' enthralling account of the voyage of the Chinese fleet, the re
Trade Review
Menzies has come up with something entirely new... it is a startling claim * Guardian *
Exhaustively researched... an intriguing and highly persuasive thesis, told with passion and energy * Evening Standard *
Popular history at its best * The Times *
A book as engrossing as any adventure story * Daily Mail *
