Who really discovered America?

Good Read

THIS IS YOUR LIFE, which aired on television from 1952 to 1961, entertained audiences with biographies of popular figures from entertainment, sports, or politics. The host, Ralph Edwards, introduced friends and acquaintances from the celebrity's past to share anecdotes that illuminated their lives. Almost invariably, there was at least one teacher who had the greatest impact on their education. If that program was still in production and I were somehow the featured guest, there would be no teacher to step forward with a fond memory. 

I was never a good student. Teachers regretted ever finding my name on their class rolls. I asked too many questions. I never challenged their lessons lightly. I came armed with facts and research as well as common sense observations. I believe that I spent far more time in the library than they ever had.

Thus, when academic historians began attacking Gavin Menzies for his assertion that the Chinese had explored the world long before the representatives of Western Civilization, I was prepared to jump into the fray. I began by reading his two books, 1421: The Year That China Discovered America, and 1434: The Year That A Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. The titles alone are enough to boil the blood in any academic historian, and I wasn't impressed by their assertions that Menzies had it all wrong simply because he lacked the academic chops to be making such assertions.

To begin with, there is plenty of evidence that many peoples had touched America's shores long before Columbus got here. Interestingly, I discovered much of the information about these earlier explorers in a grammar school text book published in 1814. It spoke of Roman legionnaires armor found in burial caves in Tennessee and a tribe of blue-eyed, blond-haired native Americans living in the Mississippi region who were descended from Welshmen. Thus I am not surprised that my teachers in the 1950s believed that evidence of Norsemen visiting North American shores before Columbus's voyage was a new discovery. They were typically clueless.

Now, these same academicians are indignant when Menzies suggests that the Chinese might also have visited. I have read one website where such a historian has debunked all of Menzies's claims by stating emphatically that “they just aren't true.” Well, they must not be if he says so.

A Chinese Treasure Ship compared to Columbus's Santa Maria

The truth is that Menzies states honestly in his work that some of his conclusions are conjecture and that further study is needed. Would that the academicians were so honest. However, they have a lot riding on their reputations and they are reacting exactly as I expect based on my earlier experiences with them.   

Why does Columbus get the credit? The answer is simple. Time and again, history has been written by the victors. The Europeans never faced any competition for the conquest of the New World because the Chinese withdrew from the contest long before the Europeans arrived. The rise of Confucianism changed the political climate in China, and the emperor dismantled his fleet. The Spaniards and Portuguese then divided the lands between them. The French, English, and Dutch later stole them.

Gavin Menzies looked past political history and studied the evidence as a sailor would. He examined the charts and applied his knowledge of seafaring as he had learned and practiced it as a serving officer in the British Navy. As a fellow sailor, I saw the common sense in his train of thought and believe that his hypotheses deserve further study, and that the dismissal of his work by academic historians is far more suspect than his writings. 

Read Jack's novel, Rebels on the Mountain, the tale of Nick Andrews, an Army spy, who has Fidel Castro in his sights but no orders to pull the trigger. The mafia as well as the American business community in Cuba will pay a fortune for Castro's assassination, but Nick has his career to consider, his friends to protect, and a romance to sort out in the chaos of a revolution.