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by Chao C. Chien (Author)
A Chinese emperor disappeared!
The Age of Discovery was a fabulous yet mysterious time. Beginning from early 15th century Europeans took to the sea in droves. The result is the discovery of entire heretofore unknown landmasses, including the Americas, Australia, Greenland, Iceland, and others. Indeed that is why the time is known as the Age of Discovery. From the European point of view Europeans "discovered" these places. Today we hail personalities such as Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and the like as heroes. Yet we know pitifully little about the history of the period. There are scant official records. Most of what we take as history is in fact basically legends and mythology. Facts are in short supply. Is the name America really derived from from Amerigo Vespucci, a minor adventurer who did not explore the new continents? Today even textbooks attribute the honor to him, but in fact we have no proof that the name America was indeed derived from the name Amerigo.
Why are American Natives called Indians? Are they from India? Hardly. Then why do we call them Indians? Where did the name California come from? Is that an Indian name? Nobody knows. The fact is, the Age of Discovery is full of such conundrums and questionable assertions. Much of what is accepted as history is in fact false. Yes, Christopher Columbus did not discover America! Da Gama, who was credited with opening the sea route from Europe to the East, was a savage and brutal man. Hernán Cortés, who conquered Mexico, was a failed legal scholar that could not make good at home and took to adventures. His cousin Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Incas and founded Peru, was an illiterate, uneducated, illegitimate son of a minor military man. Our heroes of exploration were across-the-board ruffians. What drove them to risk their lives for greatness?
In the prequel of the present book, The Chinese Origin of the Age of Discovery (now 2nd Edition), the case is made that some five hundred years ago Europeans took to the sea because they had inherited the knowledge of the world from the Chinese. At the beginning of the 15th century the Chinese Ming Dynasty had a civil war. At the end the young emperor was defeated by his uncle and vanished. Most thought he died, but the victorious uncle, who was now the new emperor, thought the ex-emperor had escaped overseas, so he built the greatest fleet the world had never seen before to go after him. Thus the Ming fleet roamed the waters of the world for thirty years, and its exploits were learned by the Europeans, who utilized the Chinese sea charts to go to sea, ushering in the Age of Discovery.
Ironically, today historians are unsure of the true purpose of these grand expeditions, and the history of the period is largely lost. In its place absurd theories disguised as history took hold. Now it is claimed that the Ming fleets were enacted to spread the glory of the Ming civilization, to promote international commerce, and proselytize the messages of peace, and the greatest nation on Earth at the time had t do it for 30 years!
In the mean time, the biggest mystery of them all: the disappearance of ex-Emperor Jianwen, was left unsolved. Yet, there exist a host of evidence-seemingly unrelated historical tidbits, often unexplainable and ignored-that can shed light on the events of the time. For one, the Ming fleets consistently sailed west. Does that not tell us something? Surprisingly, these historical remnants are not found in the Chinese archives, but in European documents and consciousness.
As the extension of The Chinese Origin of the Age of Discovery, 2nd Edition (ISBN 978-1548435554), The Hunt for the Dragon delves into the mysterious events of the world of six hundred years ago, and offers a shocking take on the extraordinary incidents that now mostly have been forgotten. Have we been propagandizing a wrong history all this time? You get to be the judge.
