1421. The Year China Discovered the World.

London England: Bantam Books. Very Good. 2003. Reprint. Soft Cover. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 9780553815221 Paperback Paperback. On 8th March 1421, the3 largest fleet the qworld 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 orders were 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth'. The voyage would last for two years and by the time the fleet returned, 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 destroyed. The resul of fiteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies' enthralling account of this remarkable journey, of his discoveries and the persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigationsl knowledge, astronomy, surviving acocunts of Chinese explorers and later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind. Revised and updated with new material - including evidence of an entire Chinese fleet wrecked on New Zealand's South Island - for this paperback edition, 1421 is a brilliant, epoch-making work of historical detection that radically alters our understanding of worlf exploration and rewrites history itself. Illustrated. 650 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.) .