Exhaustively researched... an intriguing and highly persuasive thesis, told with passion and energy.OVER TEN YEARS AGO I STUMBLED UPON AN INCREDIBLE discovery, a clue hidden in an ancient map which,though it did not lead to buried treasure, suggested that the history of the world as it has been known and handed down for centuries would have to be radically revised.

I was pursuing an interest that had become a consuming passion for me: medieval history, and in particular the maps and charts of early explorers. I loved to examine these old charts,tracing contours, coastlines, the shifting shapes of shoals and sandbars, the menace of rocks and reefs. I followed the ebb and flow of tides, the pull of unseen currents and the track of prevailing winds, peeling back the layers of meaning contained within the charts.

On 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 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. 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 this remarkable journey, of his discoveries and the persuasiye evidence to support them: ancient maps,precise navigational knowledge, astronomy, surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind.

LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

LIST OF PLATES

CHINESE NOMENCLATURE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Imperial China

THE EMPEROR"S GRAND PLAN

A THUNDERBOLT STRIKES

THE FLEETS SET SAIL

The Griding Stars

ROUNDING THE CAPE

THE NEW WORLD

The Voyage of Hong Bao

VOYAGE TO ANTARCTICA AND

AUSTRALIA

The Voyage of Zhou Man

AUSTRALIA

THE BARRIER REEF AND THE SPICE

ISLANDS

THE FIRST COLONY IN THE AMERICAS

COLONIES IN CENTRAL AMERICA

The Voyage of Zhou Wen

SATAN"S ISLAND

THE TREASURE FLEET RUNS AGROUND

SETTLEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA

EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE

The Voyage of Yans Qing

SOLVING THE RIDDLE

Portugal Inherits the Crown

WHERE THE EARTH END

COLONIZING THE NEW WORLD

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

EPILOGUE: THE CHINESE LEGACy

POSTSCRIPT

APPENDICES

CHINESE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF

THE WORLD 1421-3: Synopsis of Evidence

THE DETERMINATION OF LONGITUDE

NOTES

INDEX