They brought Chinese culture here and lived harmoniously with the local people, contributing their proud share to Australia's economy, society and thriving pluralistic culture.' (House of Representatives Hansard 24 October 2003, page 21697 )Ĭan that be true? This is not a claim you will find in many Australia history text books! For centuries, the Chinese sailed across vast seas and settled down in what was called 'the southern land', or today's Australia. Back in the 1420s, the expeditionary fleets of China's Ming dynasty reached Australian shores. The Chinese people have all along cherished amicable feelings about the Australian people. 'Though located in different hemispheres and separated by high seas,' he said, ' the people of China and Australia enjoy a friendly exchange that dates back centuries. In October 2003 Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China, made a speech to the Australian Parliament: The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies' enthralling account of the voyage of the Chinese fleet, the remarkable discoveries he made and the persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind - from sunken junks to the votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea.Īlready hailed as a classic, this is the story of an extraordinary journey of discovery that not only radically alters our understanding of world exploration but also rewrites history itself.How can we tell fact from fiction in history? 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. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed.

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. 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. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China.

1421 by Gavin Menzies