American History

[Bob]

Dzimas
In my days in banking  variable rate mortgages were strictly forbidden..but with the ascendacy of the Conservative Republicans, regulations governing insurance and  banking have been loosened or eliminated, expanding  free enterprise unregulated capitalism---and now the public suffers. 

[Bob]

I just finished a couple of good books: A GLORIOUS DEFEAT: MEXICO AND ITS WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES by Timothy J Henderson. It gives a view of the war and its causes from the Mexican viewpoint---and its short--191 pages of text, easy to read--good for a fast weekend read.

BASILICA by R A Scotti--another fast read (but not about US History), its about the building of St Peter's Basilica---also a very fast read.

Can you imagine Christopher Hitchens writing a review of Harry Potter? Check it out in  the Sunday NY Times Book Review....

[Bob]

1421 begins August 20....

[weezo]

Bob,

That book on the war with Mexico sounds mighty interesting. I'm currently re-reading 1421 and anxious to discuss it.

[elportenito]

...his is ll Spanish to You.




"Denuncian que la brecha entre ricos y pobres se amplía en el mundoUn informe de Amnistía Internacional sostiene que mientras en los '90 una persona rica tenía 30 veces más que una pobre hoy la relación es de 130 a 1. Y que al menos 1.500 millones de personas viven con menos de un dólar al día. En tanto, un funcionario de la ONU aseguró que lo que gasta EE.UU. en la ocupación de Irak y Afganistán sería suficiente para "acabar 2 veces con la pobreza en el planeta".

[thanatopsy]

Greetings all.

I'm struggling thru Menzies' 1421 and find some of those Chinese names a bit difficult to remember. The book's many critics keep impinging in my mind:

http://www.1421exposed.com/

... and I'm hopeful that some of this may also be discussed starting next week.

[weezo]

Than,

I am re-reading after reading it the first time know there were critics, read the critics, and am now reading the book again.

While the Chinese may not have gotten to America in 1421, as Menzies asserts, he does provide overwhelming evidence that 1) The Chinese came to America before Columbus, and 2) That the Portuguese probably came to America before Columbus. I will be most curious to see what comes of the wrecks he is looking for and the DNA still to be tested. I have no opinion on the maps, but it seems to be  a curiosity.

[Donotremove]

Everyone who is reading 1421 should bookmark Menzies web site:

http://www.1421.tv/

He encourages further scholarship, news, additional information readers uncover, etc,.  If you are reading the hardcover, some DNA work has been completed and the results added to paperback editions.  For other views of Menzies hypothesis, Google >1421 website< (no caps, italics, quote marks).

Remember when you are reading the book that Menzies is an experienced seaman.

[madupont]

Greetings all.

I'm struggling thru Menzies' 1421 and find some of those Chinese names a bit difficult to remember. The book's many critics keep impinging in my mind:

http://www.1421exposed.com/

... and I'm hopeful that some of this may also be discussed starting next week.

Thanatopsy,

Using your link, I turned to one particular article-- to verify.  From the China Heritage Newsletter...Australian National University, June 2005 and then I went for my copy of: The Great Chinese Travelers, to compare.

This latter was published in 1964 by Jeanette Mirsky who was a visiting fellow of the Dept. of Oriental Studies at Princeton Univ. as a USIA American Specialist. It then was a Phoenix Book published by the Univ.of Chicago Press, in 1974(since this is the period immediately following the Kissinger/Nixon "Opening" of relationships with PRC)

My only hint to you re: Chinese names, I never even tried to remember but, relying on the eventual repetition, some of them manage to stick enough so to give you a clue where to go next.  The difficulty is saying them and hearing them correctly. For instance. Zheng He  becomes in our gov't spelling (at that time) preference  Cheng Ho.  But the sound is not clipped, as in "chew your food", it is closer to sliding the sound with your teeth closed:Zzhheng(think of how Mike and Dana would say it on Saturday Night Live) not eng but ung.
The second part of his name will rhyme with that as it is neither he,hay,or ho but expulsive Huh.

Now get a notebook and write down names you need to recall and leave plenty of space in between to define why? 

Mirsky is using the account by J.J.L. Duyvendak, China's Discovery of Africa,(London,1949)and George Phillips,"The Seaports of India and Ceylon," from the--Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,Vol.20 N.S.,
1885,pp.209-226
The second part of his name is pronounced neither Hay nor Ho but Huh

I don't know if you recall the big Thus Spake Zarathustra bash at nytimes.com forums, it was at this time that hegemony (the person not the concept) was having a field day making fun of the whole Nietzsche bash for everybody's amusement,before she left to go back to Africa.   In one of the non-fiction areas, she more or less took me aside and said "Say, how long have the Chinese been going to Africa?".  My reply, "Forever."  Her response,"I just wondered, because everytime I'm there, they are busy, everywhere, doing business."

Mirsky was herself correlating these areas as a specialist in Africa and India, so when she uses Duyvendak, it is to clarify that the navigational vessels always hugged the coast from Fujian to Yemen at the Gulf of Aden straits into the Red Sea.

The question of the technological knowledge is mute, as to how to build these ships since Marco Polo had arrived approximately within half a century of the birth of Zheng He .

[madupont]

Ps. another point

Previously, the Chinese had dealt with Arab traders who followed this route, I can perhaps give you their average time it would take for voyages covering specific distances, either tomorrow or the next day, but my point is that the Chinese already felt competent to do these same routes apparently prior to the birth of Zheng He at Yunnan.(southwest China bordering on Indochina/Vietnam, Kunming region)

[madupont]

"We know that Arab traders allowed two years for the voyage to China and back; from Persia to China was a 130- to 140-day voyage. Similarly, a Chinese source states that a ship starting from China in mid-winter would arrive at Lambri, the northwest corner of Sumatra, in about 40 days, would spend the summer trading, and the following season, catching the northeast monsoon, would sail to the country of the Arabs in sixty days. 'All sea ships start in the eleventh and twelfth moon with the north wind and come in the fifth and sixth moon with the south wind.'" 

One caution, until I know  which of her sources  Mirsky is quoting,above,I do not know which calendar has been referred to: Chinese, or Western; nor, if the same Chinese calendar was in use during the  Southern Sung Dynasty(1127-1279)"not only did maritime trade increase considerably but the navy gres from a small service of some 3000 men to an impressive number of squadrons with more than 50,000 men.*  It was then that the Chinese took control of the coastal sea-lands and, displacing the Arabs,  who had dominated the Indian Ocean trade, carried on a lively commerce with the Malabar coast.

The asterisk above is to remind me to note that, at present time, the PRC
has one of the largest naval forces(which was reported in the New York Times in the last year and a half[?])but whether it is larger than our own US, which is in perpetual motion last time that I looked, I cannot comment for now.

[madupont]

Ps/ typing error underneath the time-span for the Southern Sung dynasty should read "...navy grew...".

I tried the modifier and was afraid that I had lost the entire post as my computer went into not responding and I had to restart the computer. I'm just glad the post is there!

[caclark]

Donotremove, August 11, 2007 at 11:16 PM: “…Remember when you are reading the book that Menzies is an experienced seaman”

What's the significance of that? Menzies' seamanship is not what's in question. It's his historical research methods, his conclusions, and possible motives that have brought him under the microscope. He has written a sensational book that challenges conventional historical assumptions and the world is entitled to know if his thesis is a fraudulent or fabricated history, or a responsible study.

[Donotremove]

Caclark, all of that is true.  However, someone who is an experienced seaman should/might/maybe understand the content of the research necessary to write a book like 1421 and to propose such a theory as the Chinese having discovered America. Yes/No/None of the Above?

[caclark]

Junius and Joseph
by Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister

I just finished reading this recent study on the murder of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith in June 1844. It's premise is that Smith's killing was a political assassination more than a religious martyrdom and was engineered by leading Whigs. At the time of his murder, Smith was an independent candidate for President and according to this book, Smith's presence in the race was causing angst across the country, in particular to Henry Clay for whom carrying Illinois was critical. This book stops just short of implicating Clay as a co-conspirator while leaving open the door to the possibility that he might have been.

Diabolical conspiracy theories are often off-the-wall and sometimes downright wacko. This one was well-researched and reasonably argued. But its premise rests on circumstantial evidence that can be interpreted in different ways. I remain unconvinced that there was any high-level conspiracy. But the book does recreate with liveliness, political Mormonism as a menacing dynamic in the 1844 election campaign.