American History

[madupont]

caclark, re:#700

Have you been watching Big Love on HBO by any chance? or had a chance to catch some of it? It now has me in stitches about human rationalizations to cover up their inate tendency to err; but one thing that you can't miss is how Mormons or rather their descendents when they factionalize have an eye toward business with the usual earthly reward. One thing that I had to consider upon reading Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy, after having watched Big Love for about a season, was how what Phillips points out as the entertwining bottom line of their rapid population increase, faster increase of membership than any other religious group in a growing America (these were the historical figures that he was comparing for specified time-slots)combined with their penchant for business which can finance campaigns will place any other candidate in double jeopardy.

"...political Mormonism as a menacing dynamic in the 1844 election campaign.", and even now, I might add.  The potential voters are particularly cavalier and wishy-washy these days; I don't just bet they will solidify an opinion around a worthy and competent candidate -- by then, as the saying goes, because as a matter of fact it has been quite a while since I've seen them do that.

I guess, everybody knows by now today that Karl Rove is leaving the nest and will try to be a homebody in Texas until things cool down again. He probably does not want to remind ideological enemies of his existence for the time being until the term is quite finished. But, I am not naive enough to suppose that his party of choice is not largely functional in Texas which allows him to catch his breath and contribute more bubbley  short and sweet concepts that really work, for the next round of applause and kudos,"Great Job,Karl".

[weezo]

Clark,

Mexies knowledge of the seas and seacurrents estalishes his reasoning for the routes taken by the various expeditions. If the current flows north from the Cape of Good Hope and then west to Brazil, that explains why that was the route. Menzies uses some interesting ideas to show that landfall was made - the erection of stone tablets in medieval languages with a common concentric circle signature, and the presence of known or told about wrecks that have characteristics that indicate they may have been wrecks of the Chinese junks. The theories that Europeans brought the Chinese goods to the west coast of America is not solidly verified. It is based on supposition. Therefore, the evidence tha Menzies provides, the the Chinese themselves brought their porcelain and their chickens, makes more sense that that the Europeans would have brought such valuable commodities in large quantities rather than returning them to the European markets.

On a second reading of the book, I am noticing that with most suppositions, Menzies well explains how he came to his conclusions. They are rooted more in science than in historical research, which is a refreshing change from the Euro-centric versions of history.

Has anyone gone to the 1421 website to see what new informatiion may be there to confirm or deny some of the allegations?

The fact that the Chinese, in the beginning of the tale, could not establish longitude is an excellent reason for the misshaping of some of the land masses on the ancient maps. Latitude, which they learned to use in the Southern Hemisphere, would make the land masses accurate in a North-South direction, but would leave them suspect as to east-west accuracy. Menzies does a great job of explaining how the seasons in which the voyages made landfall had an effect on their understanding of landfall, especially in the southern polar region.

[madupont]

Thanks, caclark,re:#704

[madupont]

weezo,re:#703

If I continue  from where I left out, it becomes self explanatory, keeping in mind that the Chinese travel along the coast of continents and do not navigate out on the open sea at this point in history following the Southern Sung Dynasty and/or Marco Polo's visit. The answer becomes more apparent.

"Quilon,the port at which Marco Polo's  homeward-bound ship called,and Cambay, the busy Gujarat entrepot, were for a while their farthest trading places. To pay for the luxuries she imported(s.Sung dynasty)--
elephants' tusks and rhinoceros horns, strings of pearls,aromatics, and
incense---China exported gold, silver, and copper cash, silks and porcelain. [This last, originally sent as ballast for the light, valuable silk stuffs, quickly created its own markets;Chinese Sung porcelain has been dug up in Java, South India, Zanzibar, and the east coast of Africa.]" XXX

We know that from East African caravans of trade goods went north to the Egyptian ports on the Mediterranean, so that those enterprising Venetians (who later became, "What's new, on the Rialto?" or "I'm doomed, my ship was lost in a storm..." would have found a number of things cropping up in market-places that they could take back to Europe,  including Near Eastern Greece,  which would have whetted their appetite to explore further, especially when they themselves were sailing into Indian ports where they could ask of merchants, Arab, there as in Africa, "Prego...where did you get this?"     

In fact, my question at first was since there was a Silk Road route by caravan to China, why would the Chinese not be satisfied just tucking things into a camel-load, and why would the Western parts of the Mediterranean,and Northern Europe (the Vikings for instance had raided Paris three centuries earlier, or should I say Norsemen because they left their genes behind in Normandy before they sailed back home?) not be content with the usual "luxury" goods as they were rarities?

Then the answer came to me, of course, I'm reading about it, the Chinese had bills to pay, the prize of the commodities that they coveted, the only answer would be to "mass market".

However what I was getting at is that in the push forward to mass market Far Eastern wares like the porcelain, they dealt so much more of it now picked up by  Europeans beginning to navigate longer distances at sea. Accidents will happen but whether drift would carry a wreck this far from the West African coast, especially during hurricane season which is coming up any day now( and I noticed the warnings began last night for hours ) and begins off the coast of West  Africa, would be just an average guess that a shipwreck could after a time settle to emerge  at the end of the hurricane's route.  It begins to sound like Robert Louis Stevenson discovering Treasure Island in the Manasquan river.  I'm sleepy. Back later.           

[weezo]

Maddie,

Your theory of wrecks off the African coast driftin to just the right spots accross the ocean would be perpahs possible except for the fact that the maps that survived pre-columbian times, are extremely accurate at the places where the wrecks were found, which suggests that unless the cartographers were swept across the ocean by the storms that carried their wrecks, they would have had to visit the coasts as Menzies suggests.

Hurricanes seem not to travel the routes of the ocean currents, and seem to start as often in the mid-atlantic as off the coast of north Africa. Menzies does not suggest that the Chinese went any further north in the eastern Atlantic than the Cape Verde Island, where they turned west and were taken pretty directly to Brazil. Perhaps you know more about ocean currents than I do.

[madupont]

Nope. I stay away from deep water.

[madupont]

I did think, however, that Cape Verde was about as far north as the Chinese would go before something awful happened.

[madupont]

My biggest bargain opinion for the day, though, is that probably a great many people had gotten their hands on those porcelain whatevers that would make it highly possible somebody else's ship  had as good a chance of getting  here, I just haven't checked the dates out for who was coming this way.

[madupont]

This may be useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ming-Empire2.jpg

[thanatopsy]

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


Uh, that's part of the problem --- British seaman are notorious liars. Tristan Jones who is one of my literary heroes is such an example:

http://www.tristanjones.org/

We've all heard of the good ol' USA ''fish story''.  Well, to the British those type of mythic stories are the equivalent in their culture.  Here's a quote:


Recently the truth of Tristan Jones "lives" has been published in a detailed biography by Anthony Dalton.  Here we learn that most of his life was a fabrication with many stories being total fiction.  Some of us who love his stories would have liked to believe every word.  However, the fact remains that many of Tristan's true exploits would have made marvelous reading without any embellishments.


Yes, British seaman are notorious liars and are almost as bad as Republicans.  Therefore, Menzies' background should sound an alarm for those who are familiar with the seafaring culture.

[thanatopsy]

A true American hero. His legacy will be unmatched:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/us/11flowers.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Richmond Flowers Is Dead at 88; Challenged Segregation and Klan

             
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: August 11, 2007

Richmond M. Flowers, who as the Alabama attorney general in the early 1960s drew national attention when he challenged the segregationist policies of Gov. George C. Wallace and prosecuted Ku Klux Klansmen in the killings of civil rights workers, died Thursday at his home in Dothan, Ala. Mr. Flowers, who later served a prison term for bribery, was 88.


- - - more - - -


Mr Flowers's conviction resulted from forged documents.

[weezo]

Than,

Thanks for the note on Richmond Flowers. As it happens, the news in Virginia last week was of the death of Oliver Hill, also a noted Civil Rights worker. I think he was in his nineties.

Seems these icons of the Civil Rights era are slipping out of the present. They will be sorely missed as we try to wreste our civil rights back from an president appointed by the Supreme Court.

As to Menzies and British seafarers tall tales, the proof will come out sometime in the future. He tells a good tale. There is much to be verified from other sources. Assuming (I know, A**  U Me) that his descriptions of the ocean currents are correct, he present powerful evidence that it could have happened. Some of his evidence is questionable, but I think the presence of Ming dynasty porcelain in large quantities on the west coast of America strongly suggests that the Chinese were probably frequent visitors to that part of America. I found it also interesting that a section of Mexico produces lacquered goods that use local materials but the same methods used in the Orient.

Maddie, All I have read about the early explorations of the Europeans is that they came to conquer not to trade. It seems a rather wide stretch that since they thought so little of the Native Americans, that they would have brought valuable Chinese porcelain to trade, when they felt they could get by with glass beads and copper trinkets. Even Francis Jennings in his Conquest of America, stated there was evidence of pre-columbian presence of the Chinese on the west coast of the Americas. And, he wasn't a seafaring Brit.

[madupont]

Did I say any such thing?

No, I thought you may have been referring to the Antilles conversation that was previously held in this forum, in regard to Portuguese explorations.  I never had an over arching interest in English developments in the Colonies until I arrived there in my adult guise about 1982, and said, "Holy Cow! these are the colonies that they were talking about when I was a kid in school back in the Midwest where we had our own problems on the Frontier." I mean, we learned it out of the book and heard all the patriotic spiel, but that says it right there; it wasn't even our language.

Once in the Colonies however, that was another thing. I waited for about
a graceful period until they were done archeologizing around the Stockton house, because I didn't want to drag any mud into the parlor at Morven but I was immediately hired on as a volunteer docent there making interesting historical conversation with visitors from over seas or major corporations who might drop money on the house for upkeep of where Washington came to dinner during
"the war" because the lady of the house had a crush on him and wrote poems in praise of him.  I thought it was the least that I could do.  It was quite interesting living in the midst of that war for about a decade.

No, I grasp how the porcelain could end up on coastal access to the Andes when it became Spanish Empire.

I was trying to lay out the extant information that made possible a Ming dynasty's interest because some of the terms used are very discombubalating like what is a Yongle emperor(?) and then I have to go back and see about the suppression of Mongol dominion in the Ming dynasty to come up with a term like that. Only this morning, I made the discovery that our  Ming navigator is my old friend Cheng tzu by another pronunciation and pidgin variation; but, it is kind of like, shaking hands with someone introduced at a garden tea, in which the polite thing to do would be to then lean in and ask, "Pardon me, the face is familiar but where did we meet originally?"

Which strangely enough is why I ended up at Morven entirely by coincidence.

[madupont]

Ps. on second thought.

I can meanwhile assure you that the Chinese have come not to trade but to conquer and put a stop to our aggressive tendencies.

[madupont]

Thanatopsy,re:#712

I recognize that case from 1965 mainly because my "brother-in-law" who was really by sister-in-law's brother John headed the local northern state chapter of SNCC to join the march South for voter registration. We were well into the Vietnam impending fiasco by that point in time with three political assassinations down.

Oddly enough for the time, many of the local poets, who listened to recordings of their favourite country music from back home, were from families who came north to the Midwest to get jobs in the automotive industry at Michigan and then the younger generation kind of drifted around on the road to explore what else the north had to offer and they could play coffee-house gigs often on the same instrumentation familiar to me. My father when driving to his mother's home would keep me entertained for the couple of hours or so by playing what was then called a "mouse-ory" or mouth-organ, the harmonica of Bobby Dylan's day.

None of these transplanted southern whites who sang and published lyrics in the  underground hesitated when it came to marching south for the voter registration drives.  In fact, I can think of one of those poems that I have to go hunt up that could go to poetry forum as it was written by a poet who was a Green Mountain Boy from a very northern state but did not mind going to jail at the time.