Munit Junk (TVA22)

Great! This is just what we need: more junk. (Get it: JUNK :lol: :lol: )

Seriously: Looks good though I have no use for it.
 
The Chinese junk was actualy at one point far supeirior to the european galeon; Before the fleet was destroyed by imperial decree, the chinese treasure ships performed some of the following impressive journeys;
They mapped the coast of Africa, bringing back giraffes and other animals to the imperial court.
They discovered america and Austrailia before the europeans (this has only recenty been bought to light, It seems that the portugese were actualy the last to discover america, after the vikings and the chinese).
Sailing around the southern most point of South America the chinese treasure ships traveled north and eventualy reached Iceland, even building a colony there.

The treasure ships were all destroyed and the evidence of their acheivements almost totaly eliminated as the chinese civilization once more turned inwards.
 
Its from a book that I bought my uncle for christmas, I cant remember the name I'm afraid. Of course some of it is conjecture based on slim evidence, (these sort of books are written to sell a lot of copies, not for serious history researchers) but most of it seems well documented and true.

The book was called something like "1468 the year china discovered the world" or something like that- The year is probaly different.
 
Check out 'The Great Chinese Travelers' by Jeannette Mirsky for more info... Its a hard to find book published in 1964 when evidence of this sort first showed up. Also you can take a look at the history channel show "in search of" with Leonard Nimoy, about the subject, I think it's over junks. This one was made in the 70's though, I haven't seen any more recent books on the subject, if you can find the name of that book smoking mirror, let me know, I'd love to get it on ebay.

From The Great Chinese Travelers:
China isolated and unchanging is one of the false cliches established by European travelers as they observed, with attitudes of Western Superiority, the closing century of China's last imperial dynasty. It is as informatively erroneous as the sometimes equally arrogant views of the 'barbarians' that chinese travelers abroad have described through three millenia. All such cliches fall away as we read the gems of Chinese travel liturature gathered here...

Anyone who is interested, the book is pretty dry, chinese travel liturature (diaries of travelers) is not like western ones, where they make up stuff they don't understand, and exaggerate things. The Chinese just tell it how it is, and its all matter of fact. I like it though.
 
PS as I made this unit in the first place, I feel compelled to defend it's legitimacy in the game from people who like to play on the western name for these ships, and as such, I will not apologize for going OT. :) Thankyou.
 
TVA22:
PS as I made this unit in the first place, I feel compelled to defend it's legitimacy in the game from people who like to play on the western name for these ships, and as such, I will not apologize for going OT. Thankyou.
Click to expand...

The western name? You mean I'm writing in Western, now? :)
In Swedish it's called djonk, nearly impossible to joke about. The name is apparantly from Malayan djong, meaning big ship.
The homework for tomorrow's is history lesson is to find out what the russian title bojar means. ;)
 
Originally posted by TVA22
Check out 'The Great Chinese Travelers' by Jeannette Mirsky for more info... Its a hard to find book published in 1964 when evidence of this sort first showed up. Also you can take a look at the history channel show "in search of" with Leonard Nimoy, about the subject, I think it's over junks. This one was made in the 70's though, I haven't seen any more recent books on the subject, if you can find the name of that book smoking mirror, let me know, I'd love to get it on ebay.

From The Great Chinese Travelers:
China isolated and unchanging is one of the false cliches established by European travelers as they observed, with attitudes of Western Superiority, the closing century of China's last imperial dynasty. It is as informatively erroneous as the sometimes equally arrogant views of the 'barbarians' that chinese travelers abroad have described through three millenia. All such cliches fall away as we read the gems of Chinese travel liturature gathered here...

Anyone who is interested, the book is pretty dry, chinese travel liturature (diaries of travelers) is not like western ones, where they make up stuff they don't understand, and exaggerate things. The Chinese just tell it how it is, and its all matter of fact. I like it though.
Click to expand...

Hi TVA, wo huilai ye yao huida.

The Great Period of Chinese Maritime discoveries is the end of the Ming (means "brilliant" in Chinese BTW) dynasty, namely end 16, and mostly first half 17th century. It is definitely true and proved beyond any doubt a large Chinese fleet mapped the Eastern coast of Africa and established trade links. I think there are three reasons why it stopped:

1/ But the Ming dynasty was then replaced by the Mandchus who started ruling the North and who were culturally much inferior to Chinese. As often happened in that case numerous rebellions occured to put back on the throne some members of the Ming family, most having fled in between to Taiwan (a bit like in 1949). The Mandchus were land warriors, not tradesmen and had enough pbs keeping the Chinese population under control to open itself. Since Mings were in Taiwan with direct access to the coast, the Mandchus just made most villages between the sea and 10 to 20 miles inshore move more inlands as a protection. Although the ruling Mandchus (Qing) became more and more Chinese they still kept that fear of the sea. That geopolitical choice of remaining continental when control of the sea was starting to mean power was then not actually Chinese but freed Western countries from a would-be tough competitor.
2/ Then in the XIXth it was as well the end of an era, all the more weakening China, as TVA said.
3/ Traditionally Chinese don't have to much interest in the lands around them that are just peripherals.
 
To mrtn: okay okay, what I meant was the fact that it's called "Junk" in english, which also means "trash." Which opens up the chance for annoying people to make the annoying joke that these ships are just garbage, and that's why they are called what they are. I don't know any Swedish, you've got me there, I know it did originally come from Malayan, but my point was the play on words in english that is so common among europeans and americans (no offence to people who don't do this, I'm not insulting all westerners, I am one.)

To LouLong: I've read that too, the manchus were really detrimental to the expansion of chinese science and knowledge, in the same manner as the mongols several centuries before. I've even read that China could have gone into an industrial revolution in the 1200's had they not been conquered by the mongols. Too bad for the Chinese though, I think it would have been great if they could have whallopped the brits when they came over and tried to take over cities. It would have served them right.
 
I don't realy consider this off topic at all, these units are here to be used, and often people don't know what to use them for.
Kim Stanley Robinson (author of the martian trillogy) has just released a book about an alternative history where the west failed to gain supremacy because we were all killed off by the black death. I've not read it yet but it looks interesting.
(I'm afraid I'm not at all good at remembering names of books, only the general outline of whats inside).
 
TVA22: You saw my smilies, didn't you? Here's some more: :) :)
I got what you meant.

Smoking Mirror: I think it's called "The years of salt and rice" (or "the years of rice and salt"?). I'm a little sceptic about the "100% killed by the black death"- idea, but the martian trilogy was quite good, so maybe I'll give it a shot. I read a very good book about the black death last year (in swedish, unfortunately, so I can't recommend it to all you foreigners (Stora döden, Dick Harrison)), which gave the survival rates to between 30-90%. A plague can't spread if it kills of 100% of the population, there would be no one to spread it left.

Sorry if I went off on a tangent.
 
The book in question I believe is: 1421 the year Chinese discover america. ;)

You can find more information on it at the following website:

http://www.1421.tv

There was actually a forum on that site as well but it was officially closed beginning today :( Nice book though. Lots of information and maps. I really hope TVA22 will come back from retirement and make one of those Treasure Ship. :D
 
Originally posted by Neomega
hate to go OT too, but..... Chinese, believable, Vikings.... no way.
Click to expand...

The Vikings were the 1st to see america, finding baffin island then Newfoundland, they formed a small settlement there but left because of hostile natives, before anyone else found the Americas
 
[color=600f0f]I decided to check this thread out again, and almost everything I read since my last post is Off Topic! :eek:

TVA, I don't have a problem with you "defending" your unit, and a certain amount of background history is expected. But when it gets to the point where the discussion is about who discovered America first ... that's clearly beyond the scope of a unit thread.

Please, use the World History Forum for this discussion. Don't make me get out my Big Pointy Stick.
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