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55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If Not Proof, A Well-Argued Case, August 25, 2006
This review is from: The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America (Hardcover)
A few years back, a hypothesis was put forth that the Chinese had landed in North America in the first part of the fifteenth century, nearly a century before Columbus. Needless to say, this hypothesis has been somewhat controversial. Still, though I would not say that what I've read has been absolute proof, there is certainly plenty of compelling evidence to support the hypothesis. In his book, The Island of Seven Cities, Paul Chiasson pushes the hypothesis even further by claiming that a ruin on Cape Breton Island--the author's home island where his parents still live--is, in fact, the remains of a thriving Chinese settlement.
Like much of the rest of this early evidence, it is quite compelling. Mr. Chiasson starts with the legend of the island of seven cities which is scattered through the writings of early European explorers. He makes a case that this legend is based on fact and that the basis of the legend is a sophisticated set of communities that once existed on Cape Breton Island. Then, by eliminating the possibilities that these communities were actually Western settlements (Portuguese or French, primarily), he turns to the chance that these might have been Chinese.
Much of his evidence for a Chinese presence comes from what is known about a Native American tribe, the Mi'kmaq, whose culture was incredibly advanced for the time and bears many striking resemblances to Chinese culture. There religious beliefs and legends bear a striking Chinese fingerprint and, in particular, their written language (otherwise non-existent in North America) is based on pictograms amazingly similar to Chinese writing.
For me, however, his strongest argument came from Chiasson's own speciality: architecture. He is a Yale-educated architect specializing in architectural history so his arguments have weight. He examines the ruins very closely and shows very well how the structure of the ruins mirrors traditional Chinese architecture. It is a very convincing tale.
I'm not calling this book a slam dunk on the case of Chinese presence but it's an excellent effort. If there's a weakness in this book it's that he unfolds his evidence in a timeline that parallels his discovery of it which also parallels his story of personal illness. Not to be unsympathetic but I found his comments about his struggle with HIV to be distracting since HIV is such a powerful topic itself it takes away from what he is trying to say about this revolutionary idea. To me, if the book had been less personal it would have been more "scientific" and convincing. On the other hand, it must be granted that the author's struggle with disease is often what pushed him in his research.
In any case, this is an excellent book. Likely it is another shot in what will be a growing avenue of historical research. Mr. Chiasson deserves a lot of credit for his discovery and fine research. I hope this site will be examined in more detail for undisputable evidence of a Chinese presence.
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49 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing, But . . ., June 13, 2006
This review is from: The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America (Hardcover)
Paul Chiasson has written an engaging history of his investigations into some mysterious ruins on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Chiasson writes well and his story gains additional interest because he has included material on his Acadian/Scots ancestors who lived in the Cape Breton area and also because he writes frankly of his own struggles with AIDS.
Chiasson makes it clear that his mentor and inspiration is the controversial but intriguing writer Gavin Menzies, author of 1421, which claims that Chinese fleets explored much of the world, including the Americas, during the early 15th century. Like Menzies, Chiasson is enthusiastic about his subject and tells a compelling story, but at times his conclusions are questionable.
Chiasson makes a good case for Cape Breton Island being the fabled "Island of Seven Cities" which appeared on many European maps in the 1400s and 1500s. He also does a good job describing some puzzling ruins on Cape Dauphin, which seem to have no provenance in extant European records. But he never fully proves that the ruins were built by Chinese immigrants. (A lot of archaeological work needs to be done, particularly on some sites Chiasson and Menzies claim are tombs). Much of what he cites as proof is unconvincing: the Native American Mikmaq culture had some interesting artwork and clothing styles, but they appear (to me, at any rate) no more similar to Chinese work than they do Middle Eastern or African. The Kluscap stories are interesting, but they are very similar to other "bringers of civilization from afar" stories told by other cultures, such as the Egyptian Thoth legend or the Toltec/Aztec Quetzalcoatl mythologies. Chiasson seems to discount or ignore other possibilities for pre-Columbian origins of those ruins, such as Charles C. Mann's argument (in his book 1491) that Native American cultures were far more advanced and heterogeneous than many Eurocentrics thought. And then there are also many stories of early European contact with North America, from the historically valid (the Vikings) to the more speculative/questionable (Templar "Grail in America", etc)
To sum up, Chiasson has produced a well-written, interesting story with some intriguing speculations which should not be swallowed whole, but which should inspire deeper archaeological/historic investigations of Cape Breton Island's early history.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Whether correct or not, a good read., September 22, 2006
This review is from: The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America (Hardcover)
Chiasson is an architect interested in archaeology. This book recounts his efforts to find the origin of ruins on Cape Breton, and his final conclusion: that the Chinese had a colony there by the early part of the 15th century. Chiasson is a native of Cape Breton, in fact his family were among the early white settlers. He is somewhat of an adventurer, intellectually dogged and objective, and a good writer. The fact that he thought his life was going to be cut short by AIDs while doing the research adds piquancy. The personal aspect of the narrative is the most interesting; his effort to find Portugeese and French explanations for the ruins provides material, which while not compelling, was valuable as a case study of how historical research may be conducted.
Various findings fell into place for Chiasson when he read the work of another "amateur", Gavin Menzies ("1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered the World" ), who first hypothesized that the Chinese visited and mapped the East Coast of North America (they came via ocean currents from Africa, which is why they visited the East Coast rather than the West Coast). Menzies and Chiasson's findings have not been exactly embraced by the academic community - I checked the Internet, but found no late developments as regards acceptance, but many currently accepted ideas have had similar histories. Maybe someone will dig up one of the Chinese graves Chiasson thinks he has found.
The book might have been clearer if it hadn't followed Chiasson's order of discovery and developing thought, but it would also have lost something. The one area of Chiasson's account I think he should have done a better job with, was the references to writing among the Mi'kmaq, the Indians native to the area. A whole paragraph is quoted (p.161) in which the 17th century missionary LeClercq concludes only that they may have been literate once; later Chiasson says that LeClercq found that the Mi'kmaq had "knowledge of letters" from which Chiasson concludes "they knew how to read": I wish there was a longer quote from LeClerq about this actual knowledge, to put it in context, and more about the Mi'kmaq writing characters shown in this book.
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