Chapter summary:
After 1434, European world maps changed. There was a shift away from the circular maps centred on Jerusalem, emphasising religious subjects, to depictions of the world as it really is. Toscanelli sent Columbus a map of the Americas; Regiomontanus advertised a world map for sale; Magellan possessed a world map; Andrea Bianco showed Florida on his Atlantic chart of 1436; on his 1448 map, Bianco described Brasil; then, in 1507, Waldseemueller published his amazing world map accurately rendering North and South America. All of these maps had something in common: they accurately depicted parts of the New World before Europeans ever reached those parts. They are also all copies, in whole or in part, of Zheng He’s 1418 map. It was a deliberate policy of Zheng He’s mission to distribute Chinese maps of the world. However, the transfer of knowledge went further than maps. It was that combination of a massive transfer of new knowledge from China to Europe and the fact that it came in one short period that created a cumulative effect and hence the revolution we call the Renaissance.
So at this point, not only did kings, captains and navigators have, for the first time, maps which showed them the true shape of the world but they also acquired instruments and tables which showed them how to reach those new lands by the quickest route and how to return home in safety. When they arrived in the New World, an international trading system created by Chinese, Arabs and Indians awaited them, built up by thousands of sea voyages over hundreds of years honed by centuries of experience of monsoons and trade winds. When China left the world stage this trading system was Europe’s for the taking. Europeans found not only rich new lands but the results of sophisticated transplanting and genetic engineering pioneered by the Chinese. Raw materials had been mined and transhipped across continents. Europeans found worked gold mines in Australia, iron mines in New Zealand and Nova Scotia, copper in North America, and a sophisticated steel industry in Nigeria. Knowledge of printing spread the riches of the New World accurately and rapidly and with gunpowder weapons European rivalry took a new potency and urgency resulting in frenetic competition to conquer the New World.
The same dramatic changes can be seen in Europe, not least in food production, mining and processing of raw materials. In art and architecture the new rules of perspective explained by the rational mathematics of Alberti and perfected by the genius of Leonardo da Vinci could be applied to create all manner of new buildings – which could be accurately and quickly explained and described by printing. Perhaps the most important single transfer of knowledge from China to Europe was how the universe worked. Everything could be explained without the blessing of the Church. Man’s thought was freed from centuries of religious dogma.
The transfer of intellectual knowledge from China to Europe in 1434 came from a people who had created that civilisation over thousands of years. It was given to a Europe which was just emerging from the thousand year stagnation which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. Until now the Renaissance has been portrayed as a rebirth of the classical European civilisations of Greece and Rome. Chinese influence has been ignored. Whilst Greece and Rome were unquestionably important, in my submission the transfer of Chinese intellectual knowledge was the spark which set the Renaissance ablaze.
Further reading:
Inventions from 1 AD to 1000 AD
http://www.krysstal.com/inventions_07.html
The Forlani map of North America, by David Woodward:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1151185
The life of Amerigo Vespucci, by James Canaday: http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/papers/canaday.html
Chinese inventions:
http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01780/essential/mechanical-inventions/index.htm
Johannes Kepler
http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/kepler/section3.rhtml
http://www.beforebc.com/Kepler.html
Kepler’s discovery:
http://www.keplersdiscovery.com
Kepler: The New Astronomy
http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/kepler/section8.rhtml
The Derivation and First Draft of Copernicus’s Planetary Theory A Translation of the Commentariolus with Commentary
http://www.jstor.org/pss/986461
The Copernican Revolution:
http://www.yorku.ca/bwall/nats1730/resources/coprevolution.htm
