Travel to Canada

The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America

Format: Hardcover
Author: Paul Chiasson
ReleaseDate: 02 May, 2006
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Rating:

Excellent Development of a Thesis
His curiousity spawns intensive, solitary and self funded research that includes every mapping he can find from a 1424 sketch to current aerial photograps.
Paul Chiasson discovers the renmants of a road while hiking in his native Nova Scotia. He reads the accounts of explorers and missionaries.

The author is a passionate amateur with good reason for his passion. He has made an incredible find, even more incredible for its having laid undiscovered in modern times.

Besides his clear and convincing text, he presents aerial photos which demonstrate the dimensions of this forgotten area and photos of the lore of the Mi'kmaqs which demonstrate a Chinese influence.

Chiasson has laid out the challenge and the ball is now in the court of the archeaologists. What is this discovery? Did the Chinese build these structures as Chiasson poses? If so, why is it that they were able to build on such a scale in Nova Scotia when so many others perished in the first year? Why has this been so long ignored?

Credit must be given to the book designers. The well selected maps and charts appear exactly where they should. It's rather mundane to comment on the type, but the type and layout, which added printing costs for sure, were easy on the eyes.

Essential reading
Chaisson is an architect and teacher: his insights on a series of ruins in Cape Breton Island rewrites American history, and is essential reading for any who would understand early American origins and evidence on explorations. THE ISLAND OF SEVEN CITIES: WHERE THE CHINESE SETTLED WHEN THEY DISCOVERED AMERICA gathers and presents tangible proof that the Chinese had their own settlement in America long before Columbus.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch.

Whether correct or not, a good read.
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 an architect interested in archaeology. 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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