And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed. Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the world in Confucian harmony. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China.
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