Khubilai Khan S Lost Fleet

A gripping account of the seafaring adventures of the Mongol Empire under Khubilai Khan. In 1279, off China's southeast coast, Khubilai Khan routed the Song navy and completed the grand dream of his grandfather, Genghis Khan -- the conquest of China. The Grand Khan now ruled the largest empire the world had ever seen, stretching from the China Sea to the plains of Hungary. Having also inadvertently inherited the world's largest navy -- more than seven hundred ships -- the Mongols began audacious attacks on Japan, Vietnam and Java. Yet within fifteen years, Khubilai had squandered his massive fleet, and the Mongols were a spent maritime force. Considered for centuries to be little more than legend, the story of the Mongols' fleet has finally been confirmed. Renowned archaeologist and historian James P. Delgado has dived with the Japanese team studying the remains of the Khan's lost fleet at Takashima. Using original sources as diverse as actual sunken ships, land excavations, temple inscriptions, hand-painted scrolls and historical and literary records from China, Japan and Vietnam, Delgado takes the reader on an exciting history of Khubilai Khan's great Mongol navy, whose rise and fall presaged the great fleets of the fifteenth-century Ming Dynasty, made famous in the best-seller 1421. A long and bitter struggle to conquer Japan led to two massive naval invasions, in 1274 and 1281. The struggle entered the realm of legend when the Khan's fleet was supposedly destroyed by a "divine wind" or kamikaze. Delgado has dived with the Japanese archaeologists studying the remains of the lost fleet at Takashima, and explains how hasty preparations, a poorly led force, and inferior tactics led the Khan to squander his massive numerical and technological advantages. Retreating from Japan, Kublai Khan turned his attention to Southeast Asia. Again, the Khan lost his advantage when the Vietnamese lured his navy into the delta of the Mekong River. As the water fell with the tide, large wooden stakes impaled the Mongol ships and the Vietnamese emerged from the shadows to destroy the soldiers in a rain of arrows and fire. The Mongol dream of ruling the waves was over.

After finally achieving what had eluded even his grandfather Genghis Khan - the conquest of China - and inheriting the world's largest navy, Khubilai Khan set his sights on Japan. He commanded an immense armada, the largest fleet the world had ever seen and his success seemed assured. The Japanese were vastly outnumbered and facing certain death, but they prayed to their gods for survival and the very next day Khan's entire armada were destroyed by a 'divine wind', the kamikaze. The legend of the kamikaze has endured for centuries, and was revived as a Japanese national legend during the Second World War, culminating in the suicide bombers they sent to attack the Allies, but the truth has remained a mystery. Only now, after decades of painstaking research and underwater excavation can leading marine archaeologist James Delgado reveal the truth of what really happened to Khubilia Khan's fleet.

In The Origins of the Lost Fleet of the Mongol Empire, Randall Sasaki provides a starting point for understanding the technology of the failed Mongol invasion of Japan in 1281 CE, as well as the history of shipbuilding in East Asia. He has created a timber category database, analyzed methods of joinery, and studied contemporary approaches to shipbuilding in order to ascertain the origins and types of vessels that composed the Mongol fleet. Although no conclusive statements can be made regarding the origins of the vessels, it appears that historical documents and archaeological evidence correspond well to each other, and that many of the remains analyzed were from smaller vessels built in China's Yangtze River Valley. Large, V-shaped cargo ships and the Korean vessels probably represent a small portion of the timbers raised at the Takashima shipwreck site.

"David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans-the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian-which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people-free and enslaved-across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas"--

From his seat in Xanadu, the great Mongol Emperor of China, Kubla Khan, had long plotted an invasion of Japan. However, it was only with the acquisition of Korea, that the Khan gained the maritime resources necessary for such a major amphibious operation. Written by expert Stephen Turnbull, this book tells the story of the two Mongol invasions of Japan against the noble Samurai. Using detailed maps, illustrations, and newly commissioned artwork, Turnbull charts the history of these great campaigns, which included numerous bloody raids on the Japanese islands, and ended with the famous kami kaze, the divine wind, that destroyed the Mongol fleet and would live in the Japanese consciousness and shape their military thinking for centuries to come.

Examines independent documentary film production in India within a political context.

Though left uncompleted, “Kubla Khan” is one of the most famous examples of Romantic era poetry. In it, Samuel Coleridge provides a stunning and detailed example of the power of the poet’s imagination through his whimsical description of Xanadu, the capital city of Kublai Khan’s empire. Samuel Coleridge penned “Kubla Khan” after waking up from an opium-induced dream in which he experienced and imagined the realities of the great Mongol ruler’s capital city. Coleridge began writing what he remembered of his dream immediately upon waking from it, and intended to write two to three hundred lines. However, Coleridge was interrupted soon after and, his memory of the dream dimming, was ultimately unable to complete the poem. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Described as a "forest of masts," San Francisco's Gold Rush waterfront was a floating economy of ships and wharves, where a dazzling array of global goods was traded and transported. Drawing on excavations in buried ships and collapsed buildings from this period, James P. Delgado re-creates San Francisco's unique maritime landscape, shedding new light on the city's remarkable rise from a small village to a boomtown of thousands in the three short years from 1848 to 1851. Gleaning history from artifacts—preserves and liquors in bottles, leather boots and jackets, hulls of ships, even crocks of butter lying alongside discarded guns—Gold Rush Port paints a fascinating picture of how ships and global connections created the port and the city of San Francisco. Setting the city's history into the wider web of international relationships, Delgado reshapes our understanding of developments in the Pacific that led to a world system of trading.