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I forgot to mention that I met Ben Olshin for the first time at the
special session that the American Historical Association (AHA) decided to have
at
its annual convention to discuss/address Menzies Chinese-First theories
and the uproar surrounding his book, 1421. Olshin was on the panel as was
Menzies.
The whole idea for holding this session I was told from high level
persons was the idea of David Woodward who as it turned out could not attend
due to illness. Woodward's idea was that it would be best to take on
Menzies directly in a major forum and finish him off for once and for good.
There was no hanky panky. Menzies could not have engineered this session on
his own.
The AHA convention in question was in Washington where I live and was
(if memory serves) in January 2004 which was a brutally cold time.
The session was fairly civil. No screaming and yelling. My
recollection was that Menzies critics at the session pulled their punches a
bit to
avoid fueling more commotion.
For his part, Menzies got what he sought -- fairly high-level
publicity like what he got at the Royal Geographical Society's building and at
the National Press Club where I first saw him in February 2003. However, the
AHA session came more than a year after his book appeared in late 2002 in
the UK and he had come under considerable attack long before this
convention.
I had a long, interesting conversation with Olshin and his wife
after the session.
The Rossi maps never came up in our conversation. I do not know if
Olshin knew about these maps in early 2004. I recall the person who worked
at the LOC but not in the G & M Division who told me sotto voce about the
Rossi maps kept in a vault but I cannot recall exactly when. Perhaps in
2002 or perhaps it was 2004 but not much later than that.
Again it will take a lot of additional research and advanced
analysis to sort out the Rossi maps some of which could date to before the
1700s
but even then (as most agree) not likely all the way back to the Marco Polo
era of 1200s/1300s which Bagrow ruled out as does Olshin.
Whatever the ultimate truth about the Rossi maps, there is little
doubt that I have all the best high cards -- cartographic and otherwise -- on
what really really counts -- the Europeans and their exploration of the
New World and their much more rapid success in achieving a geographical
synthesis of the empirical data they derived from that exploration than they
were given credit for by the flawed, inadequate scholarship that calcified
during the 19th-century.
Perhaps if he had lived longer, Woodward who was interviewed by the
media following my initial publications in Exploring Mercator's World in
October 2002 would also have tried try to finish me off for once and for good.
My research after 2002 fortunately further powerfully bolstered my
position so it is far more unassailable that it appeared initially in
2002-2003. An attempt to "finish me off" for once and for good today in 2010
is
Mission Impossible.
Peter Dickson
Arlington, Virginia
703-243-6641
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