1421: The Year China Discovered the World

1421: The Year China Discovered the World is a book written by retired submarine commander and amateur historian Gavin Menzies positing that explored the world before s. It was first published in 2002 in Great Britain and was published in the United States under the title 1421: The Year China Discovered America. It has become the focus of much controversy and criticism, and has been translated into several languages other than .

Synopsis

Menzies states in the introduction that the book is an attempt to answer the following question:

''On some early European world maps, it appears that someone had charted and surveyed lands supposedly unknown to the Europeans. Who could have charted and surveyed these lands before they were "discovered"?''

Menzies concludes that only China had the time, money, manpower and leadership to send such expeditions. The book then sets out to prove that the Chinese visited these unknown lands. Menzies claims that from 1421 to 1423, during the Ming Dynasty of China, ships in the fleet of Emperor and Admiral Zheng He and commanded by the Chinese captains Zhou Wen , Zhou Man , Yang Qing and Hong Bao travelled to many parts of the world that were unknown to Europeans at that time. Menzies produces what he calls "indisputable evidence" that the Chinese discovered Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Antarctica, the Northeast Passage, circumnavigated Greenland, made attempts to reach both the and South Poles, and circumnavigated the world before Ferdinand Magellan. Menzies puts this forward as the "1421 hypothesis".



Menzies claims that knowledge of these discoveries was subsequently lost because the bureaucrats of the Imperial court feared that the costs of further voyages would ruin the Chinese economy. According to Menzies, when Zhu Di died in 1424 the new Hongxi Emperor forbade further expeditions, and the Mandarins hid or destroyed the records of previous exploration to discourage further voyages.

Menzies discusses the first European attempts to colonize the New World and identifies the maps he used as evidence for his theories.

The 1421 hypothesis is moderately popular among the general public, but has been dismissed by and professional historians. Menzies has been criticized for his "reckless manner of dealing with evidence" that led him to propose hypotheses "without a shred of proof".

Method

The hypothesis is based on Menzies' unconventional interpretations of evidence from shipwrecks, old Chinese and European maps, a translation of an inscription set up by Zheng He, Chinese literature that survives from the time, DNA evidence, and accounts written by navigators such as Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. The hypothesis also includes claims that allegedly unexplained structures such as the and the Bimini Road were constructed by Zheng He's men.

Menzies bases his book on the accepted history of the voyages of Zheng He who took a large group of treasure ships on a series of voyages between 1405 and 1433 ranging over most of the Indian Ocean, including trips to the Red Sea and East Africa. There is an unproved speculation that on one of these voyages his ships may have rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Atlantic Ocean. This is derived from the account given in the Fra Mauro map of reports from junks from India in around 1420 which completed a 4000 mile trip round the cape. Several other maps show the approximate shape of southern Africa well before it was rounded by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488.

Beyond this the evidence in the book changes character. Menzies continues to use the appearance of modern scholarship - footnotes, academic references and promises of what will appear on his website - without the scientific rigour of proof. When he gets to the central part of his thesis: the claim that the fleet divided in the Southern Atlantic into three parts under separate admirals, he offers no evidence of any sort that this happened. The names of the admirals and their courses are simply asserted. From here on his reasoning is entirely presumptive. His logic appears to follow the reasoning that if something could be explained by a Chinese visit, it happened during this set of voyages. The entertaining nature of the narrative alone carries the story forward.

Maps

''1421'' refers to several maps:
* The Cantino planisphere
* The Kangnido map
* The Fra Mauro map
* The Pizzigano map
* The Piri Reis map
* The Jean Rotz map
* The Johannes Sch?ner globe
* The Vinland map
* The De Virga world map
* The Waldseemüller map
* The ''Wu Pei Chi map''

Criticism

Despite significant book sales, Menzies' views in the 1421 hypothesis are widely dismissed by and professional historians. Menzies cannot read Chinese, so the book lacks any citation of Chinese sources. There are numerous mistakes in the book and most "evidence" could not be pinpointed to peer-reviewed articles.

Menzies' methodology has been criticised on many grounds. Robert Finlay writes:

The 1421 hypothesis is based on some documents of debatable provenance and on novel interpretations of already accepted documents as well as uncategorized archaeological findings.

Some critics focus their skepticism on the conspicuous absence of an explanation of why these Chinese fleets seemed to touch every coastline of the world except that of Europe. The absence of any European records corroborating such an exploration is glaringly absent. Such a record, if it existed, would certainly have been handed down.

While it represents a minor part of Menzies' argument, some critics also maintain that the linguistic evidence cited by Menzies is highly questionable. It is inevitable that similarities between words taken from any pair of languages will exist-- even if only by pure chance. Thus, the short lists provided by Menzies are considered by some to represent unsatisfactory evidence. Furthermore, none of the alleged Chinese words listed by Menzies as similar to words of the same meaning in the Squamish language of British Columbia are actual Chinese words. Similarly, the presence of Chinese-speaking people in various locations in the Americas could be explained by immigration after Columbus, yet Menzies cites no evidence that these communities existed prior to Columbus.

Menzies' critics note that throughout the book he displays a lack of chronological control e.g. p138 with a story of a map dated to 120 years before 1528; Menzies dates the map to 1428 not 1408. Critics also claim that many true but irrelevant facts are included in the argument, presumably to confuse the reader. In other cases, they say supposed relevant facts are due to mistranscriptions.

Another criticism is that Menzies did not consult the most obvious source of information on the Zheng He voyages, namely the Chinese records from the period themselves. Menzies asserts that most Chinese documents relating to the travels of Zheng He were destroyed by the same Mandarins responsible for the closing of China's borders in the years following 1421. While it can be supposed that most of the records have been destroyed, other records remain in extensive form, including the account by Ma Huan published in 1433 and other information in the Ming dynastic histories. These records have even served as the basis for previous historical accounts of the Zheng He voyages, such as that by Louise Levathes.

Some critics have also questioned whether Menzies has the nautical knowledge he claims. Some feel that his unsubstantiated claim to have actually sailed the same seas is suspect, particularly while commanding . Menzies and his publisher have also been criticized for misrepresenting his background as an expert on China.

Menzies makes another argument both in his book and also in a PBS program based on similarities between appearance of Native Americans and Chinese. Menzies claims that Columbus believed until he died that he had reached China because he saw Chinese people in the New World and not because he thought the globe was much smaller than it actually was. Menzies uses this statement to claim that Columbus saw the previously settled Chinese "colonizers" from Zheng He's voyage. Columbus actually believed he had reached India and he thought the people he saw were Indians.

An additional problem posed by the theory of Chinese-Native American contact is that of the lack of Native American immunity to Eurasian diseases. According to Jared Diamond's ''Guns, Germs, and Steel,'' advanced agricultural societies living in populations with livestock carry and develop immunities to diseases not found in the populations of the New World, where there were fewer domesticated animals. There are no indications of any die-out consistent with Eurasian-American contact prior to Columbus's landing. Should the Native Americans have been exposed to such a catastrophe prior to 1492, they would have been prepared for it with immunities and not suffered such hideous losses.

Australia

Menzies cites several stone structures in and around Sydney and Newcastle as evidence of pre-European contact with Australia by the Chinese. On page 203 of his book, Menzies writes of the 'Chinese' ruins in Bittangabee Bay. However significant research on this site has been conducted by Michael Pearson, former Historian for the which has identified the ruins as having been built in the early 1840s as a store house by the Imlay brothers, early European inhabitants, who had whaling and pastoral interests in the area. On page 220 there is the claim that "A beautiful carved stone head of the goddess Ma Tsu...is now in the Kedumba Nature Museum in Katoomba." In fact no such museum currently exists. There once was a curio stand in Katoomba called "Kedumba Nature Display" but it closed down in the 1980s.

Later on in the book, Menzies recruits "a local researcher", Rex Gilroy, for his valuable discovery of a Chinese pyramid in Queensland: the Gympie Pyramid. Menzies claims that the Gympie pyramid is "the most direct and persuasive evidence of the Chinese visits to Australia". However, this is the same Rex Gilroy who at one time ran the "Kedumba Museum" and purportedly found the Chinese carved goddess Ma Tsu from the Chinese Fleets, a connection which Menzies fails to mention. The Gympie Pyramid has been researched independently and found to be part of a retaining wall built by an Italian farmer to stop erosion on a natural mesa on his property.

The River at the Center of the World

The River At The Center Of The World : A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time is a book by Simon Winchester. It details his travels up the Yangtze river in China and was first published in 1996.

Viewing an ancient Chinese painting scroll drawn by gives the author the inspiration on how to structure his book. He starts his journey in Shanghai, at the Yangtze river's delta, and makes his way upriver to the headwaters. At the same time, his narration also makes a journey back in time, writing about contemporary times in Shanghai and Nanjing, and writing about events that date back increasingly farther in cities upriver.

He makes the travel with a companion — a Chinese lady who is only referred to in the book as ''Lily'' to protect her identity. The chapter titled ''A Great New Wall'' is devoted to the 3 Gorges Dam that is being constructed.

Chapter List

# The Plan
# The Mouth, Open Wide
# The City Without a Past
# The First Reach
# City of Victims
# Rising Waters
# Crushed, Torn and Curled
# Swimming
# A New Great Wall
# The Shipmasters' Guide
#The Foothills
#The Garden Country of Joseph Rock
# The River Wild
# Harder Than the Road to Heaven
# Headwaters

The Mandate of Heaven

The Mandate of Heaven: Record of a Civil War; China 1945–49 is a nonfiction book published in 1968. It was written by John F. Melby and illustrated with photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. It takes its title from the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven.

The Mandate of Heaven: Hidden History in the I Ching by S. J. Marshall is an attempt to relate and date the initial historical Mandate of Heaven for the overthrow of the Shang Dynasty and establishment of the Zhou, to the Changes of Zhou, the I Ching. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12299-3

The Good Women of China

The Good Women of China is a book published in 2002. The author, Xinran Xue, is a British-Chinese journalist who currently resides in London and writes for ''The Guardian''. Esther Tyldesley translated this book from the Chinese.

''The Good Women of China'' is primarily composed of interviews Xinran conducted during her time as a radio broadcaster in China in the 1980s. However, she also details some of her own experiences as a woman in China. The interviews usually focus on the embedded cultural perceptions in China about women's rights, roles, and suffering. Many of these interviews were drawn from the call-in portion of Xinran' widely popular radio program, ''Words on the Night Breeze''. She also interviewed other women, whom she sought out for their experiences as Chinese women or opinions about the status of Chinese women.

This book attacked key issues such as infanticide, son-preference, suppression of sexuality, homosexuality, and the sexism embedded in culture and society. For this reason, Xinran had to leave China in order to write the book, which was published in Britain.

Though the author herself has some opinions about women, whose inherent differences she describes throughout the book, she acknowledges and confronts the stereotypes about women which she detailed in some of the life experiences of Chinese women she recounted. Many women's stories involved rape, forced marriage, deception, and abuse at the hands of authority figures in society and the government. All of these men gained their power over women from pre-existing cultural practices and furthered their control through the existing power structures.

In ''The Good Women of China'', Xinran sheds light both on the persistence of oppression of women in China as well as the new opportunities for women in modern Chinese society. Drawn mainly from anecdotes and interviews, and sparsely substantiated by historical facts and statistics, this novel takes on important issues without resorting to a black-and-white view of the situation.

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 written by and published in 1971 by Macmillan Publishers it won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The book was republished in 2001 by Grove Press Also published under the title Sand Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 by Macmillan Publishers in 1970.

Using the life of Joseph Stilwell, the military attache to China in 1935-39 and commander of United States forces and allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in 1942-44, this book explores the history of China from the to the turmoil of World War II, when China’s Nationalist government faced attack from both Japanese invaders and Communist insurgents.

Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now

Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now is a 1996 book by Chinese-Canadian journalist Jan Wong. Wong describes how the youthful passion for and socialist politics drew her to participate in the Cultural Revolution. Speaking little , she became one of the first Westerners to enroll in Beijing University in 1972.

However, her idealism did not survive the harsh realities and hypocrisy she saw in the China of the 1970s, and she abandoned her support of Maoism. She eventually worked as a foreign correspondent for the ''The Globe and Mail'' newspaper.

Wong was an eyewitness to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which the book describes in great detail. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, Wong interviewed Chinese dissidents such as Wei Jingsheng and Ding Zilin.

One's Company

''One's Company: A Journey to China'' is a travel book by Peter Fleming describing his journey day by day from London through Moscow and the Trans-Siberian Railway, then through Japanese-run Manchukuo, then on to Nanking, the capital of China in the 1930s, with a glimpse of “Red China.”

Chinese Lessons

Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China recounts 's experiences and perspectives about the then opening China during his attendance of Nanjing University in 1980, during one of the first student exchange programs between the United States and China.

It was first published by Henry Holt and Co. on August 8, 2006.

1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance

1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance is a book by amateur historian Gavin Menzies. Menzies argues that by 1434 delegations had reached Italy during the reigns of and the Xuande Emperor Menzies claims that the delegations had a series of meetings with the Pope and his court. According to ''1434,'' the consequences of these meetings were of great importance because they took place just as Europe was emerging from a millennium of stagnation following the fall of the Roman Empire. Menzies argues that, while the ideals of the civilisations of Greece and Rome undoubtedly played an important role in the Renaissance, the transfer of Chinese intellectual capital to Europe was the spark that set the Renaissance ablaze.

Issues with conclusions drawn by Menzies

On closer examination, there are problems with this hypothesis.
Several major items of knowledge originated in China and were found later in the West. Although Menzies cites Robert Temple's ''The Genius of China'' as a source he ignores the following points made by Temple:
*The stirrup was invented in the third century CE and was introduced into the Byzantine Empire in 580.
*Porcelain was invented in China in the third century CE and was independently re-invented in England by Josiah Wedgewood in the eighteenth century.
*Printing was invented in China in the eighth century and woodblock printing was introduced into Europe before the middle of the fourteenth century, not in 1434. Johannes Gutenberg began to use movable type in 1458, though it did not appear in Italy first, but in Germany; there is no indication of its transmission from a visiting Chinese embassy, as woodblock printing had been practiced for more than one hundred years already in Europe.
*The idea of the circulation of the blood was brought to the Near East by al-Nafis and the works of this Arab were translated by Servetus, Renaldus Columbus and others, not working from information transmitted in 1434.
*The compass was found in Europe by 1180, mentioned first by Alexander Neckham.
*A form of stern hung, centreline rudder was invented in China in the first century CE. A quite different form of sterm hung, centreline rudder is referred to in documents and images in the west in the 12th century, for example in Alexander of Neckham in 1180, though it was probably in use earlier. Some scholars suggest it first appeared in Scandinavia, not Italy.
* The crossbow was used extensively in Medieval warfare; for example there were a large number of Genoese crossbowmen at the battle of Crecy in 1346.
*Gunpowder was known in China by the 800s CE, and in the West by the late 1200s. Not in 1434. The English had gunpowder cannon at the battle of Crecy in 1346 after previously using it against the Scots and further the French had also used cannon.Also during the seige of Orleans in 1428-1429 both sides used large numbers of cannon.

A further problem with Menzies' idea is that the Renaissance, as its name implies, was a period of the rebirth of Greek and Roman ideas, not of Chinese ideas. Giotto painted long before 1434 and Dante Alighieri created his Divine Comedy as well; Petrarch's sonnets were finished long before 1434. Leonardo da Vinci lived and painted after 1434, but he painted Christ, the saints and Italian nobles, not the Buddha or Chinese emperors or sages.

Menzies claims that the Veronese artist Pisanello sketched Mongol figures in Venice in the 1430s and that Ambrogio Lorenzetti, who never left Tuscany, painted "The Martyrdom of Francescan Friars" in the church of San Francesco Siena, depicting Chinese merchants with conical hats. Previously, oriental eyes had appeared in faces painted by Giotto and Duccio. To back this claim, Menzies uses a quote from Leonard Olschki's ''Asiatic Exoticism in Italian Art of the Early Renaissance'', “the impression has been given that Tuscany was almost a neighbouring country of the great Mongolian Empire and that Mandarins, Khans and Oriental dignitaries were almost as much at home in Florence and Siena as in Peking, Trebizond and Calicut.” To put this quote in context, the next sentences say "It is through these exaggerations and a corresponding lack of criticism and discernment that a few allusions to distant or fabulous countries in popular poems of the Quattrocento, drawn from antique texts and from reminiscences, have been interpreted as documents of an alleged "fureur asiatique" burning in the brains of the hard working and very positive Tuscan people. This is mere hallucination." The more likely explanation, as mentioned in Philippe Aries and Georges Duby's ''History of Private Life'', is the number of Tartar slaves in the Italian city-states, who served as models for the paintings.

Although Olschki acknowledges that there a "few but impressive cases in which a real representation of Asiatic types in the Italian art of the Renaissance appears to exist beyond doubt" he continues:

The essential question is how to explain the Mongolian heads of the men in Lorenzetti's fresco or Pisanello's and Gozzoli's Asiatic archers. The scholars who constructed complicated systems of far-fetched hypotheses for the solution of this riddle overlooked a very obvious and simple fact. During the Renaissance, Italy, and especially Florence, had a considerable Asiatic population of recent immigration and settlement. The historians of Italian orientalism in art and life have overlooked the slave markets of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Naples, and most of the large and small towns in Italy, which harbored a particularly busy section of the Asiatic slave trade in Europe. A multitude of documents, still preserved in Italian archives, many of them carefully edited in easily accessible publications, reveal that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Mongolian slaves were preferred, in Florence and elsewhere, for indoor work and every kind of hard or degrading labor.