Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(17)
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3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Another fantastic volume in Gavin Menzies's trilogy, "The Fifteenth Century: When China Discovered the Universe". Volume 2, "1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance" follows Menzies's successful and enlightening Volume 1, "1421: The Year China Discovered America". Menzies fans are looking forward to next year's equally profitable final Volume 3 of the trilogy, "1438: The Year China Launched the First Manned Rocket to Mars". Who says history can't be fun...

A comment upon the above review asked for more specifics on my attitude toward Menzies, so...

I'll make a few more comments:

The issues with Menzies are twofold. First, there are many contemporary Chinese descriptions of these voyages which Menzies ignores, all of which describe the voyages (including the 1421 sixth voyage) as being confined to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Second, Menzies just invents out of his imagination events and descriptions and evidence that have no relevance to reality. Hence, his many scholarly detractors.

Zheng He himself in 1431, prior to his seventh and last voyage, left us two engraved inscriptions (at Liujiagang and Changle) that describe the first six voyages, and which describe the 1421 voyage as only delivering ambassadors back to their home countries (such as Hormuz) and returning to China with their tribute in local products. Nine years after the end of the 6th voyage, he knew of nothing extraordinary that took place on any of the 1421 voyages. Ma Huan (who sailed on the 4th, 6th and 7th trips as an interpreter) in 1433 wrote the "Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores" describing the many places that the various Chinese fleets had visited, including the places visited by others in the fleets that he himself had not seen, and he knows of no places ever visited outside of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Fei Xin (who sailed on the 3rd, 5th and 7th trips) in 1436 wrote the "Overall Survey of the Star Raft" again describing the many places that the fleets had visited, including the places visited by others in the fleets that he himself had not seen, and he knows of no places ever visited outside of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Gong Zhen (who sailed on the 7th trip as Zheng He's private secretary) in 1434 wrote "The Monograph on the Foreign Countries of the Western Ocean", once again describing the many places that the various Chinese fleets had visited, including the places visited by others in the fleets that he himself had not seen, and he knows of no places ever visited outside of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

So you have five still existing contemporary sources by participants in the voyages, including Zheng He himself, all writing within 14 years of the voyages, describing the many places that the various Chinese fleets had visited over the years, and NONE of them report any Chinese trips outside of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Hummm... you'd think they would have noticed that they or their fellow Chinese had sailed round the world landing at many new continents and visiting many new peoples - that kind of thing would probably not go unnoticed by participants of the voyages.

The "Mingshi" is the official history of the Ming dynasty compiled from Ming Court documents (during which all of these voyages took place) and in its biography of Zheng He the Mingshi describes again the seven voyages - and describes nothing extraordinary. The "Taizong Shilu" which is the official history of Yongle's reign, the "Renzong Shilu" covering Hongxi's reign and the "Xuanzong Shilu" documenting Xuande's reign all again mention Zheng He, and the various voyages in some detail, and they know of nothing extraordinary that took place during any voyage, or any place visited by any fleet outside of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. All of these documents and inscriptions exist, and other relevant documents also, but Menzies ignores them all - since they all refute his wild and unsupported claims. These many contemporary sources give detailed accounts of each voyage: when the various fleets left and returned, which places were visited, how long it took on various voyages to travel from A to B, how long they were in various ports, etc.

Then again you have Menzies' claims for Chinese "evidence" and "events" throughout the world. Once you really look at his "evidence" you will see that it doesn't actually exist - it is based on unsubstantiated claims and assertions - actually the "evidence" is either speculative, imaginary, only possible, misinterpreted, misunderstood - in brief, you can't go and examine actual, verified, evidence that passes even the barest of scholarly merit. Claims are many and asserted often - actual evidence for Menzies' claims is lacking. Hence, his many scholarly detractors.

I will give you one example of Menzies' method. He describes in glorious detail the concubines on board the voyages, specifically the 1421 voyage. He describes in detail where the girls come from, their appearance, their clothing, their many sexual practices, their sexual relationship with the ambassadors on the ships, and on and on in fine detail. But we have two contemporary sources (as well as all of the sources mentioned above) that describe in precise detail the personnel present on the ships, with precise numbers in each category of people - and (surprise) not a single Chinese source mentions any women on board, much less beautiful concubines. Ma Huan (1433) mentions women in a sexual function taking place only once on a voyage - that some married Thai women had sex with some of the Chinese men - but no concubines anywhere. They are completely a figment of Menzies' imagination. Let me say it again - he just makes them up! Why? Because he wants to fabricate events later in his imaginary voyage that he needs the existence of women for (he needs these imaginary women to spread Chinese DNA all over the world) - so he just invents women on the trip, and invents all of the details that he describes. He does the same thing with hundreds of other elements of the 1421 voyage - he just INVENTS WHAT HE NEEDS to make his unsubstantiated and wild claims.

Another instance: Menzies makes many claims of Chinese junks being found throughout the world, but in spite of his many vague claims, I have yet to see him tell us a single location where we (and a scholar) can actually examine and date a single Chinese junk of Zheng He's period (or before) outside of the China Seas and the Indian Ocean where you would expect to find them. So I went to his "1421" web site looking for evidence and found three entries. These following are his headlines and my comments about his article.

"A fleet of Chinese junks wrecked on the Pacific coast of North America?"
The article says, "there are potentially over 40 unidentified wrecks lying under the sand dunes". Notice what the article says: "potential", "unidentified", therefore, undated, no time period, no nationality, no ship type.

"100 foot long Chinese junk raised from sea bed"
Oops... the junk "has been raised from the sea bed off the coast of China", right where you would expect to find one.

"Chinese shipwrecks in the Caribbean?"
Golly. "Local folklore has it, that this [totally unidentified] ship sank long ago..."... and the article goes on to say that there is no "light on the ship's origin"... and oops, "We are not able to divulge the precise location of the wrecks as yet." I.E., again, no actual observable evidence of a Chinese junk. Just another vague unsubstantiated claim.

So much for Chinese junks found throughout the world...

The bottom line is that for anyone familiar with the actual Chinese sources, and with the actual evidence pertaining to Menzies' claims throughout the world, it is clear that Menzies has almost zero evidence behind his empty assertions - it is just a money making gimmick that gullible readers who have no actual knowledge of the facts and evidence fall into. Virtually everything that Menzies asserts has been shot down by the scholars in their respective fields. That there have been some contacts in the Americas with other peoples I am not denying - that there have been any contact with Chinese fleets, much less fleets of Zheng He's time - is just fun fantasy in a long line of pseudo-scientific and pseudo-historical best sellers. If you look at it as a historical novel (i.e., fiction) you'll have a fun romp - it you look at it as history, well...... Meszies is smiling all the way to the bank...

Gavin Menzies' foolish and ridiculous book 1434 claims that a Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and gave the Europeans knowledge which started the Renaissance.
This statement is false.

Allow us to examine several major items of knowledge originated in China and found later in the West. In no case was the knowledge transmitted in 1434.
This information is from Temple's The Genius of China, cited by mangy Menzies as a source but apparently unread by him.
The stirrup was invented in the third century CE and was introduced into the Byzantine Empire in 580. Not in 1434.

Porcelain was invented in China in the third century CE and was independently re-invented in England by Josiah Wedgewood in the eighteenth century. Not in 1434.

Printing was invented in China in the eighth century and was introduced into Europe before the middle of the fourteenth century, not in 1434. Gutenberg did begin to use movable type in 1458, but it did not appear in Italy first, but in Germany; there is no indication of its transmission from a visiting Chinese embassy, as 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, I believe, by Neckham. Not in 1434.

The rudder was invented in China in the first century CE and found in Europe by 1180, not transmitted in 1434.

The crossbow was invented in China, and was known to the Greeks by 397 BCE, not 1434 CE.

Gunpowder was known in China by the 800s CE, and in the West by the late 1100s, not 1434.

Therefore to claim that vast amounts of knowledge was transmitted all at once in one imaginary voyage is clearly false. Menzies should learn history.

I wish I had read a few of the reviews prior to purchasing this book. Regardless of whether you believe the author's theory or not, it's just not presented in an interesting or readable fashion. As a lover of history, particularly Renaissance Italy, I was intrigued by the notion that China had provided the spark. After slogging through dense, repetitive and just plain boring verbage, I found that my time could have been better spent elsewhere.

There's no doubt that the Chinese made some amazing voyages in the 1400s. However, this book starts from there and takes a speculative leap. He asserts that Chinese ships visited Italy in 1434, bringing maps of the Americas and numerous other inventions, helping to start the Renaissance. I just don't see that Menzies' evidence supports his conclusions.

In many places the book seems simply sloppy. For example, in Chapter I Menzies says that the Forbidden City of Beijing built by Zhu Di still stands today. Only a few paragraphs later he says that the Forbidden City built by Zhu Di burned to the ground in 1421. I'm sure there's an explanation for this, but this sort of error doesn't incline me to trust Menzies' scholarship.

The book's constant instructions to check the author's website for more information are very annoying. If Menzies has evidence, why not present it?

Menzies believes that the Chinese explorers knew how to calculate longitude at sea from the stars. He also says they knew in 1384 that the sun was the center of the solar system and moves in an ellipse. This strikes me as very doubtful indeed, the more so as Menzies gives very little evidence for it. Of course it's theoretically possible that they might have calculated longitude at sea, but that's a long way from saying that this was a common practice. The calculations involved are formidable.

Menzies believes that the Chinese fleet passed from the Red Sea to the Nile through a canal. My understanding of this is that a shallow canal pre-dating the Suez canal may have existed at various times, starting in antiquity. The older canal may have been usable only at flood times; at any rate, it seems to have frequently silted up and been abandoned for centuries at a time. I find it difficult to believe that a canal existed in 1434 suitable for use by Chinese junks. Why would European explorers such as Columbus and Vasco da Gama have gone to such trouble and expense over the next century to find a sea route to Asia if a readily available sea route already existed? I would not take Menzies' word on this without confirmation by other historians.

The maps and globes relied on by Menzies to show Chinese influence don't seem particularly accurate to me. I also don't see anything there that Europeans couldn't have come up with. Menzies says that Magellan had a chart of the Strait of Magellan before he went there. I'm sure Magellan had seen some charts of the area; the question is whether such charts were the product of fantasy or were accurate enough to provide reliable sailing directions. Fantastic charts having little connection to real geography were, of course, widely available at the time. If Magellan actually had an accurate chart, it seems odd that Magellan had so much trouble finding the strait (he spent months exploring every inlet on the South American coast, looking for a passage through). Again, I would not take Menzie's word on any of this.

This book has caught my attention and imagination when published, but has been a great disappointment after reading: No documented evidence that such a voyage ever took place, and such knowledge transferred at that time! Not in China and not in Italy. Pure speculation and fiction. Loose connections between facts. The story does not stand in any test of logic and science. This is a perfect book for those who believe to everything that somebody puts in a book and claims it to be true.

I thought this was going to be an alternate-future type of novel, along the lines of "what would life be like if... in 1434, a magniificent Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and sparked the Renaissance?"

Instead, this is historical, but I found it heavy on hypothesis and light on evidence. Just because it COULD have happened, there is no reason to conclude it MUST have happened this way. Much of the mystery of how this wisdom was transmitted could end with this -- people talk. People curious about other lands asked the Chinese sailors. Sailing crews talk to one another. Likewise with written knowledge -- one person makes notes, shares them with others, and the technology is shared.

The journals of Lewis and Clark reveal that they were able to sketch out a fairly predictive map of the territory they had not yet entered, based on verbal accounts of Indians, trappers, and traders they encountered before they left their first winter camp. We do not need to construct something very elaborate to solve the mystery.

Still, it was an enjoyable book, and I decided to read it in the same vein I read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code -- interesting. An oyster turns a grain of sand into a pearl. Menzies takes a grain of theory and turns it into a book.

I liked the books "Ra" and "Kon-Tiki" better (Thor Heyerdahl recreated Egyptian papyrus raft and Andean watercraft and sailed from Egypt to America and from South America to Polynesia, respectively.) -- they had the elegance of simple reporting.

In principle, I am very sympathetic to Mr. Menzies. I found his previous book, 1421, about the treasure fleets and their exploration of the world to be very compelling. If not an open and shut case, he provided a lot of good evidence to support his claims. The idea that Chinese maps of the world played a part in getting Western sailors to start exploring seems quite likely. In this book, he expands his claims for the Chinese, trying to find a link between Chinese fleets and the beginning of the Renaissance. Here, he stumbles a bit.

Leaving aside for a moment the validity of the claims he makes, there is a major problem with this book: it's simply not very well written. Menzies didn't show himself to be a particularly strong writer with his last book but it was easy to look past his weaknesses because that book was focused, well-argued, and entertaining in its controversiality. In this book, all of Menzies' weaknesses come to the fore.

First of all, this book stinks with Menzies' desperation to be believed. There was some of this in 1421 but it's worse here. If I'm not convinced by everything he asserts, I think he puts forth ideas worth investigating. But it's hard to follow him through the growing undercurrent of persecution. Second, he wanders all over the place here. He revises and rehashes some of the arguments he made in 1421. He finds Chinese links to the development of Western astronomy, mathematics, printing, firearms, steel and the work of famous names like Copernicus and Da Vinci. But, third, his supporting materials this time around do not have the impact of the maps and artifacts from his last book. (I, for one, see very little similarity between the Chinese drawings he shows and the Renaissance drawings.) Finally, and most irritating to me anyway, he constantly refers the reader to his website. I don't want a book that's a companion piece to a website. I want a well-argued case in the text.

Of course, we must then come to the claims he makes about the Chinese influence on the discoveries of the Renaissance. Ultimately, I came away feeling he tried to claim too much for the Chinese, which is too bad because it undermines the fact that the Chinese did have a long history of discovery (see Joseph Needham's work) and they certainly did have an influence on Western thought. However, by the thirteenth century, well before the dates Menzies is discussing here, Western Europe was awaking to the influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Arabic/Islamic world as well as the East, via the Silk Road and other avenues of trade and travel. To find a direct causal link between the landing of a fleet in Italy in 1434 and the birth of the Renaissance goes a bit too far.

And, for me, there is always that nagging fact that the Chinese did little with their great discoveries. The Chinese are surely to be admired but, isolated and homogeneous, they were content to keep the outside world at bay. In the simmering West, however, these ideas boiled over into the creation of the modern world. Does it matter that the Chinese invented paper and block printing centuries before these things appeared in the West? Granted, it's interesting. However, it was Gutenberg's work that exploded the production of books that changed the world. (And Gutenberg's work of over two years to perfect his process seems to indicate that he didn't copy directly from anyone.)

Anyone who knows me knows the admiration I have for the Chinese. And I think it's great to have someone out there like Mr. Menzies, putting Chinese discoveries in the limelight and trying to find connections between East and West. But I take a more balanced view of the historical development of the topics Mr. Menzies discusses. I don't think it's necessary that he take a more balanced approach, but I do think it's necessary for him to make a better argument, write a better book.

No one can doubt Gavin Menzies' enthusiasm. For years now, first with 1421 and now with 1434 (with hints of a third volume to come) he has striven to demonstrate that much of what is taken for granted to be of Western European origin is actually from China. Its a solid point with undeniable evidence behind it, much of which Menzies presents in really intriguing detal, but unfortunately he chooses to present it in an unwarrantedly sensational manner. In 1421 he claimed that giant Chinese fleets had circled the world. Now in 1434 he argues that the European Renaissance was triggered by a visit by a Chinese navy to Italy, bearing maps, machines, weapons, and many other gifts. Mr. Menzies presents evidence for Chinese contact with Europe, but unfortunately by limiting the contact to one year he obscures what should be better known: that there was substantial European contact with China, India, and the Middle East for centuries, and that many European "inventions" like the printing press are derived from earlier Asian developments.

Mr. Menzies' enthusiasm is unquenchable, but again and again he can't produce evidence to back up his theories. For example, he spends a lot of time discussing maps which existed before 1492 but which depict the Americas, the Pacific Ocean, and other areas then unknown to Europeans. Unfortunately, he can't produce the originals of these maps, just copies from the 1500s or later, after the Americas had been discovered, thus allowing for editing and additions by the copyists. This is not to say Mr. Menzies doesn't have a point here. There are numerous intriguing maps like the Piri Reis which seem to show more knowledge of the world than Europeans are thought to have possessed at the time they were drawn, and historians find them difficult to explain away at times. Its unfortunate that Mr. Menzies focussed so narrowly on one year and one supposed Chinese visit to Italy as the source for so much of this knowledge. Speaking of the Chinese visit in 1434, Mr. Menzies cites as evidence numerous vague references by Europeans to travelers from the East who brought knowledge and gifts over many centuries. Again, his argument would have been so much stronger had he not tried to link the entire Renaissance to that one voyage in 1434. And speaking of that voyage, isn't it odd that no one in Italy, the most literate area in Europe at the time, left descriptions of what must have been the impressive sight of many enormous Chinese junks anchoring in Venice and dozens of Chinese officials parading through the streets of Florence? Sometimes Mr. Menzies actually does offer evidence, supposedly to support his thesis, that actually refutes it. A good example deals with Chinese and Mongolian DNA appearing in European populations along the Adriatic Sea. Mr. Menzies attributes all of that to that one 1434 voyage even though he also mentions in the same chapter that there were many slaves of East Asian origin living around the Mediterranea at the time.

I like Gavin Menzies. His enthusiasm is infectious, and I deeply respect his years of service as a naval and submarine officer in the British navy. Although I feel he jumps to some unwarranted and fanciful conclusions, he has done a good service to history by helping to make the public at large better aware of the many contributions China and the rest of Asia have made to world civilization. Those interested in learning more about China's gifts to the world will enjoy Simon Winchester's new book The Man Who Loved China.

The nonsense and fabulist nature of the book has been detailed by many reviewers here. I'll add another point:

The author makes the claim that Lean Battista Alberti learned the science of linear perspective from the Chinese during this 1434 voyage. There are several problems with this.

1) there is no evidence the Chinese understood linear perspective. It is not a system that has ever had a place in Chinese art. And the underlying geometry is decidedly Western.

2) Alberti published his book that describes linear perspective (among other things) in 1435, but was working on it well in advance of that date. A little early to have picked it up from a 1434 voyage.

3) In any case, Alberti didn't invent it, either. He gave the most famous and precise description of perspective. But it was known in Florence well in advance of the Chinese voyage. Brunelleschi demonstrated his knowledge of linear perspective decades earlier. And his young friend Masaccio used linear perspective in several works that predate the Chinese voyage (such as his Trinità in the late 1420's).

If you liked Menzies earlier book - 1421 - you will be disappointed in this follow-up. While 1421 appeared to be based on years of scholarship, by a dedicated and skilled naval officer, obviously pursuing a personal obsession, 1434 seems to have been dashed off to meet a publisher's deadline. The central thesis is that after Zheng He (hero of 1421) returned to China he was despatched to Europe armed with a complete compendium of all Chinese knowledge to enrich the barbarians. Unfortunately, the book is almost entirely devoid of substantiated facts - instead we are treated to reminiscences of holidays the author took with his wife, meetings with collaborators, trips to restaurants and florrid descriptions of the countryside that the Chinese sailors might have seen had they actually made then journies Menzies proposes. The sense of desperation the author must have felt in trying to fill pages with something - anything - is almost palpable. This book is a very different beast to 1421. Admittedly, there are some intriguing findings(Pisanello's sketches of a Mongol face from the 1430s, Toscanelli's observation of comets,for example) that hint at some European contact with China in the early 15th century, but Menzies' thesis is far from convincing. One also gets the feeling that Menzies has deliberately held something back. At the end of 1421 we are decisively informed, after years of study, that the great Chinese treasures fleets were stood down, the information collected destroyed, and Zheng He made to retire. Yet at the beginning of 1434, we are told that within 2 years of their return the fleets were up and running again. Surely, Menzies (and the horde of Chinese scholars who have worked on this saga for decades) must have had some hint of this during his research for 1421? Overall, the book is intriguing yet must be taken with a large pinch of salt.