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1421: The Year China Discovered the World
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.
1421: The Year China Discovered the World (
US title:
1421: The Year China Discovered America) is a 2002
book written by retired submarine commander and amateur historian
Gavin Menzies positing that
Chinese explored the world before the
European Age of Discovery. Menzies' main theses are dismissed by professional historians as pseudohistorical fiction.
[1][2][3][4]
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 Zhu Di (朱棣) and
Admiral Zheng He (鄭和) and commanded by the Chinese
captains Zhou Wen (周聞),
Zhou Man (周滿),
Yang Qing (楊慶) and
Hong Bao (洪保) 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, and the
Northeast Passage; circumnavigated
Greenland, made attempts to reach both the
North and
South Poles, and circumnavigated the world before
Ferdinand Magellan. Menzies puts this forward as the "1421 hypothesis".
This
Chinese map, produced in 1763 and claimed by the unidentified author to be based on a 1418 Chinese map, has produced much controversy as to how much knowledge Medieval China had of the Americas and Antarctica even though the map uses European place names that had not yet been assigned in 1418.
[5]
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Menzies claims that knowledge of these discoveries was subsequently lost because the
Mandarin 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.
.
Method
The
Kangnido map depicts the entirety of the
Old World, from Europe and Africa in the west on the left, to Korea and Japan in the east on the right, with a greatly oversized China in the middle.
.
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
Newport Tower 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 has been speculation that on one of these voyages Zheng He's ships may have rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Atlantic Ocean.
[6] 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.
.
Beyond this, the evidence in the book changes character. Menzies attempts to use the appearance of modern scholarship, however, his reasoning is entirely presumptive
[original research?]. For example, 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 actually happened. The names of the admirals and their courses are simply asserted. Throughout the course of
1421, his logic appears to follow the reasoning that if something could possibly be explained by a Chinese visit, then that is what happened, and it occurred during this set of voyages
[citation needed].
.
Maps
Detail of the
Fra Mauro map relating the travels of a
junk into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text.
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1421 refers to several maps:
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Criticism
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The 1421 hypothesis has been dismissed by
sinologists and professional historians.
[1][2][3][4] Menzies has been criticized for his "reckless manner of dealing with evidence" that led him to propose hypotheses "without a shred of proof".
[4] There are numerous errors of fact in the book, and very little of Menzies' evidence is supported by peer-reviewed scholarship. Menzies cannot read Chinese,
[7] so the book lacks any citation of Chinese sources. Critics have also questioned the extent of Menzies' nautical knowledge.
[8]
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Menzies' methodology has been criticised on many grounds. The historian Robert Finlay writes:
[4]
- .
- Unfortunately, this reckless manner of dealing with evidence is typical of 1421, vitiating all its extraordinary claims: the voyages it describes never took place, Chinese information never reached Prince Henry and Columbus, and there is no evidence of the Ming fleets in newly discovered lands. The fundamental assumption of the book—that Zhu Di dispatched the Ming fleets because he had a "grand plan", a vision of charting the world and creating a maritime empire spanning the oceans (pp. 19–43)—is simply asserted by Menzies without a shred of proof. It represents the author's own grandiosity projected back onto the emperor, providing the latter with an ambition commensurate with the global events that Menzies presumes 1421 uniquely has revealed, an account that provides evidence "to overturn the long-accepted history of the Western world" (p. 400). It is clear, however, that textbooks on that history need not be rewritten. The reasoning of 1421 is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous. Still, it may have some pedagogical value in world history courses. Assigning selections from the book to high-schoolers and undergraduates, it might serve as an outstanding example of how not to (re)write world history.
- .
Finlay also wrote:
.
- "Examination of the book's central claims reveals they are uniformly without substance."[4]
- .
The 1421 hypothesis is based on some documents of debatable provenance (e.g., the
Vinland map[9]) and on unique interpretations of already accepted documents (such as the
Fra Mauro map, de las Casas) as well as purported 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.
[citation needed] 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.
[citation needed] 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 actually Chinese. 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.
[10]
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.
[citation needed] In other cases, they say supposed relevant facts are due to mistranscriptions.
[citation needed]
.
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 is possible that most of the records have been destroyed, there are sets of records that remain in extensive form, including the books written by
Ma Huan (馬歡, accompanied Zheng during 3 voyages as interpreter) published in 1433, by
Fei Xin (費信, accompanied Zheng during 4 voyages as interpreter) published in 1436, by
Gong Zhen (鞏珍, accompanied Zheng during the 7th and final voyage as secretary) published in 1443, and other governmental and civilian historical records and writings of the Ming Dynasty. Some of these records have even served as the basis for previous historical accounts of the Zheng He voyages, such as that by Louise Levathes.
[11]
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Some critics have also questioned whether Menzies has the nautical knowledge he claims.
[8] Some feel that his unsubstantiated claim to have actually sailed the same seas is suspect, particularly while commanding
HMS Rorqual. 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
[12] 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 (who were actually Native Americans) 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. However, Columbus actually believed he had reached Japan and he thought the people he saw were Japanese, as evidenced in his diaries' frequent descriptions of the land as "Cipango".
[13]
.
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
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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
NSW Parks and Wildlife Service[14] 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.
[15]
.
References
- ^ a b The 1421 myth exposed
- ^ a b "Zheng He in the Americas and Other Unlikely Tales of Exploration and Discovery". Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. http://www.csicop.org/sb/2004-09/tales.html.
- ^ a b "1421: The Year China Discovered the World". The Asian Review of Books. http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/arb/article.php?article=201.
- ^ a b c d e Finlay, Robert (2004), "How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America", Journal of World History 15 (2): 241, doi:10.1353/jwh.2004.0018, http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jwh/15.2/finlay.html
- ^ The Economist, January 12, 2006
- ^ Needham, J. (1961). Science and Civilisation in China, vol 4 part 3.
- ^ Danford, Natalie. 2003. “The Chinese discovered America -- Or did They?”
- ^ a b 1421 exposed article on Menzies, see in particular note 5 in the appendix
- ^ Discussion of the Vinland map
- ^ Bill Poser (2004-02-01). "1421". Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000409.html. Retrieved on 2007-03-08.
- ^ Levathes, Louise (1997), When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne 1405 – 1433, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
- ^ 1421: When China Discovered America? 2004
- ^ , http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/Columbus1.html title=Christopher Columbus: Extracts from Journal
- ^ Pearson, Michael (1987). "Bittangabee ruins—Ben Boyd National Park". in Birmingham, J and Bairstow, D. Papers in Australian Historical Archaeology. Sydney: Australian Society for Historical Archaeology. pp. 86–90.
- ^ Wheeler, Anthony (1985-11-01), In Quest of Australia's lost pyramids, Omega Science Digest, pp. 22–26, http://www.skeptica.dk/arkiv_dk2/wheeler.htm
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See also
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External links
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- The book's official website
- Gavin Menzies' official website
- China Has an Ancient Mariner to Tell You About article about Zheng He from the New York Times
- ABC television Page with numerous transcripts and sub-pages criticizing the 1421 hypothesis.
- 1421 exposed, an academic website criticising Menzies' theories
- 1421: The Year the Chinese DID NOT Discover America: A Tabulation of the Evidence Against Gavin Menzies
- Gavin's Fantasy Land
- Critique of linguistic claims, including an update
- General criticism of numerous points in 1421, retrieved December 17, 2006
- Review of 1421 by a science editor at the New York Times
- Robert Finlay: How (not) to rewrite World History. Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America Journal of World History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2004), S.229–242
- Colavito, Jason. 2003. "The China Syndrome"
- Danford, Natalie. "The Chinese discovered America -- Or did They?" in Salon.com on January 7, 2003.
- Hitt, Jack. 2003. "Goodbye, Columbus!". The New York Times Magazine, January 5, 2003. Section 6, page 18.
- Paulson, Amanda. "The Pinta, Santa Maria And A Chinese Junk?" Christian Science Monitor, January 29, 2003.
- Wilford, John Noble. "A New Theory Puts Chinese Fleet Ahead of Columbus", New York Times. Section 1, Page 8, March 17, 2003.
- BBC News article: 'China map lays claim to Americas'
- China beat Columbus to it, perhaps by The Economist, January 12, 2006
- "Speculation That Chinese Explorer Discovered America", Windows Audio from Public Radio International The World program, January 17, 2006
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners Program Transcript of "Junk History"
- "The Independent article: Hero of the Ming Dynasty: The man who mapped the world"
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Further reading
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- Levathes, Louise, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433, Oxford University Press, 1997, trade paperback, ISBN 0-19-511207-5
- Ma Huan,Ying-yai Sheng-lan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores (1433)', translated from the Chinese text edited by Feng Ch'eng Chun with introduction, notes and appendices by J.V.G.Mills. White Lotus Press, reprint. 1970, 1997.
- Menzies, Gavin (2002). 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. London: Bantam Press. ISBN 0593050789.
- Viviano, Frank. "China's Great Armada." National Geographic, 208(1):28–53, July 2005.
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