Naval historian Gavin Menzies's unique take on history
- Source: Global Times
- [23:45 April 13 2011]
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Gavin Menzies. Photo: AFP
By Zhang Lei
Was someone making a sly reference when inviting "historian" Gavin Menzies to speak at the Bookworm earlier this month. Menzies' controversial 1434 attempts to stir up the world by literally rewriting the history between China and the West of the mid-15th century.
In his New York Times bestseller 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, published in 2002, Menzies claimed that it was the Chinese who discovered America, not Columbus. Menzies' astonishing new discoveries of Chinese influence on Western culture didn't stop there.
In Beijing, Menzies presented his evidence, detailed in 1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, that a large Chinese fleet of eunuch admirals led by Zheng He, sent by Emperor Zhu Di, arrived in Tuscany in 1434, supposedly bringing with them advances in science and technology that would set the Renaissance ablaze including Da Vinci's inventions, the Copernican revolution, and Galileo's theorems of astronomy.
The extensive volume of documentation from both Zheng He's voyages, in Chinese and 15th century Italian, mysteriously fail to mention this visit. Cultural contact between China and the West is normally attributed to the continents-spanning Mongol empires of the 13th and 14th centuries.
Menzies offers such evidence as Asian-looking faces in Renaissance paintings and diagrams that "look similar" between Chinese and Italian books as proof for his claims. His assertion that letters associated with Christopher Columbus refer to a "Chinese ambassador" has been described by respected historian Felipe Fernando-Arnesto as "drivel."
But 1421 sold well in over 100 countries and regions and became a worldwide bestseller, providing Menzies with enough money to invest heavily in setting up a website, where he employed six researchers to analyze e-mails from his readers in search of further proof.
Amazingly, with 2,000 hits a day over nine years, this research method led to the basis of 1434. "To me, 1434 is a much more fundamental book than 1421 because it effects European civilization today, which is based on the Renaissance very heavily influenced by the Chinese," Menzies said.
Menzies affirmed he is not intimidated by the avalanche of criticism and debunking that his books unleashed because, he said, every single statement was checked by his publishers at HarperCollins.
"I'm not slightly fussed if [someone] comes along and says I forged this and that, I planted evidence they are just wrong," said the retired British submarine commander, better known for his navigational skills.
