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Gavin Menzies. Photo: AFP |
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.
One early memory of China is still fresh: A photo from 1937, when he was two months old, in the Forbidden City, being carried by a Chinese nanny, "Ah-ma". At that time his family lived in Weihaiwei, Shandong Province for two years and returned to England as war broke out in 1939.
Menzies says he can still remember "like yesterday" that "luck" brought home to the tale he spins in 1421, of how Emperor Zhu Di summoned foreign ambassadors to his inauguration in the Forbidden City after sending huge fleets around the world, which he heard when he and his wife visited the Forbidden City on a cold New Year's Eve in 1990, to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary during a two-week package tour. Now an honorary professor of Yunnan University, he gives lectures there twice a year. "I'm very grateful they gave me a professorship despite so much uproar."
Despite Ah-ma's ministrations, mastering Chinese or learning anything further at 74 is off the agenda, something Menzies apparently considers an advantage: "Chinese at this era is nothing like Chinese today and a lot of historians haven't realized that."
In response, Jeremiah Jenne, a historian of Qing Dynasty China (1644-1911) living in Beijing, commented, "Historians of China spend three to four years studying past forms of Chinese, including, typically, a year of research specialization." Speaking anonymously, another historian noted, "Menzies doesn't read a single character of Chinese, so how does he know?"
Menzies claims otherwise. "The world is a much more fascinating and complex place than we believe. China has made an enormous contribution to European civilization, not only the maps discovered, but all the things written in [1434]. So we were all one family for long time. The unwritten theme, the catastrophe, is that China closed her doors for hundreds of years."
Oddly for a self-avowed Sinologist, Menzies refuses to offer his views on modern Chinese history because "It wouldn't interest anyone." He admits, however, his publications are timely inasmuch as they coincide with China's phenomenal economic progress in the last 30 years. Menzies finds himself on the right side of history for now.
"If my book has been written 20 years ago, nobody would be really interested," he said.
The Chinese edition of 1434 will be published this June when Menzies hopes once again to procure more evidence from amateur historians, continuing the cultural exchange he believes has existed between for over five hundred years.
1434 will likely be a huge seller here and Menzies is discussing a documentary based on his findings. It seems that, in China at least, Menzies has found an uncritical and potentially lucrative audience.