Here is my review in today’s London Evening Standard of 1434, the sequel to Gavin Menzies’ 1421, a piece of pseudohistorical garbage which claimed that Chinese fleets discovered America and Australia in the 1420s. This time round, the Chinese have “ignited the Renaissance”. Sick-bags at the ready.
1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies, HarperCollins 368 pp, £20.
This book is called 1434 because that was the year when, according to Gavin Menzies, “a magnificent Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and ignited the Renaissance”. Menzies, a former British naval commander, is also the author of 1421, in which he revealed that the expeditionary fleets of the Ming dynasty circumnavigated the globe, discovering America before Columbus, stopping off at Australia, New Zealand and Greenland. The book has sold over a million copies, making it one of the major history bestsellers of the decade.
The claims of 1434 are less spectacular but, in their own way, equally revolutionary. Renaissance Italy was familiar with Mongol slaves but until now we have assumed that it was only dimly aware of the mighty Ming civilisation: there is one brief, second-hand report dating from 1474 of an “ambassador” – presumably from China – bringing Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447) a message of friendship from a “Grand Khan”. So, if his research is to be trusted, Menzies has done historians a great service by uncovering details of an unidentified Chinese admiral sailing his vast ships into Venice in 1434, and then leading his delegation to Florence. Here he presented priceless Chinese porcelain to the exiled Pope and introduced the wonders of Chinese mathematics and astronomy to Florentine humanists, enabling them to paint a precise representation of the night sky on the interior of Brunelleschi’s cathedral dome. And thus the Renaissance was ignited.
The problem with Menzies’ discovery – and it seems almost churlish to point it out, so delightful is his picture of Chinese junks sailing towards the Doge’s palace – is that it is unsupported by a single source. The Venetians must have had their backs to the water when the junks sailed by, because nobody recorded it. Likewise, although Menzies assures us that the fabulous Chinese inventions “would have made a very forceful impression” on the Florentine scholars gathering in the Palazzo Vecchio, none of them wrote it up. On the other hand, we do learn that “a legend persists among island people off the Adriatic” that they were once visited by “oblique-eyed yellow Easterners”.
It should go without saying that the Ming voyage to Tuscany never happened, in 1434 or any other year. And the reason it should go without saying is not just that the evidence is missing, but also because this book is written by a notorious historical fantasist. Menzies’ “discoveries” of Chinese voyages to Brazil and New Zealand have been described as “the drivel of a two-year-old” by the distinguished maritime historian Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. This is a rich two-year-old, however. Gavin Menzies is basically an old-fashioned Martians-built-Stonehenge pseudohistorian who has brilliantly exploited the 21st century’s appetite for what I call “counterknowledge” – fiction, quackery or ideology disguised as scholarship.
The Chinese are among the world’s leading consumers of counterknowledge. They loved 1421: President Hu Jintao quoted it to the Australian Parliament and a 1421 documentary in Mandarin made by Phoenix TV (co-owner: Rupert Murdoch) proved enormously popular with Chinese audiences. Will they love 1434 as well? It tells them that Leonardo da Vinci copied his inventions from – you guessed it – Chinese prototypes, so what’s not to like? By one of those spooky coincidences that Menzies is so good at discovering, this sequel is being published by Murdoch’s HarperCollins.
Two years ago, a documentary by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation entitled “Junk History” claimed that, of the 130 people employed to work on 1421 by Transworld, its original publishers, not one was responsible for checking facts. This time round, in contrast, the author thanks a team of researchers. Let’s name them: Erica Edes, Antonia Bowen-Jones, Vanessa Stockley, Lorna Lopes, Anna Mandy, Anna Rennie, Susie Sanford and Leanne Welham. Menzies describes them as “university graduates with good honours degrees” who are “a testament to today’s young people and the British education system”.
Do any of them, I wonder, truly believe that a Chinese fleet sailed to meet the Pope in 1434? If they don’t, why did they not resign from the research team as soon as they realised that their project was based on an entirely false premise? And if they do, God help the British education system.
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21 responses
“If they don’t, why did they not resign from the research team as soon as they realised that their project was based on an entirely false premise? And if they do, God help the British education system.!
I have you not yet realised that the current British educational system is geared not to the advancement of knowledge or culture, but to making its graduates as rich as possible, then where have you been these past 50 years?
Er, he doesn’t say what their ‘honours degrees’ were in? Can I suggest Hospitality Management, Sports Science, Meejah Studies and Cheese Mechanics?
They were a cunning lot, those Chinamen. Not only did they slip past all the artists painting views of Venice and Florence, but they also encouraged the Renaissance Humanists to take an interest in Roman buildings and books, ensuring that none of the products of Chinese civilisation would be imitated by mere Italians.
They also took nothing from their travels back to China, which must have been a disappointment to the Emperor: all that money spent, all that time passed, all those leagues travelled and they didn’t even bring a souvenir of Venice.
Daiman,
Feel free to ignore this all you want.
Surely what you deem “psuedo-history” is inherent in every philosophy, religion, or academic subject on the face of the earth.
I agree that this particular article highlights a problem with some historical analysis. However what the Chinese are doing is no different from what America, Britain and every other country/institution does.
My gripe is you seem to be picking the easy targets - holocaust denial and “islamic terrorism” - which in itself is a psuedo-historical context if you consider the different factions, in reality, vying for power across the *Arab* world. True Islam is used to mobilize forces, as is capitalism, ‘freedom’, democracy and socialism - all containing lies and psuedo-historical analysis.
You seem to be picking the easy ones and complaining about them. Analyse how large organisations and governments can manipulate history for their benefit - it has happened everywhere, not ragband groups of armed militants, or a marginilised group of racists.
Oh for heavens sake. Does no-one know anything about Chinese history? Marco Polo is supposed to have been to China way before this time and even published his first portfolio of work years before. The “ambassador’ from the great Khan is well known to have been Marco Polos father and uncle and they were requested by the great Khan to bring a reply from the Pope. The only problem was that he was dead at the time and a new one had not been appointed. Instead they returned with a reply from Acre. There is further no evidence that Marco Polo went to China. There is evidence however of a Catholic Bishop being in Beijing in the 13th century, well before this supposed visit by the Chinese and plenty of other evidence including gravestones of Italian traders in China in the 13th and 14 Centruies. Another problem is that the Chines forbid their Admiral to travel outside of Chinese waters. The Chinese for China is Zhong Guo which means middle kingdom. The Chinese considered that their kingdom was the centre of the world and had no interest at all in anything outside its borders. If this idiot would care to contact me I would be happy to provide a reading list that would correct all of his misconceptions. MarC Stanton stantonm@edgehill.ac.uk
I found this review after starting reading 1434 without knowing anything about. I noticed the book may not be entirely mainstream, and googled and found a lot of the criticism that’s raised against 1421. And it seems some of it is deserved.
However, what you write here is nothing but pure pseudoskepticism. I can’t see anywhere in your review what Menzies does wrong, except not having your approval, and since I have no idea who you are I can’t put much faith in your consistent argument from authority and condescending tone - the latter which often seems to be enough for pseudoskeptics to vouch for authority. You even ridicule that he is using fact checkers, the eight of them, based on nothing but you knowing you are right, assumedly per defintion.
It’s pretty easy to build a reputation as a skeptic by just writing off every new idea. I have my background in science, not history, and I am surprised how the latter - while acknowledging that no historian can be entirely objective and always is biased by the sources he has access to - will hold on so doggedly to the established story, no matter how ethnocentric or politicized.
Menzies’s fact-checkers have been unable to produce a single primary source to verify his account of a Chinese voyage to Venice or visit to the Pope.
I would add that the Italians of the time were keen and copious writers. All Italian history in the 1300s and 1400s is known in detail. And a visit from Eastern dignitaries would have been of extreme interest, especially in Venice, which had a keen interest in Eastern trade and politics. The supposed invigorating effect on Italian culture this visit is supposed to have had is also not supported by facts. The 1430s were an age of consolidation, between the explosions of intellectual energies unleashed by the Florence-Milan wars (1375-1402) and the well-known and well-studied further explosion caused by the flight to Italy of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople (1452). Considering the immense interest to all European historians of these decades of Italian history, the impact of foreign culture could hardly have gone unnoticed; and, as a matter of fact, it was not - when it was the Greeks who did it. There WAS no Chinese fleet in Italy in 1432 or at any time. Besides, even granting that a Chinese admiral could accomplish the fearsome deed of crossing the Indian Ocean, doubling the Cape, sailing up the whole Atlantic against the prevailing winds and currents - why, in the name of Heaven, should it have sailed into the Mediterranean instead of into one of the many rich and available harbours of Atlantic Europe - Bordeaux, Antwerp, London, Hamburg? And why, in that case, should his advanced culture have struck the Italians rather than the equally wide-awake and intellectually lively Netherlanders? Look, this is nonsense, utter nonsense.
An Eastern voyage of exploration into Europe, that of Bishop Rabban bar Sawma in 1291, is well known and well documented. I suggest you look it up.
Incidentally, if the Chinese were so far more advanced than the Europeans in the 1430s, why is it that two centuries later the Chinese Emperor hired Matteo Ricci and his team of Jesuit missionaries to build him an observatory (which still stands in Beijing) and correct the astronomical observations of his own specialists?
SO MANY HATERS THAT CAN’T STAND THE FACT THAT CHINA WAS A CENTURY AHEAD OF ANY EUROPEAN COUNTRY AT THE TIME…..ITS A KNOWN FACT THAT CHINA WAS THE ONLY SUPERPOWER AT THE TIME…FACT…Genghis Khan IS THE MOST POWERFULL MILITARY GENERAL IN HUMAN HISTORY…HES’ CHINESE…:)
Firstly Genghis Kahn was Mongolian and his armies conquered China (and everything between there and Syria).
Secondly for a large part of human history China was indeed the worlds greatest power but that doesn’t mean that they sailed a fleet to Italy and unless any real evidence shows up it didn’t.
The Chinese texts which Mr Menzies cites from his acolyte Wang Tai Peng to support his claim for MIng visitts ro Florence in fact all refer to the Holy Roman Empire at Constaninople — the “Rum” of the Arabs.
There is not a single Chinese text which supports in any way a 15th century Chinese visit to what is now Italy.
Geoff Wade
Asia Research Institute
National University of Siungapore
arigpw@nus.edu.sg
So: Dr.Wade testifies that there is no Chinese record of any visit to Italy; I testify that there is no Italian record and that the facts of Italian history do not fit. What else is left?
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1434 was one of my Christmas presents - and I’ve just finished reading the story. I’m not an historian or anyone important. Despite the horribly inept editing - you would expect HarperCollins to assist a submariner with text layout, grammar and logic - I thought the tale fairly plausible. BUT I have been amazed at the sour grapes, similarly inept critical responses from academics! It may be a hoax - but they make no better case than Menzies. I realise none are from top class universities - I guess the top guys are busy with real stuff.
Annelies: you evidently have not read anything with any attention. Supposed “maps” written in modern Chinese, supposed “visits” for which there is no testimony whatever, misinterpreted Chinese texts - what the Hell does it take to convince you? As for the notion that scholars should be polite to a moneygrubbing, incompetent crank such as Menzies, that really is asking too much. It is human nature to become angry when one detects fraud; worse still when the fraud is so plain as to insult one’s intelligence. As for your insult to the credentials of people who debunk Menzies, perhaps you will inform us of what totally brilliant and novel contributions to historiography, anthropology and Sinology you have made lately. Or even tiddly winks.
Of all the sad things one witnesses when arguing against counterknowledge, much the saddest is that of dupes standing up angrily to defend the person who duped them.
Fabio P. Barbieri wrote:
“to a moneygrubbing, incompetent crank such as Menzies”
Gosh, I completely agree with young Fabio about something! This is a first. Well done Fabio!
Gavin Menzies does raise many possibilities, not yet proof, which warrants deeper analyses. However, he meets unchecked skepticism and arrogant abuse. Easy dismissal without sound arguments says nothing but draws embarrassment to the critique self. If you disprove it, present your evidence and your research.
You no brainer, stop abuse this site. If you thinks Menzies’ things are worthless, present your supposedly not nonsense arguments, if you indeed have something to say. Next when I see this kind of words without backing of true arguments, I will call rubbish.
YM Just go to the 1421 Exposed website. Oh and since when is a voyage around Greenland in 1421-1423 C.E., the slightest bit feasible. Menzies has been analyized and throughly destroyed. The fact that you are not aware of the large amount of the material available on the web that proves how wrong he is and lays bare the absurdity of his books only tells me about your research skills.
Mats about your question about the article not telling you were Menzies goes wrong. The article clearly says this voyage is totally unrecorded in any contemporary document. Isn’t that an arguement about where Menzies went wrong?
I suggest you both read the transcript for the ABC program Four Corners called Junk History. There it is revealed that 1421 was little more than a calculated attempt by the publisher to make money.
i’ve read part of the book, i recon its a load of crap, my skeptiscism was sparked by somewhere in the text saying that it was possible to sail westwards to china from italy, correct me if im wrong, but isnt there a continent or two in the way
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