Recommended by Jack Kaysar. Mentioned by Kristof in Thunder from the East.

Lots of information But the individual information does not add up to the total the author desires. Much non critical information is included. The book makes for a excellent conversation starter but certainly does not prove his theory. ( )

By virtue of having some experience as a submariner, Menzies claims special insight into the routes taken by Chinese junks bent on exploration in the early 15th century. We are asked to believe that no record of these extraordinary discoveries is now available owing to a conspiracy to suppress all documents, markers and relics in China and elsewhere, relating to these voyages. It may be noted that Joseph Needham (see above), who was eager to promote Chinese achievements made no mention of the Chinese early discovery of America, or of the Pope of the day having received a little private tutoring from Chinese seamen.
However, a copy of the so-called Kangnido map - the Chinese/Korean chart dating from 1403, which shows Africa with remarkable accuracy - hangs in the South African National Assembly, the country's houses of parliament. This map embroidered on silk was presented by the government of China to the South African state as an act of friendship. Chinese nationals travel to Cape Town to see it as the original is somewhat fragile and is not open to public inspection.
What likely began as a private obsession by Menzies has grown into a considerable and no doubt lucrative publishing enterprise. I recommend that anyone coming into contact with this book (672pp) save themselves many hours of wasted time by disposing of it immediately ( )

This book has interesting theories but should be taken with a grain of salt.

The visuals are often lacking in '1421'.

Menzies lacks historian credentials. ( )

Interesting, if speculative alternative history. As someone who grew up loving In Search Of... I love a good alternative history especially because it covers history I'm generally unfamiliar with i.e. China. That said the book was overly long, and tended to drag in parts ( )

a great example of why not to take received wisdom for granted. who is going to tell the spanish and portuguese city authorities to revise the inscriptions at the feet of all their columbus and magellan statuary? ( )

Oh dear. I have just wasted $29.95! The blurb makes out that this book is history re-written, when in fact it is nonsense. The best part of this book is the proliferation of web-sites pointing out the enormous range of inanities that populate the text. Dreadful.
Partially read December 2007

I loved reading this fascinating account of the Chinese admiral. It's worth reading just for some of the details (trivia such as the dolphins kept in the hold for fishing and the chickens that lay blue eggs--I'd never noticed them in the store in China until I read this book!)

More than anything else, I like the kind of expertise Menzies brings to his research. No, he's not an historian, but he is a navigator of wide experience and deep knowledge. That impacts his study of history giving us his novel perspective. How completely accurate the "history" is, I am in no position to judge. I do wonder how much of the uproar raised among historians arises from that very fact about the author. One must certainly acknowledge his openness to criticism as his website is open to comment and refutation. Anyone who goes against received wisdom, though, opens himself up to egregious attack--"this can't possibly be true" obviates rational discourse.

No doubt, Zheng He must have achieved more, and deserves more lasting and widespread fame, than any other eunuch in history. (I'd love to be corrected if that is wrong!) And I'm happy that this era of opening in Chinese history is now more widely acknowledged. That the Chinese perceived this endeavor in diplomatic terms rather than militaristic/imperialistic ones certainly contrasts to the soon-to-come European exploitation of their colonial empires commencing mere decades after Cheng He's voyages.

What an interesting set of hypothetical scenarios arise when we consider what might have been if the Chinese had not drawn back into such hermetic isolation? ( )

A thoroughly entertaining account of the author's theories that a huge Chinese fleet explored a wider area than is generally accepted and that . Menzies absolute faith in his model and his overt disdain for historians who disagree drive him to disregard the rigours of the scientific or historical method but it lends the book an immediacy that conveys his excitement.

Menzies was a highly regarded navigator when he served aboard Her Majesty's submarines and this undoubted skill provides a new and rewarding perspective on the maps derived from the voyages of Zheng He's fleets. This authority is undermined, however, by his reliance on anecdote and in some cases demonstrably mistaken evidence from a very wide palette of academic disciplines. Similarly, he has used some evidence inconsistently: why, for example, are sea level changes only significant when the maps are inaccurate? ( )

A speculative series of claims that the great Admiral Zheng He's fleet explored far more of the world than it probably did. Much of the "evidence" is flimsy at best. The Levathes book on Zheng He's voyages is far better and more reliable.

About the only reason to wade through this massive construction is for the amusement of contemplating what might have happened if Zheng had chosen to round the Cape and sail north, potentially arriving in European waters where Henry the Navigator was trying out his new 75-foot boats at Ceuta, Joan of Arc was rabble rousing and preparing to influence the 100 Years War, the British were fighting the French with picks and staves at Agincourt, and Hieronymus Bosch was worrying about moral failings. ( )

Notable for its accurate descriptions of the advances medieval China, fantastic theories and possible illegitimacy. I was entertained and very firmly able to disengage my Western-centric mind for the whole the read. However, Menzies postscript had something of the Da Vinci Code about it- a little unbelievable and lacking a logical plot. I will look forward to further arguments in the scientific community, as Menzies theory becomes further peer reviewed. ( )

This is a wild book -- in both the positive and negative senses of that word. Menzies presents a full-blown (many would say overblown) theory of a wide-ranging and systematic Chinese exploration of the world in the early 15th century. He's assembled evidence with, shall we say, an open mind, drawing on everything from cartography and DNA analyses to pure hearsay.

I found many points he makes both provocative and plausible, but this is such an aggressive attempt to overturn conventional historical assumptions that it's simply impossible to agree with all of Menzies's conclusions, or even to believe everything he says.

Menzies's style is quite readable, but his frenzied attempts to marshall evidence lead to repetition and a kind of breathlessness common to alternate histories.

Still, I think he's on to something, and this book is well worth reading. ( )

This is a fascinating story, both of the voyages part of the Chinese fleet 1421-1423, and of the author's research and exploration to confirm his suspicions and assumptions.

Interesting and likely-to-be-true theory. I would love to see more evidence to back up this amazing idea. It would be a great turning point of our views of the past and the future. ( )

Fantastic book. Opens up a whole range of (formerly) taboo discussions over the exploration of the Americas. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

We Westerners are of course familiar with the historical period known as the Renaissance; taking place between the 1300s and 1600s, it's the period when Europeans finally crawled out of their Dark-Age hole, rediscovered such ancient Greek concepts as science and philosophy, and started doing such things for the first time as sailing to the far corners of the planet. But did you know that China as well went through its own brief Renaissance at the same time, actually sailing around the planet on a regular basis a full 50 years before the Europeans started doing so, and that it was the maps and tips these Chinese gave to the Europeans that allowed the great figures from the "Age of Discovery" to make their voyages in the first place? Well, okay, so not everyone completely agrees with this theory; but it's the surprisingly strong one being espoused in the books 1421: The Year China Discovered America and 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, both of them by a retired British naval commander named Gavin Menzies, a hobbyist scholar who just happened to start stumbling across more and more evidence during his studies to support the theory mentioned above. See, the whole thing is problematic, because the Chinese actually went through a major period of isolationism right after this brief period of world-traveling, specifically as a overreaction to Ghengis Khan and his Mongol Hoard, which had actually held and ruled China all the way up to the beginning of the 1400s, or in other words the beginning of the Ming Dynasty in that country.

According to well-known history, the Chinese were so set on turning inwards at this point, they actually destroyed most of their own records regarding their globetrotting sea voyages from this period, just so no one else would be tempted to make such trips again; according to Menzies, he has slowly been putting the pieces back together through shreds of evidence in other countries, stone markers and rescued scrolls and the like, revealing that the Ming Dynasty's own period of global seafaring was actually much larger than any of us have ever realized, a systematic series of successes that would've virtually guaranteed China's eventual world domination, if they had simply stuck with it instead of embarking on a four-hundred-year period of profound isolationism like they actually did. It's certainly an intriguing theory, and Menzies does a pretty credible job backing it up; these are giant thick books we're talking about (over a thousand pages altogether), just chock-full of evidence both direct and circumstantial. Combine this, then, with Menzies' tech-savvy prose concerning the problems of map-drawing and chart-creating in that period, which is why certain documents from that period need to be widened or narrowed in Photoshop before they'll actually line up with real coastlines; it's just one of the dozens of little issues and problems with all this old evidence, he argues, that prevented it from being all added together by anyone else before now. (See, one of the things Menzies did while in the navy was actually sail the ancient Chinese routes talked about in these books; he therefore has an expert's understanding on what these routes must've been like for the original Chinese sailors, and can thus explain the inconsistencies in the maps and charts they left behind.)

These were great reads, books that really crank the gears of the mind into action (why, just the descriptions of a glittering, wealthy Southeast Asia in the 1400s is worth the cover price alone); I'll warn you, though, that these are denser books than the usual airport and beach reads, not exactly academic in complexity but definitely stories you need to pay careful attention to while reading. That said, they both get a big recommendation from me, especially for the growing amount of people in the western half of the world who are becoming more and more curious these days about the mysterious history of the eastern half.

Out of 10: 9.3 ( )

The author argues that a huge Chinese fleet of treasure ships circumnavigated and charted the world years before the first great European voyages of discovery, giving as evidence findings from shipwrecks and ancient maps, to local peoples accounts and their DNA.

Interesting reading. Certainly gave me a different perspective of what I thought I knew of both Chinese trading and exploration. ( )

The book aims to revolutionise history. It was an interesting argument, but further reading did not seem to back up the facts so I felt a bit cheated. ( )

While on vacation in Florida, I ran across this book at the condo we stayed in. I wasn't expecting much but I had just finished the book I brought with me to read so I picked it up. I knew I didn't have time to read the whole thing since we were only there a couple of days - and I had heard that it wasn't a very exciting book so I just wanted to browse through it a little. After a call to the owner of the condo, this book came home with me (a good way to eat up 1200 miles in the car). I did like reading it and found it interesting. I think I was ready for a change and a history book was just what I needed. I would assume that this book would appeal to men more than women as it is a history book full of facts, etc. It is not a story book. I do recommend it if you like history type books. You also get a little lesson on the time frame when China decides to isolate herself from the rest of the world and why. ( )

This was a fascinating but frustrating book. Menzies argues that between 1421, when a large fleet set out from China to explore the world, and 1423 when they returned to a much-changed society (where their logs were destroyed and further exploration halted) the fleet discovered just about every bit of land on the globe. (The subtitle of the original British edition is "The Year China Discovered The World", rather than "...America" as in the US edition. It's a telling change in more ways than one -- making the focus more narrow is not only intended to attract US audiences, but singles out the most controversial elements, since the claims that the Chinese explored Australia and rounded the Cape of Good Hope long before Europeans are more solid than the claim that they also explored the Americas).

Menzies' passionate belief in his own thesis is evident and unfortunate; I suspect a decent fraction of what he claims is probably true, though not even close to all of it, and his credulous enthusiasm casts everything into doubt. He commits the cardinal sin of seeking evidence to PROVE his hypothesis, not to TEST it.

Take the case of Australia, for instance. I can certainly believe, based on maps, archeological findings, and other evidence discussed in the book that Chinese ships reached at least the northern parts of Australia long before Europeans, and there are what look like easy routes down the coast of Southeast Asia then via Indonesia. Menzies, however, needs to tie Australia into the grand scheme of exploration he lays out, so he posits a mind-boggling crossing of the Southern Ocean from Cape Horn, which substantially weakens the overall argument.

Similar inclusions of other laughably weak 'evidence' (he even dredges up the Vinland map), and internal inconsistencies (he argues that rising sea levels have covered land in the Caribbean (using laughably bad extrapolations for the amount of rise, assuming that the post-industrial rate of sea level rise can be extrapolated back for three hundred years before humans started producing lots of carbon dioxide) but that a warm period and the resulting lower ice levels made a circumnavigation of Greenland possible, apparently without even recognizing the conflict) make me doubt even the evidence I'd otherwise be willing to believe in other sections of the book.

Over-reliance on secondary sources, and failure to even discuss, much less rule out, alternative hypotheses is another major weakness. Here the case of South America is a good example. Menzies claims that several crops native only to the Americas were in Asia prior to
European contact with the Americas, which would be extremely strong evidence if it were adequately demonstrated. That's a big "if", though, and his claims are that Magellan found maize in the Philippines and that cochineal (a type of dye originating in Mexico and the southwestern US) was in China prior to Columbus. Unfortunately he fails to show that maize could not have reached the Philippines overland from Europe between Columbus and Magellan, and his source for the claim about cochineal is a book from the 1970s -- hardly an adequate primary source. His description of a Chinese method for determining longitude (feasible only from land when spending a reasonably long time) is feasible but utterly un-footnoted; is it documented, or the product of wishful thinking? These obvious weaknesses again make the stronger points -- a wrecked junk built in approximately 1410 found near the Philippines with metates (corn grinding stones from the Americas) in its hold, and DNA markers found only in China and in parts of the Yucatan in Mexico -- less believable
purely by association. Finally, some of the "evidence" in the section on the Americas has a faint whiff of racism, suggesting that the Native Americans could not possibly have developed complicated lacquer processes, or even observed the supernova of 1054, on their own, and utterly neglecting the Polynesians as a method of spreading plants and animals around the Pacific basin.

In short, I leave this book wishing someone less eager would write one, or for a thoughtful but not axe-grinding rebuttal -- I suspect there's something there, am reasonably sure it's not as much as Menzies claims, but wish I knew where to draw the line. Hopefully the DNA testing and further searches for wrecked Chinese ships will help answer these questions; I can only wish Menzies had waited until more of these solid forms of evidence were in before publishing the book, rather than constantly telling us to check his website for details (which are still lacking; if anything, the website has a higher ratio of hype to content than the book). ( )

The more I read, the less I know what to think. I suspect that he may be correct in his thesis- that Chinese sailors arrived at the Americas before Columbus -- but the writing was so enthusiastic that I felt he was trying very hard to convince me, which made me more suspicious.

Part of what makes his overall argument almost convincing is the amount and variety of evidence he brings together. He ties his findings to those other people have made with data of varying levels of corroboration... But I also thought that he often jumped to specific conclusions about evidence I felt was a bit thin -- he may very well be right, but I wasn't yet convinced based solely on the evidence he presented in the text. So while he may be right that Chinese got to Australia and the Americas, I'm not convinced they got everywhere he claims (such New England or Greenland). I'd be very interested to see how this all turns out after rigorous academic research.

Overall, I felt that the book will be (and to some degree has been) useful to spur and synthesize a lot of research in many fields to either corroborate or dispute his claims. As such I think the book could be important. Had it been written more objectively as a synthesis of other folks' research I don't think I would have been as much of a skeptic.

As for the quality of the writing, it's easy to read, has a fairly conversational tone, but Menzies often repeats himself and brings in the same evidence over and over (oh those asiatic hens!) to justify multiple claims, and it often just isn't enough. ( )

This is a fascinating book, even if you do not accept the argument wholesale.
Firstly, no one disputes that China's seagoing fleet dwarfed anything European in the early 15th century, although it is little mentioned in your average world history book. The story of the Chinese government then turning its back on the sea is one of the classic "what ifs" in history.
This book though seeks to recreate the most impressive of the voyages by the Chinese fleets, and as the author sailed the world in only-just post war submarines when navigation was still done with a sextant his insight on the nautical side is fascinating too.
If anything the weakness of this book is in the author's absolute certainty. Parts of the voyages are far more convincing than others (and radically rewrite history anyway), others are more speculative (not least by the standards of evidence set in, especially, the earlier parts of the book), and I found these less convincing. If they had been presented as possibilities rather than certainties the book as a whole would have sat easier with me. Nonetheless it is thought-provoking and well researched and deserves to be read and judged on its merits. ( )

When this book was first released in China it created quite a furor. I read the book, and although I think Admiral Zheng He of the Ming Dynasty is an unsung hero of early exploration, I was not at all impressed by Commander Menzies scholarship, or lack thereof I should say. The following is a letter I wrote to the editor of a local Beijing magazine that stepped way over the line in touting the book. It contains my appraisal of Mr. Menzies' work.
_________

Dear Editor,

I wish to comment on the Stolen Glory article published in your January 18th edition;

http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/en/beij...)

I have three points: the cover of your magazine, Mr. Menzies’ theory and the standards of journalism used in your article.

First, concerning the cover of your magazine, it was irresponsible of you to make the statement that any glory due Zheng He was stolen. The word stolen used on your cover implies that there has been some international conspiracy to suppress the truth concerning the history of the world from the 15th century to this one. Not only is it a ridiculous statement, you do nothing to support it in your article. I am left to conclude that is was just some ham-handed gimmick to get people to pick up your magazine. Simply put, the situation concerning Zheng He is this; if Mr. Menzies’ theory is proven true by orthodox means, revision will have to be made in light of current knowledge that heretofore has been unrecognized or unknown to the scholars of the world.

See, no one stole anything, and no one need be punished for any wrong doing. That is not how you make it sound on the cover of your magazine.

About Mr. Menzies, let me say that I do not deny the possibility, nor do I deny the probability that Mr. Menzies’ theory that Zheng He discovered the new world 71 years before Christopher Columbus and that he circumnavigated the globe 101 years before Ferdinand Magellan is correct. I share the inclination to believe it. In fact, in light of what Mr. Menzies and others have said, at the very least, we should take a good, hard look at the history we have been taught and consider making additions to it—I, for one, never studied about Zheng He in high school nor university, but this motivation to take a good, hard look does not mean that we should immediately run out and make radical changes to history.

Why shouldn’t we?

Not one of Mr. Menzies’ major assertions has yet been proven by rigorous historical or archeological research. It HAS NOT been proven by orthodox methods that Zheng He discovered the New World first. It HAS NOT been proven by orthodox methods that Zheng He circumnavigated the globe first. As long as these two major assertions have NOT BEEN proven according to rigorous methods, we cannot allow ourselves to believe them; therefore, we should not state them as fact.

It is Mr. Menzies’ habit to go with his gut instinct concerning every tendril of information that he can find and somehow fit it into his version of 15th century history. As an open minded reader, I can accept that quality in him. Mr. Menzies does not claim to be a historian nor an archeologist. He was a submariner and a cold warrior, and I am sure his instincts carried him very far in that arena just as they have carried him quite far in his research concerning Zheng He, but instincts do not replace the rigors of science. Mr. Menzies has written a popular book that is making a lot of money. I do not begrudge him that. In fact, I congratulate the man for what he has accomplished. I am even quite proud to say that I have an autographed copy of his book in my personal library, but that doesn’t mean I can accept his theories as fact because, by definition, they are not fact.

Your article reported, and Mr. Menzies himself mentioned in a lecture I attended, that he had not been asked to participate in a recent National Geographic special about Zheng He.

Can you guess why?

My guess is that serious scholars do not want to be associated with a rank amateur that is unwilling to conform to proper standards of research. For example, Mr. Menzies recounts his exploits in putting a name to the “one last creature [he had] to identify” in Patagonia as part of his study of the Piri Reis map, which plays such a large role in his theory concerning Zheng He. It is truly comical how Mr. Menzies recounts his telephone call to the Museo de Sitio in Puerto Natales.

He is an excerpt: “I’m looking for a monster twice the size of a human. Were there any creatures like that in your area?” The answer came back in the affirmative. The person who answered the phone reported to Mr. Menzies that mylodons had existed there, and that they were monstrous and that they were twice the size of a man. From this, Mr. Menzies allows himself a higher flight of fancy and says “I could imagine the Chinese seamen luring these lumbering, dog-headed creatures
out of their caves and onto the giant ships, accompanied by tons of leaves for them to eat.” Sadly, if Mr. Menzies had just stayed on the phone with the Museo de Sitio just a few minutes longer, he would probably have discovered that the mylodons died out about 10,000 years ago. Admittedly, Charles Darwin did claim to have discovered one in that area and subsequently named it mylodon darwinii, but the one he found was skeletal, and in a condition not unlike the Mastodon remains found from time to time in Siberia.

Nevertheless, from the half information of that phone call, Mr. Menzies suddenly wove into his tale that the Piri Reis map includes Patagonia, the Patagonian animal depicted on the map was a mylodon, and the Chinese captured a few and brought them back as gifts to the Emperor. That is how Mr. Menzies does his research; that is how Mr. Menzies supports his theory, and that is why Mr. Menzies is not very well respected in the academic community.

Now, about the journalistic standards of your article, much like Mr. Menzies, Mr. Hill has a similar habit of stating fact where none actually exist. Concerning the 1763 map so proudly displayed in his article, Mr. Hill states this as fact: “Done in ink on bamboo paper, the map was drawn by Mo Yi Tong in 1763, replicating a map from 1418.” He goes on with his list of facts to say that words in red boxes on the map “are words taken directly from the 1418 version and include a note on the region of Alaska”. He says that the words contained in the Alaskan red box “obviously refer to the Eskimos”, and the North American red box (as though Alaska is not part of North America) “[refer] to the American Indians”. First, although Mr. Hill mentions briefly that the map was examined by Menzies and unnamed experts, he doesn’t tell us whether or not the map was authenticated to 1763, the obvious first step in proving its value of at least ¥4000.

Furthermore, he fails to tell us that even if the map is authenticated to 1763, it means absolutely nothing to the Zheng He theory. Why? It means nothing because by 1763 the world possessed nearly 300 years of intercontinental and circumnavigational experience.

The only thing that would really make some splashes in history is if someone were to find the original 1418 map, of which the 1763 map claims to be a copy, and verify its authenticity with the utmost rigor. The first splash would be that history would most definitely need to be rewritten, and the second splash would be people tossing Mr. Menzies book into the toilet since a true 1418 world map produced by the Chinese would have to have been drawn based upon experiences that would necessarily predate Zheng He’s voyages. In fact, if the 1763 map is to be trusted, the original claims to come from information gathered between 1415 and 1418—three full years before Zheng He set sail.

Despite my facetiousness a few lines up, I don’t mean to say that the 1763 map is completely without value. I would like to close with an excerpt from a rough draft translation by Geoff Wade of an article written about 2 weeks ago by Professor Gong Yingyan of the Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University concerning the map.

"Carbon 14 dating can only determine the age of the ink and paper. If this is indeed a map from the Qian-long period, it will be good news as many maps from that time have been destroyed by natural and man-made disasters. The non-historical nature of the annotations within red borders cannot but cause us to have grave doubts about this map. The map not only reflects the influence of Western culture on China after the great geographical discoveries, but also a proof that only a very few advanced Chinese people studied Western culture at that time. In the long stream of Chinese history, what is evident by its lack is this spirit of actively studying those cultures which are different from ours. If we use this valuable map to weave a modern fairy-tale about “Zheng He discovering the world” it will be a violation of the real significance of this map, contrary to the spirit of Zheng he’s voyages to the Western Ocean and also contrary to the global trends of our times." ( )

I felt cheated by my eduacation after reading this book. It is so convincing that you feel History books today should change to incorporate many of the theories herein described. Whether you beliive it or not it still is a great read, and provides great insights into Chinese culture and technology dating 600 years ago. ( )