Faculty Book Review--October 2003
Gavrin Menzies'
1421: The Year China
Discovered America
By Richard Beattie
At the James Ford Bell Library in Minnesota, there is a map signed by Venetian cartographer Zuanne Pizzigano which includes drawings of two islands west of Europe called Antilla and Satanezces. Don’t worry about your geography knowledge base, these islands don’t exist today, at least by those names. A close examination of the two islands reveals that, in fact, they are fairly accurate renderings of Puerto Rico and Guadeloupe. So far, nothing spectacular, right? However, the Pizzigano map is dated… ready for this… 1424. Now as any schoolchild will tell you, Columbus did not sail the ocean blue until 1492. And prior to Columbus’s voyage, Europeans had been fixated on sailing east, not west. So, the question becomes: how is it that European cartographers had detailed maps of the Caribbean more than sixty years before the supposed first European saddled up the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, in search of the New World?
Gavin Menzies thinks he has an answer to that question, and provides it thoroughly in 1421: The Year China Discovered America. The back story here is fairly common knowledge in World History circles, you’ve probably heard about it in your World Cultures class (at least I would hope you’ve heard about it in your World Cultures class!) In the early 15th century, the Chinese Ming Dynasty, relieved, as it were, of their Mongol (Yuan) yolke, embarked on its own imperialistic imperative which involved, among other things, the commissioning of exploration vessels frequently referred to as the “Treasure Fleets”. The ships themselves are legendary, and their commander, even more legendary still. Zheng He, Muslim eunuch and friend of Emperor Zhu Di was reported to stand more than 7 feet tall, oversaw many of the voyages, and is frequently cited as the model for Sinbad of Sinbad The Sailor fame. The objective of the Treasure Fleets was to make contact along fairly well established trade routes, with India, Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and Southeast Asia, and the ships themselves were well outfitted for this objective. The largest of the fleets were more than 450 feet long, with nine masts and rudders of roughly 36 feet. In other words, the rudders of the Treasure Fleets were almost as long as the entire Nina Columbus sailed on. The hulls were separated into compartments that could be flooded separately, and the ships were made of teak and other hardwoods to withstand ocean travel. Between 1409 and 1424 the Treasure Fleets undertook many voyages and all historians agree that they probably made contact with at least thirty different countries in and around the Indian Ocean trade networks. In 1424, upon the death of the emperor, China suspended all further navigation (for complicated reasons), though Zheng He would make one more voyage. The fleets were decommissioned and all Zheng He’s records were destroyed. This has become one of the great “what if” games in World History. The ships were certainly capable of trans-oceanic voyages, and given time, it doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination to infer that the fleets might well have gained access to the Southern Atlantic.
What makes 1421: The Year China Discovered America (titled 1421: The Year China Discovered The World for its UK publication) as controversial as it has become, is Menzies’ claim that the Treasure Fleets did indeed venture beyond the India Ocean networks and did reach the Americas during the 1421-1423 voyages. Apart from the Pizzigano map, Menzies sites four other 15th and 16th century maps with verifiable references to the New World. He also makes full use of the logs and records of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan which strongly suggest that they had charts of the Caribbean and South America before they set sail. At one point for example, Magellan, facing yet another potential mutiny, rallies his crew by showing them detailed charts of the Strait they don’t believe exists. Later, after navigating the Straits, we get this, from the diary of Antonia Pigafetta, a crew mate of Magellan’s. “When we had left that Strait. If we had sailed always westwards, we should have gone without finding any island other then the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins…in 52 degrees of latitude exactly towards the Antarctic Pole.” As Menzies points out, how could Pigafetta possibly have know that? His contention, of course, is that Europeans had received these charts and maps from Chinese navigators who had been there close to a hundred years earlier. To further his argument, Menzies sites thousands of Chinese artifacts purported to have been uncovered from Argentina to Rhode Island, and up and down the West African coast. Additionally, there are dozens of “unidentified” wrecks (half a dozen off the coast of Florida alone). The construction and materials of these wrecks are not consistent with European vessels, and salvage operations have uncovered (in some) blue porcelain that could have only been Chinese in origin, as well as other artifacts of a Chinese provenance. I know what you’re thinking: “just because the porcelain came from China doesn’t mean the ship came from China.” And you’re absolutely right. Therein lies the problem.
The book has not been received well by certain sectors of the historical community. It doesn’t help that Menzies received an ungodly amount of money to write the book, a sum unheard of in the historical writing community. Publisher Bantam/William Morrow also laid out extravagantly for a pre-publication media blitz. There are currently three documentaries in production, and, of course there is a 1421 website. But not all the criticisms need be attributed to jealousy. To put it nicely, many historians accuse Menzies of pure speculation on what “might be” possible explanations for inexplicable circumstance. To put it not so nicely, some see it as historical fabrication. The book is full of phrases that run something like this: “If so and so had done this, then inevitably this would have occurred, therefore its obvious that this other thing would have been a logical conclusion…” The essential flaw, many argue, is in scholarship, or the lack thereof. Because Menzies doesn’t read Chinese, there are no Chinese primary documents that mention anything about the Americas. His treatment of 15th century maps as a basis for his hypothesis is very dangerous, prone as they were to forgery and constant amending. Not to mention, as T.H. Barret noted in his review of the book for London’s Independent: “If the maps that appear to show portions of the New World before Columbus do derive from the cartographic activities of the Chinese in 1421, why are their depictions of China so inaccurate?” He’s got a point, they are pretty inaccurate, sometimes unrecognizable. Lastly, several of the “artifacts” referenced by Menzies have later proven to have alternative explanations.
In The Vietnam Experience, Mr. Booth and I used to assign the reading of an interview with filmmaker Oliver Stone, in which he defended himself against historians who accused him of “speculative” history. Reaction to the Menzies book reminds me of reaction to Stone films JFK and Nixon. There may be quite a bit of time spent “out on a limb”, and there may be some hypotheses that require some logical leaps; but ideas are ideas, and may have innate value in and unto themselves. And there are unanswered questions, inexplicable phenomenon. I’ve noticed that Menzies critics don’t offer their own plausible explanations as to how maize (indigenous only to the Americas, and requiring cultivation) is reported by Magellan as being offloaded in the Philippines; or as to the 16th century existence of Asiatic hens in South America. How did they get there? They certainly didn’t fly. I disagree with the notion, often stated, that Menzies’ “fantastic” notions marginalize the true accomplishments of Chinese exploration, and though Gavin Menzies may be spinning tall tales, they are interesting and thought provoking tales nevertheless.