I totally enjoyed this book. There's some controversy over his claims (surprise, surprise), but the wealth of evidence out there makes a pretty good case whether each individual part of it is 100%. I do believe the true history of the Americas is in its infancy and there may be many surprises for all before it's entirely unraveled!

This is a difficult book to rate, let alone review.
This review, therefore will probably jump around a bit, contradict itself, confuse you, and end up being awkward and poorly edited.
First to a rating, as this may focus my train of thought.
If I rated on readability - 4* - it is readable, presented relatively simply, but unfortunately is prone to some repetition.
If I rated on engagement, or how much appeal the subject matter has - 4*.
If I rated on how the book deals with presenting evidence in a scientific manner - 2* (more on this later).
If I rated the book on my irritation as the author manipulates assumptions and presents them as evidence, I would rate it 1*.
Overall, I think I am fence sitting at 3*. I do own another two books by Menzies, and I will read them, which means I can't really rate this less than 3*, or I wouldn't feel able to read more.

And so, to content. As I read this book, I started out making notes of some bits to refer to in my review. This got out of hand very quickly, and I stopped completely. As other reviewers have said, Menzies is an "amateur historian". This is obvious from the outset - he even states it up front, and makes no apology for it. It does cast doubts, and while he constantly refers to his cast of scientists supporting his theories, they seem background characters, and their credentials are seldom shared.

That is not to say that Menzies THEORY is not possible, or even plausible. There are certainly some compelling arguments, examples and THEORIES which seem essential to follow up. In this book, certainly, there seem so many that it is perhaps reckless of the scientific historian community not to be following this up. However that is part of the problem with this book - it is probably unfair to expect Menzies to write about the other side of his assumptions and theory - why would he present the evidence that doesn't fit. It is because of the amateur nature of this book that at no time does the reader feel they are being offered an opportunity to decide anything. Menzies takes this choice out of our hands. He simply tells us what he believes happened, and that we should believe him.

One of the most annoying aspects of his writing, is his use of repetition, and subtle changes to the repetition to strengthen his position. During the narrative he regularly starts of with an assumption - a mere speculation that fits some vague evidence. Some pages later he will return to that assumption, and add a further layer of speculation, restating it as likely. Later again he will confirm this as fact, evidenced by X an Y theory. In his summary chapters the original "theory" is a certainty. This process undermines his evidence, in my view.

Another trait which lessens the effect of his narrative is his repetitive use of phrases to sell his assumption. "By this point I was sure...", "I realized that Zhou must have...." and "From my days as a navigator, I knew that ....". The use of these phrases, in my view changes this from a serious historical investigation to a game of join the dots.

However, his presentation methods aside, it is still a fascinating THEORY. There can be no doubting the depth of Chinese Culture. Winchesters Bomb, Book & Compass: Joseph Needham & the Great Secrets of China goes some way to describing the technological achievements of the Chinese, and there is no reason to think that navigation and seamanship should not have been ambitions of China.

Menzies helper scientists were also in the process of DNA testing at the time of publication, and he uses the postscript in this edition in a couple of ways. One is to throw around some proof of Chinese DNA in pretty much all of the native peoples of the world from American Indians to New Zealand Maori, from native Alaskans (Aleut) to the Incas and Australian Aboriginals. Again we are just told this is incontrovertible proof - but it is not explained (but to be fair, I probably wouldn't understand it either). The other thing he does is take a return swing at some of the academics who have challenged aspects of his theory. This is sort of an easy way for him to score points, as he can pick one or two of the challengers, present their argument as he wishes to and then respond. I think it lacks the professionalism required in an impartial and formal challenge to history.

But before I finish my rant, as promised, some out jumping around, because I realise you may have no idea what this book is about. The basic THEORY is that the Chinese in 1421 set sail with a massive fleet of many hundreds of ships (some massive) to explore the world and return to their homes many hundred of envoys from other countries who had been in Beijing to pay homage to Emperor Zhu Di. (These envoys, and hundreds of concubines play a part later, when they help back up some theories about certain native peoples being 'whiter' having integrated not only the Chinese but some of these envoys into their breeding.)

The flotilla of ships splits up into many, many routes, and basically not only returns some of the envoys, but carries on to discover almost the entire world, from Antarctica to Greenland, both coasts of Africa and South America, North America, the Azores, Caper Verde, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand. Also the obvious ones - India, the Spice Islands, parts of the Middle East and Indonesia. Pretty much all but Europe (I understand that Europe is suddenly on the table in Menzies next book, called 1434). They not only visited, they accurately surveyed and charted the extent of their travel, and even set up numerous colonies.

This, all far before the Portuguese and their Age of Discovery, and long, long before the Dutch explorers and James Cook etc.
More than just beating them to it, according to the theory, every single one of those famous explorers were in possession of the Chinese originated maps, and therefore were not heading off in discovery, but were simply following the map to places they knew existed! They just never really told anyone.
And the reason that China holds no substantial written (or oral) history on this? There was a fire which destroyed the Forbidden City. As a result the emperor lost his nerve (to do with the gods revoking his mandate to rule) and China shut her borders, and destroyed all the evidence of their explorations, and suppressed all records. Anyway that is the very short version.

But I have written enough, and need to put this review to rest, as it is approaching TL;DR.

As justified above, 3 stars.

great book about the discoveries the Chinese made of the new world and other places like Tasmania long before Columbus sailed looking for the new route to India. great tale.

I stopped reading this book halfway through when I realized that, contrary to my assumption that it would largely be based on factual content about Zheng He's treasure fleet voyages with some speculation about the potential that it reached the New World, it turned out to be entirely lacking in any factually sourced non-fiction content whatsoever. Certainly nothing beyond what a person could find out after a quick google search or skimming the Wikipedia entry about Zheng He.

This book is a complete waste of time. It's embarrassing that an entirely unqualified person who, if my research into him is accurate, couldn't even be relied on to write the book himself but required the help of a team of ghostwriters, was apparently given a large advance in order to produce nonsense. This book takes away from the potential for a scholar with real expertise to publish a worthwhile popular history of Zheng He's voyages, which are fascinating in their own right.

Highly speculative, this book adduces a host of evidences of varying quality to assert that Chinese fleets had visited, even occasionally colonized, both Americas, Australia, West Africa and many Pacific and Atlantic islands before the Europeans. Some of the claims--such as Chinese knowledge of Australia--are stronger than others--such as that about the visits to the polar ice caps. One--that about the Bimini Road--is very farfetched.

Menzies' arguments rest primarily on maps, some extant, utilized by later European explorers, maps which showed routes and places no European had yet visited. Accepting this--and some appear incontrovertibly prescient--where did they come from? Who made them? His answer is China and the Chinese. Here his arguments appear strongest. The rest of his arguments, however, very greatly in quality. Much reference is made to wrecks, to artifacts, to the transmission of flora, fauna and DNA--much of which I'm not competent to judge, most of which is only glancingly referred to. To evaluate this book would require following thousands of references.

Still, as an exercise of the historical imagination this book is provocative and such claims for China can be expected to increase as China and the Far East rise in global prominence.

PS For a scathing critique of Menzies read the article "How Not to (Re)Write World History", published by Robert Finlay in the Journal of World History, Vol. 15, #1, 2004.

First off, I will start off by saying that I do NOT believe the Chinese beat the Europeans to the New World. I just think the evidence just is not compelling enough.

However that doesn't mean that they could NOT have. They certainly had the navy, the navigational skills (no worse than the Europeans), and the funding and ingenuity to accomplish it. And that is precisely what this book seeks to theorize. Of course there is not any historian that wants to make any money "theorizing" unless you are stictly in the academic community. In which case you then are not making any money.

But I digress.

Gavin Menzies has decided to theorize that the Chinese could and did in fact do exactly what the title promises. He makes a compelling case and this book is very readible to the amateur history buff. Which is why it gets 4 stars. You will read and really think that maybe the textbooks have been wrong the whole time.

But like any good, compelling history, the reader should now get enough information and go find out for themselves what is really believable. Especially with a theory like this one that would literally turn history on its head. And after doing some further reading, you realize that Mr. Menzies simply does not have enough solid data to support this claim.

But the book is well written and he makes a compelling case. Just not a slam dunk nor anything close. But fun to think about nonetheless.

In 1421: The Year China Discovered America, Gavin Menzies presents evidence that China not only discovered North and South America before Columbus was born, but also rounded the Cape of Good Hope, explored the North and South Poles, discovered Australia, and circumnavigated the world, visiting every continent except Europe.

The reason this information isn't widely known is because China became xenophobic after these great voyages and all records of the voyages were destroyed. However, enough evidence of these voyages remains to provide compelling proof.

Menzies focuses on maps of the world made before the European explores were born and points to journals showing that Columbus, Magellan, Cook, and others had maps of the areas they were "discovering" before they ever set sail.

Magellan knew where the Straight of Magellan was by using a map. Cook found Australia the same way. Columbus didn't discover America on accident; he simply followed the map he brought with him. In fact, when Columbus landed on Puerto Rico, he found an earlier Portuguese voyage had already settled there ahead of him. (The Portuguese landed in Puerto Rico a short ten years after the Chinese.) Columbus wasn't even the first non-Scandinavian European to visit America! Also, Columbus himself admits that the Chinese had been to America before him.

Where did these maps come from? Menzies shows that Europeans who visited India came into contact with the Chinese and brought maps back to Europe. Portugal kept the maps a secret from the rest of Europe to give them an advantage in the spice trade. However, Columbus and his brother copied the maps, altered them to make it look like it was easier to reach the Spice Islands by going west rather than east and tricked Spain into financing a voyage to the Americas.

Menzies also presents a mountain of evidence of Chinese explorations around the world including Chinese stone markers and observation pyramids, ancient Chinese shipwrecks, including one found in San Francisco Bay, Chinese artifacts found around the world, Asian plants and animals introduced to the Americas, American plants and animals brought back to China, legends and cave drawings of indigenous peoples, and Native Americans with Chinese DNA who speak languages similar to Chinese.

In addition to presenting compelling evidence, Menzies also provides interesting historical tidbits. For example, the Chinese had trained otters who herded fish into nets. He provides fascinating descriptions of medieval China, which made me wish the grade school history classes I took didn't focus solely on Europe and European America.

The only problem I had with the book is that it gets repetitious towards the end, especially the epilogue that I found unnecessary since it just restates evidence from earlier in the book. Strangely, he includes an appendix explaining how the Chinese measured longitude, which is almost exactly the same word for word as his description of how the Chinese measured longitude found in Chapter 15, making it completely extraneous. Except for this one shortcoming, the book is a fantastic read and gives us indisputable proof that our history books need to be rewritten.

Trash and nonsense.
Racist, orientalist, trash.
Entertaining I guess?

Should have been a novel.

Some debunking: https://web.archive.org/web/201311090...

I recently read one of Ben Bova's science fiction novels, JUPITER. In this novel, a group of scientists on a research station orbiting Jupiter embark on a mission to determine if there is life on the great planet. The commander of the station is Chinese and names the space probe that will go to Jupiter, the Zheng He. The commander explains to the crew that Zheng He was a 15th century Chinese admiral who commanded seven expeditionary treasure voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433. According to legend, his larger ships carried hundreds of sailors on four decks and were almost twice as long as any wooden ship ever recorded. Although I hadn't really heard much else about Zheng, I remembered that I had this book, 1421, on my shelves for several years and that it related that Zheng and other Chinese admirals supposedly explored much more of the world. Anyway, I decided to read the book and draw my conclusions from it.

1421 is a very well-researched book and unequivocally states that the Chinese explored and colonized much of the world from 1421-1423. Menzies asserts that the records of these voyages were destroyed by the Chinese Emperor based on a self-imposed isolation from the world after the destruction of the Forbidden City in Beijing by fire. The book propounds that four Chinese fleets circumnavigated the world and were comprised of more than 800 vessels containing both sailors and concubines. These fleets charted the world and supposedly passed these charts and maps on to Portugal. The charts were then used by European explorers including Columbus, Dias, da Gama, and Magellan. According to the book, the Chinese sailors and concubines settled in Malaysia, India, Africa, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and other islands in the Pacific. The fleets went as far as Antarctica in the South and around Greenland in the North.

Menzies does use some somewhat compelling evidence in his research including maps that predated Columbus, stone carvings from various locations around the world, DNA evidence showing that natives in various locations have Chinese DNA, etc. But how much of this is true? Looking on line, I have found many people who debunk Menzies claims and some compare him to Erich von Däniken and his claims of ancient aliens who colonized the earth.

Overall, I found this book to be very interesting although it was sometimes repetitious. I confess that I skimmed a lot of the last chapters of the book. But in my opinion, based on what is known about Zheng He and the Chinese treasure fleets, it could be feasible that the fleets could have gone much further than records show. But if Menzies theories are somewhat accurate, why haven't mainstream historians and scientists latched onto this possibility and further developed it? Overall, I would mildly recommend this but whether or not it is true is left up to the reader.

There are some books that come to our attention through curious routes and then strike us as books "we were meant to read." I suppose in some ways, this is true for many books. Perhaps it is proof of the old saying, "Chance favors the prepared mind."
When my GoogleLitTrips.com project was selected by the Asia Society to receive the Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in Education, I was invited to New York City to receive the prize and there, in passing, it was suggested that 1421 might be a good book to do a Lit Trip on. Though I found the book a bit outside of the parameters of the Lit Trip project, I found it eye-opening to say the least.
I had forever been aware of the "controversy" relating to the claims that Christopher Columbus "discovered" the new world. It had long been in my cognizance that the Vikings had been to the Americas earlier. And, of course, how can one claim to have discovered a land when the land one "discovers" is inhabited by millions of people with clear signs of advanced civilization?
I had also only recently become aware of the extent of the Portuguese sailing history, suggesting that Columbus was following fairly well-known routes that the Portuguese were well aware of.
But, this book, which offers extensive evidence that the Chinese were sailing the entire world long before either the Portuguese or Columbus was essentially complete news to me.
One beauty of the book for me is it's support for my serious belief in photographer Aaron Siskind's quote which I had posted above my black, then, green, then white board in my classroom for over 30 years. It was Siskind who said, "We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there."
I love this book because it verifies that what we know, or what we believe we know about history (and perhaps everything else) quite possibly is sufficiently less than what there is to know and therefore an indicator that we ought to always make room for the possibility that a complete reality check may always be in order.
Was it coincidence then that through virtually no pre-planning or awareness on my part, that in traveling to New York to receive my prize, that "coincidentally" a friend of mine from the Apple Distinguished Educator group would "happen" to be invited to attend the ceremony, not knowing that I was to be one of the recipients? And that he would because of this "coincidence" invite me to join him in presenting at a conference in China on 21st Century Learning? And, that, I would then use part of the prize money to fund my attendance where I would find ample evidence of the stories of 1421 to be documented in multiple museums?
It is true and always refreshing to be reminded that "The more we know, the more we come to understand how little we know."
Great book!

I started it, so I finished it…

As history, this would get a 1 (out of 10, not the forced 1 out of five that the site makes us give). As a story, whoever actually wrote this book—if Menzies had a ghost writer as some suppose—did a very good job of making it readable, which would get a 3 or 4 (out of 10). Is his premise that a Chinese expedition which has subsequently been wiped from history possible? Yes there are unexplained mysteries of history, although it rings of a conspiracy theory. Is it probable? Probably not. Skip the book and read a good fantasy instead.

When I studied history -- granted, many years ago -- we had to prove our thesis, not speculate widely and say, "this must be true because I cannot find another explanation." Menzies is not encumbered by that historical imperative.

DNFed on page 237.

I tried so hard, you guys. I wanted to love this book. I mean, turning all of western exploration on its head? YAAAAAAAAAAAS.

But here's the thing: this book is not a non-fiction history book. This book is pure speculation based on the experiences of one man with no background in history. Like, his entire premise is "I was in the navy, therefore I can read charts and most historians can't." It literally took all of my self control not to put this book on my fantasy, alternate history and historical fiction shelves.

Is it possible that expeditions from China sailed to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, South American, Central America and North America? Yes. Is there historical evidence for most of these? No. Menzies provides historical sources for Chinese expeditions visiting Africa, but after that the sources dry up.

Additionally, all of his sources are secondary documents which he claims were based on Chinese sources, but for which there is no evidence because apparently the Chinese emperor ordered all reference to the expeditions destroyed when they returned to China. Menzies doesn't read Chinese, and therefore can't have examined any primary documents himself.

So after the fleet leaves Africa, the rest of the book is pure speculation: lots of "I knew instantly that X, Y, and Z" and "chickens in South America lay blue eggs, which is a uniquely Asian chicken trait, therefore the only possible conclusion is that the Chinese fleet landed in South America" and "there's an Aboriginal rock painting of a huge animal with a dog-shaped head. The only possible conclusion is that it's a milodon which the Chinese fleet brought with them from Patagonia" and "I found this rock with swirly patterns on it in New Zealand. There's a similar rock with swirly patterns on it in Central America. THE TWO MUST HAVE BEEN LEFT AS MARKERS BY THE FLEET!"

In short, it's a lovely idea and I wish to God it were true. And it's a very readable (if rage inducing) book. However, Menzies sounds increasingly like the Captain of the HMS Tinfoil Hat Brigade as the book progresses.

Essentially, this book involves many a tenuous connection and a hell of a lot of jumping to conclusions. So after reading about how the Chinese explorers rode their horses hundreds of kilometres inland from the Australian coast to mine for gold and iron and who knows what else, I noped my way firmly to the exit, following the path that dozens of reputable historians have forged before me.