Muy interesante recuento de lo que pudo haber sido la historia de la flota china en el siglo XXIII, y los logros que pudieron y debieron alcanzar entonces, entre ellos, llegar a América antes que los europeos.

Once you get something in your head, it's hard to let go. For example Gavin Menzies believes that China discovered the world and is so convinced of it he wrote a book.

1421 is like listening to an old man give his long winded opinion. Every turn Gavin Menzies takes, every though he has, every theory he comes up with, a little searching and the evidence is right there. It's hard to know whether he's trying to convince you or the world (don't worry he's definitely convinced himself), but I'd guess both. With the huge amount of data lumped on you, the notes and cross references, it's hard to argue against him. That is until you start to hear things that just sound a little fictitious, a little far stretched, and every single anomaly throughout the world all leads back to Gavin's theory. After he repeats himself yet again, only a third of the way through the book, it all gets a bit tiresome and you can see how the remainder of the book is going to untenuously play out. Whilst the occasional interesting fact has you perking up, a quick Google search shows that Mr. Menzies has been a little creative with the truth.

At the end of the day some say 1421 is fact, some say it's fiction. Either way the facts don't add up and the fiction is monotenous and boring. Long before the book was to end something stuck in my head too, that I don't really care to carry on and see how it plays out, because at the end of the day does it really matter?

I listened to the audiobook version from my library, narrated by Simon Vance.

It is an interesting story, but from what I googled, not proven, just "pseudohistory".

To start, this author is not a historian and he is so biased in his views, that I really don't know what to believe. His methods and "evidence" are suspect and at times contradictory. He takes no time to offer a balanced perspective, instead he repeats over and over how the evidence clearly points towards Chinese fleets discovering America. I don't know what percentage of this book is true, but I do know that I do not trust this author at all.



The other irritating part of the book is how the author constantly inserts himself into the story, bragging about all his "discoveries". Not only is he a hack historian, he's a hack writer too! Don't waste your time with this book.

It is hard to explain the awfulness of this book fact-wise(the fact that there is actually a web site dedicated to to doing this should tell you something). It consists of a long list of anecdotes along the lines of "when I was in the navy, I saw a pile of moss covered rocks on the beach in South America that had a shape vaguely similar to that of a collapsed Chinese temple - further proof of Chinese contact with America!"

I like a good wild theory as much as anyone, and typically enjoy reading about them and considering them ("The Deep Hot Biosphere" is a favorite), but I need a FEW FACTS to make it palatable - not an author posturing as if he was an authority to trick people without strong analytical abilities in to believing him. Menzies just rolls out a long list of vague assertions with really no proof other than his own belief(which I don't doubt), and acts as if a long list of vague assertions has more validity together than they would separately. I am not some ivory tower type either, who gets all wound up because sources are vague, or a few of the facts might be slightly off. I'll overlook some speculation or inaccuracies if the actual evidence you DO have is compelling and you are just filling in some blanks. But 100% speculation and 0% facts is a little tough to swallow.

I normally don't go out of my way to slam a book, but since this guy didn't fade in to obscurity after his first book & actually seems to be gaining a following, people need to be warned.

The author starts off with his assumption that the famous European explorers used European maps that were copied from old Chinese maps because they showed yet uncharted land. In 1421, a large Chinese fleet set sail and discovered the world.

Based upon the assumption that the large Chinese armada sailed with a speed about 4.8 knots, combined with the ocean's currents, the author is able to reconstruct the entire course of the Chinese armada and to pinpoint each location of the different armada's on any given day.

In his opinion the Chinese fleets sailed around Cape of Good Hope, visited the coast of West Africa, the Cape Verde Islands where the fleet splitted into a southern direction and a northern direction. The southern fleet then explored South America, then went on to discovering Antartica, and then back via the Kerguelen to Western Australia upon returning to China. The northern fleet discovered the Caribean, went to Greenland and then sailed through the Arctic Ocean and North Pole back to China. Another fleet visited the Maya's and established Chinese colonies there.

This is all supported by little evidence, and except for some marginal examples the Chinese left any clues what so ever. Let me give you an example of how the author describes the discovery of Guadeloupe: the author assumes the fleet travels by the same route as Columbus did 70 years later. The author then assumes that they were traveling by night, because the island of Guadeloupe is charted, but other islands in the near surrounding have not. The only reason is that the Chinese were traveling by night and assuming it is new moon, the exact date is given: 25 November 1421. The anamolies with the island of Guadeloupe as chartered on the map with the real geographical situation is easily explained: the Chinese junks were low on the water and therefore it's obvious that they didn't see any bays. Also, the fact that Guadeloupe consists of two different parts is easily explained, because when the Chinese fleet was in the area, it was early in the morning and the sun must have distorted their vision. The fleet then goes northbound, where the map shows a lot of islands that aren't there, easily explained by the fact that the sealevel has risen with more than 6 feet since 1421, so a lot of islands must have overflooded with water since then, like this only occured in this region. The Chinese fleet then must have been low on water and therefore must have been visiting Bimini. The (in)famous Bimini road is explained by the fact that the Chinese fleet must have lost their ballast stones to recover some ships that obviously must have been damaged by the storms in the region.

And it is things like these why this is obvious drivel and I can go on and on. At this point in the book I started to think about Erich von Däniken and decided to place Gavin Menzies in the same category.

So why 3 stars? If you want to read this as a science and historic book I will give this 1 star - for it's obvious not. But as a historical novel, apart from all the pseudo-science drivel, it's an enjoyable read.

I suspect it doesn't matter to Gavin Menzies. This book is ofcourse highly controversial and the author has fared well; his next book claims that it were the Chinese who started the Renaissance in Europe. Both books have sold well and it will only spur Gavin Menzies on to write more of these books.

Point is, read this for fun, read for curiosity, but read with a skeptical eye, is all.

First of all: I'm American. I don't particularly care about Columbus (genocidal) or Vikings being the "first" to "discover" the Americas, though. One or another claiming "discovery" of an already inhabited land is silly. I think it's absolutely plausible that Chinese fleets *could* have sailed to the Americas (I've seen no convincing evidence that they *did*). And I think amateurs can and often do make important scholarly contributions. These are not my problems with this book.

My problem with the book is that it is full of easily falsifiable assertions, and without them Menzies has *nothing* to support his argument, and yet people don't care. He writes so convincingly! They really WANT him to be right to stick it to Europe (does most of Europe actually care about Columbus or Vikings reaching the New World? I doubt it) or because it would be cool!

It *would* be cool. Menzies is a pretty compelling writer, and when I read it, I thought it would be a great premise for an alternate history novel.

But to claim that he's dismissed simply because he's establishment is insulting to all the amateur historians out there who would never put their names on such shoddy work. To claim his "theory" is worth considering because his
*invented and wishfully misinterpreted* "evidence" is compelling is like saying Game of Thrones could be real because it's compellingly written. Anyone creative can make up bullshit that sounds good, but it's still bullshit.

I can't figure out if Menzies is a knowing fraud or a true believer who's just not very good at research, but I find the reviews of this book really disheartening when it comes to the critical thinking skills of many readers.

Two stars instead of one because I'd still read the alternate history novel I wish he'd written instead.

So silly. It was closer to fantasy than history; or, it was a very long conspiracy theory. Read as fiction it is enjoyable while being unbelievable.

From time to time, this reviewer comes across a publication so crackpot that I hardly know where to start in reviewing it here. I'm happy to see that Gavin Menzies' thesis in 1421: The Year China Discovered America, that a Chinese fleet launched in 1421, embarked on a tour around the world, discovering all major points before Europeans and leaving artifacts, has already been generally debunked by numerous sources. Perhaps the most substantial is Robert Finlay's review "How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America" in the Journal of World History, June 2004, where Finlay shows that there are no "lost years" in Ming dynasty sailing, and so Menzies' book is completely without foundation. My fellow reviewers here have also offered some important critiques. I would like to offer a perspective from my own individual profession, linguistics. Menzies writes, for example:

"Linguistics provide further evidence. The people of the Eten and Monsefu villages in the Lambayeque province of Peru can understand Chinese but not each other’s patois, despite living only three miles apart. Stephen Powers, a nineteenth-century inspector employed by the government of California to survey the native population, found linguistic evidence of a Chinese-speaking colony in the state."

The first assertion, on the Peruvian village, is not sourced at all and is either the personal fancy of the author or some minor crank idea. The second, however, is cited to an 19th-century bit of scholarship evidentally done without appropriate field methods. He goes on to claim that Chinese sailors shipwrecked on the East Coast of the United States would have been able to communicate with locals, as these would have included Chinese who had walked over the Bering Strait. Chinese walk across to Alaska and across all North America, but end up speaking Middle Chinese, and yet leave no trace of this dialect on neighbouring Native American languages? Risible fantasy. There's even an assertion that Navajo elders understand Chinese conversation, and an assertion that the Peruvian village name Chanchan must be Chinese because it sounds (at least to him) like "Canton". Perhaps the silliest Peruvian connection is between Chinese "qipu" and Quechua "quipu"; Menzies seemingly doesn't understand that "q" represents a completely different sound in each language. So, I hope that the reader with some training in linguistics can see what kind of arguments are used in the book, and beware accordingly.

If I may be permitted one final indulgence, I should like to protest Menzies' weird view of Chinese culture. He blasts European explorers for committing genocide, claiming that continued Chinese expansion would have led instead to a world of peace and Confucian harmony. This is the naive romantic view of the Orient held by a child flipping through National Geographic. A man of Menzies' age and experience should have realized that all civilizations have it within them to commit do in indigenous peoples--the marginalization of Tibetan and Uighur language and culture and the disappearance already of a distinct Manchu people stand as proof that the Chinese are no exception.

When I first read this years ago, having not much knowledge about this time in history or about the Treasure Fleets, I found it compelling and would have given the book at least 4 stars at that point.
However, after discovering that the author is not as reliable as he makes himself out to be, I must give it one star. His entire theory is considered fictitious by the majority of modern scholars. When I found out I felt embarrassed that I had actually told other people about this book.
A complete disappointment.

I enjoyed reading this and found the theories fascinating. I was all but taken in by it until I started researching some of the author's claims on my own. I found that most of his evidence is based on hearsay or conjecture; it doesn't stand up to normal historical or scientific scrutiny.

So, an enjoyable read, but probably mostly fantasy. Try researching the claim about the Chinese junk buried in the Sacramento River Delta in California and you'll see what I mean.

Badger

Revisionist accounting of history suggesting that Chinese explorers and traders sent out by the Emperor Zhu Di were the first to discover vast swathes of the Earth’s surface. Amongst others the author suggests that these Chinese fleets discovered and explored Australia, Cape Horn and both coasts of Africa, Peurto Rico, Cuba and the Carribean, both Coasts of the United States, Greenland, both the Arctic and Antartica and a few places in between. Not only this the author claims that the Chinese actually established settlements in many of these places. The book is peppered with speculative maps showing the routes the various Chinese fleets took in these journeys of discovery, however the question is left begging, why if the fleets travelled all over the world did none think of stopping in at Europe where their arrival could presumably have been recorded?

The most interesting section of the book is in fact the first few chapters which details Chinese history of the period. The coming to power of the Emperor, the building of the Imperial Palaces and the positions of power of the Eunuchs all makes for interesting reading. Indeed it was the Grand Eunuch Zheng He who led the fleets and was admiral of the 100 or so ships carrying 28,000 men in total who set out on the voyages here described which took place between 1421-1423.

The historical backgrounds to the trip are then counterbalanced by changes in Chinese society which occurred while the ships were away. The lightning storm which burnt down the Imperial Palaces was seen as a sign of bad fortune which eventually led to the side-lining of the Emperor Zhu Di and the re-assertion of power of the Manadarins. Davies suggests these Mandarins were not only opposed to the voyages and exploration because of the financial burden they imposed (this despite the fact that the ships were also supposed to be trading missions that brought in untold riches).t More conveniently for the writer this opposition extended not only into China withdrawing from its overseas missions (which explains why there was no more history of Chinese exploration) but also led to the destruction of ALL records and accounts of the trips that these various fleets had made.

Indeed despite the tens of thousands of sailors on these trips there is no support for their existence from Chinese sources at all. Not one written account exists from any of the Chinese sailors, mandarins, historians or whoever. Rather the author builds his speculation on a number of maps he claims to have found indicating the existence of Australia, North and South America and Antartica that he claims have been proven to pre-date Columbus, Cooke’s, Magellan’s and De Gama’s later ‘discoveries’. However with one exception each of these maps is European in origin. The author argues that the fact indicates that someone had already discovered the places and then jumps to the conclusion that as ONLY the Chinese were capable of this kind of navigation at the time that the maps MUST be the result of the Europeans copying from Chinese sources, of course all the Chinese maps having been destroyed by those pesky mandarins.

The bulk of the book recounts the various expeditions, the author surmising that the fleets broke into various smaller groupings and going their different ways to explore the world. Once again the author uses very suspect research techniques and huge leaps of logic and the imagination to back up his claims that these places were visited and sometimes settled by the Chinese explorers. Among these are ‘finds’ of ming era statues or crockery made centuries later that the author claims could only have come from these 1421 sailings. Later recounts from any source of peoples who were light-skinned or wore unusual dress for the area id recounted as CLEAR evidence that the Chinese must of populated these lands. Similar far fetched theories that vegetation or animal species could only have crossed continents with the help of the Chinese fleets is presented as facts. The whole book at times becomes a house of cards, with speculation piled upon suppositions all resting on a vivid imagination.

The book closes with a few uninspiring chapters detailing the subsequent growth of Portugal, Spain and Britain into the worlds largest fleets, repeating the claim that the famous western explorers were ‘climbing on the backs of giants’ using maps based on these previous Chinese voyages and discoveries.

Despite its length the book is a good read, being ably supported by use of maps and illustrations. There is certainly something to think about in the authors assertions. There may be a kernel of truth to what is being put forward, however the over-arching enthusiasm and grandiose claims stretch that kernel to breaking point. Alternative theories of how the maps came into existence are seldom discussed and where they are, they are quickly dismissed. Much of the ‘evidence’ presented for example suggests that Indian sailors may have had much to do with some of the discoveries suggested however this alternative is never explored in any detail at all.

So an interesting starting point for future researchers to rethink some common conceptions of the history of world exploration - but by itself too far ‘out there’ to carry respectability as a solid historical account.