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.

I cautiously liked this book. There are a lot of criticisms floating around about this being “pseudo-history”, inaccurate, and, just generally, armchair historiography. Like most others, I’m not in a position to weigh whether those criticisms are valid. However, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed Menzies attempt to uncover whether China made it to North America before Columbus. He’s kind of like a nautical Indiana Jones.

A former British submarine officer, Menzies brings a sailor view to his examinations of cartography and sea routes. Where Zhang He’s treasure fleets could have encountered currents and winds add dynamism to Menzies’s analysis. He delves into the obscure notations in obscure Western maps to find traces of Chinese influence and questions how Westerners would know certain coastlines before their accepted “discovery.” He may make some conclusory leaps at times, but he lays out the facts he is relying upon which at least makes him transparent as to why he jumps when he does.

Additionally, he leaves the armchair plenty of times. Whether it’s digging into museum archives or trekking out to find moss-covered stone markers on island hilltops that may be evidence of Eastern stone masons, Menzies seeks to support his claim with evidence and not just analysis. A 600-year-old mystery that has enticing traces of long overlooked clues.

Again, is he right or wrong? I have no idea. But I like it. I just wish the cover was Menzies standing on submarine with a fedora and whip.

K, this is that book to increase general knowledge. That being said helps explain why it took so long for me to finish. Phew! And I was skimming toward the end too.

It was the premise that sucked me in. I wanted to know how and why the author believed the Chinese were the first to circumnavigate the globe. Western culture knows so little about Eastern history. It's not that I couldn't believe the Chinese were first. It is more of a question as to why would it be new information now?

I do have issue with his writing however in that it could have been condensed by leaving out suppositions on many occasions. Basically, he adds much guess-work as fact. I think he also tried to include "excitement" for his older male readers by often describing Chinese concubines. This coloration of the facts makes me wonder what else he might have exaggerated.

Gavin Menzies has an array of data that strongly suggests the Chinese indeed traveled the globe. Too bad the Chinese destroyed their own documentation as a way to blot out one dynasty. I think it's just as plausible that there are many unrecorded voyages between nations and continents that we'll never know. Unraveling the truth is always exciting.

Wow. The preponderance of evidence not only turns accepted European history and world history on its head, but also makes one wonder about the question the author poses as to whether or not we could be speaking Chinese now, rather than English, and have Buddhism as the dominant world religion, as well as my own personal question : did someone perhaps decide that the world was better off allowing Europe to take another three centuries to figure out what the Chinese already knew?
Given the cruelty of the conquests we saw by the Europeans, versus the kindness with which visited populations were treated by the Chinese fleet, it seems safe to predict that history might have turned out quite differently for the human race had that information of how to navigate the world remained in benevolent hands.

Ok, so this was really interesting and he had a pretty good basic thesis. In fact, I could totally buy the most important 10% of his theory. Basically, no one disputes that the Chinese had this enormous fleet that set sail in 1421 and went across the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa. They were sent on a mission to trade with different countries and basically tell everyone how great China was.
The part of his theory I can buy is that the Chinese didn't stop at East Africa. They sailed around the southern tip, up the west coast, and across to Brazil. Then they bumped around the coasts of what is now Brazil and Argentina and then sailed back to the Indian Ocean. Makes sense. They were told to sail as far as they could and explore, and they had the ships to do it. Plus they were mapping the southern stars and learning about navigation.
But the author doesn't stop there. He says, basically, that the fleet split up and then sailed, literally, everywhere else in the world. One group went up the east coast and explored everything from Puerto Rico to Greenland, one group explored Mexico and California, one group explored Antarctica(!) and Australia. Basically, the Chinese went EVERYWHERE.....except Europe. For some reason, they didn't stop anywhere in Europe. At all. Even though they knew there were countries there they could trade with.
Plus whenever this guy sees a map that doesn't help his story, he comes up with some excuse, including gems such as "they must have seen an iceberg and thought it was an island" or "they must have traveled by these islands at night and accidentally thought they were a continent". Right.
I can't say it's not an interesting read though. I'd say read it and decide for yourself how much of this guy's elaborate story you are willing to buy into.

Actually, this was super interesting for an intermittent read. At times, some conclusions sure seem to be drawn from remarkably circular reasoning, but clearly, there is much evidence to support the basic premises in this book, worthy of professional academic research. China closed in on itself, though, at the very moment that it could have solidified its presence at the various contact and wreckage areas, and so Europe ended up taking the stage a couple generations later.

Before European explorers such Columbus, Magellan, and De Gama, departed on their voyages to the new world. They had highly accurate charts that laid out their destinations. Who provided the information for those charts?

According to Gavin Menzies, this information originated with sailors from a series on Chinese “treasure fleets” that sailed around the world between 1421 and 1423. Menzies, a former Royal Navy submariner lays out an elaborate case for how and why these various fleets explored both poles and every continent, and possibly even set up colonies in their journeys.

Menzies work is the subject of incredible controversy, particularly because many of his assertions lack hard proof. There are several mentions of inconclusive tests or those waiting on results or frequent assertions by the author that “it’s possible”. Menzies uses genetic, biological, and archeological assertions to assert a Chinese presence in several parts of the world but these are not always convincing. In one case he makes the assertion that stones with certain inscriptions may have been placed by Chinese sailors in places like the Canary Islands or the Congo River. However the inscriptions are Indian, not Chinese. In another example, he points to the “Mahogany Ship”, a mysterious shipwreck in Western Australia, as a possible Chinese wreck. A check of this found little evidence that anyone believes this ship was Chinese. (Most think it was Portuguese).

With such a broad and complex theory, there are bound to be problems and Menzies does have evidence to back some of his claims. The idea that the treasure fleets managed to reach the east coast of Africa is not really disputed, but after that the evidence starts to become thinner. Menzies notes statements by previous explorers and local legends that seem suggest some sort of Chinese presence that predates European explorers.

Despite the controversy, this is still a fascinating theory worth exploring. I recommend so each reader can decide for themselves.

Interesting and a much better theory than Aliens.

This book is very interesting and gives insight that the Chinese were the first people to sail the world.

I enjoyed it. Universally trashed, nevertheless an interesting theory that is not totally lacking in merit. It is sad that some of the 'experts' tearing the book down have totally misquoted and/or plain just not read the book in its entirety.

What a story this is! Do you remember Erich von Daniken? He had quite a story to tell, too.

Menzies writes that the Chinese, during the reign of a single emperor at a time over five decades before the voyages of Columbus, spared no expense building treasure fleets with the centerpieces being huge flat bottomed square bowed junks 180 by 450 feet flying bright red silk sails on up to nine masts surrounded with lesser support ships that carried everything from food to horses in a quest to discover the world and plant colonies in the process. To this extent, it's all true. But then, Gavin Menzies runs with the ball.

1421 tells of of the voyages these fleets undertook that reached and accurately mapped, within the limits of the technologies of the time, the coasts of much of North and South America, Australia and Antarctica. Page after page of revelations kept me eagerly reading. I thought it would be interesting to use the Internet to look up some of the artifacts, standing stones, and buildings that Menzies mentions.

I went online only to discover that though the items mentioned do exist (check out the Newport Round Tower and the Bimini Road, for examples) there is no evidence for the claims Menzies makes and very good evidence for their existence that has nothing to do with any Chinese visitors. At this encounter with real science I had read past the middle of the book but, feeling duped, stopped reading.

My suspicion had been aroused even before I did my online checking. Menzies doesn't write with the care and deliberation of a historian. He follows a pattern. He looks at an ancient map, puts his experience as a navigator in the Royal Navy to use, comes up with a hunch about a Chinese visit to some point on the globe, visits the location and discovers that, sure enough, there is strong evidence for exactly what his hunch had told him might be the case. The Chinese visited! Move on to the next place. Thus does he move along around the world revealing what he would have us believe are facts. From time to time he admits there might be other reasons for something he finds, but little time is spent bothering with them because his view is obviously correct.

Chinese treasure fleets did sail starting in 1421, reaching as far as the east coast of Africa, long before the famous voyages made by the Portuguese around Africa and into the Indian Ocean. It's a fact that the Chinese were all over the waters off Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and the Persian Gulf long before Europeans arrived over the waves. That is no little thing, reason for admiration, proof that Chinese civilization and technology was second to none at the time. It is also a fascinating fact that this expansive effort was stopped abruptly, leaving the world to be "discovered" by the Europeans as China turned inward.

The real story of the Chinese treasure fleets is remarkable. This account from a man with a very active imagination and a publisher willing to put it in print wasted my precious reading time. Don't waste yours.

Do you like pseudo-history from rank amateurs that draw wild conclusions from scant evidence while discounting, in almost all situations, the simplest explanation in favor of conspiracy theory level conclusions?

Then this is for you.

Just horrid.