Product Description

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the world in Confucian harmony. Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe. But by the time the fleet returned home, Zhu Di had lost control and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so these great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their extraordinary journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook...The result of over fifteen years research, 1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED THE WORLD is Gavin Menzies' enthralling account of the voyage of the emperor's fleet, the remarkable discoveries he made and the incontrovertible evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators as well as the artefacts the fleet left in its wake - from sunken junks to the ornate votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea. Already hailed as a classic, this is the story of an extraordinary journey of discovery that not only radically alters our understanding of world exploration but also rewrites history itself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19386 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 650 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
If you're going to make a stir, you might as well do it in style. And Gavin Menzies has caused one, big time. In 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, this retired Royal Navy submarine commander, who only visited China for the first time on his 25th wedding anniversary, claims that the Chinese navigator Zheng He discovered America some 71 years before Columbus. And not content with this, he goes on to suggest that Zheng He learnt how to calculate longitude several centuries before John Harrison supposedly nailed the problem. Unsurprisingly, this has not gone down too well in some areas and the book has been the target of some scepticism.

Although Menzies has unearthed a few unknown primary sources, the bulk of his thesis depends on amalgamating several disparate areas of research into a grand unified theory. So he combines what we do know--principally that the Chinese built huge sailing ships with nine masts and that Asiatic chickens were discovered in South America--into what he considers compelling evidence. Menzies has also turned up some maps from the pre-Columbus era that appear to show the Americas, along with a few shipwrecks and Ming artefacts from along his supposed route.

It all makes for a gripping read, even if the sum doesn't quite add up to the whole. For all the detail, Menzies is some way off providing proof. None of the supposed 28,000 colonists has left any documentary evidence because all records, boats and shipyards associated with his voyage were burnt by imperial order in 1433. This surely begs the question--if we know so much of Zheng He's voyages around the Indian Ocean, how come we know nothing of his trips further east? Nor, conveniently for Menzies, did any of the colonists return home in triumph. They either died en route or skulked home to obscurity after they were disowned by the emperor.

So you either accept Menzies as an act of faith or brush him aside with scepticism. Either way, you'll have a lot of fun in the process as the book is never less than provocative. And even the sceptics will find themselves hoping Menzies has got it right, because there's something intrinsically uplifting about the notion of an amateur historian getting one over the professionals. --John Crace

The Times
Popular history at its best

Daily Mail
A book as engrossing as any adventure story

Customer Reviews

An interesting read
The basic premise of this book is that prior to the European voyages of discovery a massive fleet of ships left China and ended up circumnavigating the globe and on the way discovered North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and Greenland. The author, Gavin Menzies, is a former Royal Navy submarine commander and as such much of his evidence is based on his knowledge of currents and wind direction when compared to maps that predate the voyages of Columbus. He goes on to use a number of other sources of evidence to back up his case including, among other things, the presence of mysterious wrecks scattered the globe, the presence of animals and plants outside their native lands before Europeans reached them and the diaries of the first European explorers themselves.

While much of the evidence presented in this book is thought provoking and definitely worthy of further study there are many pieces that are open to other interpretation and some that can only be described as circumstantial. I feel some of the problem that this book has is that it doesn't generally present its evidence in the best way possible being overly repetitious in places and being a bit too informal in others. Overall 1421 is an interesting book that does present many new questions for historians on the accepted view of the voyages discovery but it does require more research.

The medieval Chinese had the bomb!
Not bad as cartographic history and the main thesis is certainly intriguing, despite some tenuous evidence. Unfortunately this book really loses the plot when it reaches the purported voyage around north Greenland. First we are told that the north pole was much closer in 1421 and the Chinese may well have got there centuries before westerners, but the book is (deliberately?) vague about just which "pole". The goal of modern explorers has almost invariably been the geographic north pole which is in the same place now as it was in 1421; the celestial north pole does precess but not much, while the magnetic north pole shifts a lot. As a former submariner the author really should be more careful. But there's worse, much worse, to come. We are told that strontium 90 in ice cores reveals a warmer climate at the time. RUBBISH! - strontium 90 is an entirely man-made isotope of strontium that first entered into the environment via atomic bomb tests in the 1940's. Of course this "evidence" fails the first hurdle of scientific credibility because there is simply no reference to its source, either in the book or on the 1421 web-site. If strontium 90 is indeed found in those ice cores only two conclusions are possible - either the ice core dating is wrong or somebody in 1421 had the atom bomb! Mr Menzies would no doubt choose the latter !

Lovely PR hype - but sadly fairly rubbish history
You'd hope for more from a former Royal Navy commander, but sadly while his publicity machine is first rate, his history is anything but.

It would be lovely to turn what we know about naval history on its head and say that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He conclusively 'discovered' America or Australia long before any European navigators/explorers.

Unfortunately, this book falls into the category of what publishers call "wa-wa" history. In other words, it ain't true - and the historical reseach is shoddy.

The publishers know it's rubbish. We the public know it's rubbish, but we buy it anyway. And so they publish, because they know we'll buy it and they'll make money. In other words we get the books we deserve. We should be reading decent, reseach-based histories - but we find them rather dull so we don't....

Despite the welter of 5 and 4 star reviews this book has garnered on Amazon, it is important - before you buy it - to note one important fact.

Not ONE single naval historian has given any credence to these claims. Not any European - nor any Chinese - historian. In fact, they all say that the evidence is not there.

While other readers seem to like this book, I have to say that having read other books on global trade and sea voyages in the pre-modern era, I found Menzies style very confusing and it was very difficult to follow his train of thought and how he was using evidence to support his conclusions

Astonishingly, Menzies seems to have ignored two key pieces of Chinese evidence for Zheng He's voyages which list the countries he visited - and don't mention anything that could be America.

In fact Menzies does not read Chinese and there are no direct quotes from any articles or studies written in Chinese. Which is pretty gob-smacking when you think the book is about a Chinese Admiral!

The book may be entertaining, and I am sure Gavin Menzies is a nice bloke etc etc. But that ain't enough. For me his book was full of circular reasoning, speculation, distorted sources and slapdash research.

Or as has already been said - this book may well prove to be the Piltdown Man of literature and should only be classified as fiction.

You may think this is a case of the little man, the amateur, beating the massed hords of the professionals. That is always a very beguiling image, but it's the wrong one to picture.

This book is a triumph for publishing hype and muddled thinking and writing. For that reason we should give it a wide berth. Unless of course you actually like your history as fiction. In which case, be my guest. However, you have been warned....