The Author
Gavin Menzies (1937 - Present) is a retired Royal Navy submarine commander who served with the Royal Navy from 1956 -1970. In 2002 he realised 1421: The Year China Discovered the World. In 2008 the book 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance was released. Menzies has no formal qualifications as a historian.
Underpinning Arguments of 1421
Menzies basic supposition is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The essential theme is that because the Ming Dynasty had the capacity to do what Menzies claims they did and there was absolutely nothing stopping the them from pursuing a programme of global exploration at that time, that is exactly what they did do. The complete absence of verifiable supporting evidence is, in Menzies mind at least, not an obstacle because he provides that evidence. The main source of Menzies expertise is based on his experience as the commander of HMS Rorqual. Many references are made in 1421 to Menzies use of and expertise with traditional methods of navigation. He claims repeatedly in this book to have visited many of the places that the Chinese fleet visited in 1421 during his time as a submariner and he uses this as a way of gaining credibility. Menzies also gives himself a loophole in the statement that when the Ming Dynasty changed its political posture from outwardly engaged to isolationist that the mandarins running the bureaucracy were utterly thorough in destroying all evidence of the voyages he claims to have happened.
The case against 1421
Responses from the professional academic and naval communities to 1421 have been scathing. There is simply no established authority on Zheng He who supports anything Menzies writes from the moment Menzies has the Chinese fleets leaving a geographical area bounded by Java in the south, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula in the west and the Philippines in the east. There is very little that Menzies has written in 1421 that is not dismissed outright by the academic community. The Australian Professor W.A.R Richardson sums up the arguments against Gavin Menzies and 1421 best: “Works of historical conjecture such as his relyfor their success upon a number of persuasive techniques. These include the use of that false logic called begging the question or circular argumentation, the all-pervasive and persuasive presentation of assertions as though they are established facts, the selective use of evidence, and frequent repetition. Menzies’work is permeated by the above techniques. He relies extensively upon secondary and even tertiary sources, mainly works of the same speculative genre as his own, and upon any
unsubstantiated rumour which can conceivably be interpreted as supporting his case.”[1]
The website www.1421exposed.com has articles that challenge everything from the maps used by Menzies through to the size of the ships Menzies says the Chinese built and the contributors to this website are all established authorities on the subjects that they criticise Menzies on. Menzies briefly mentions Erich Von Daniken in his book, which is odd given that the same type of distortions of evidence and statements of assumptions as fact of which Von Daniken stands accused of in his book “Chariots of the Gods” are exactly what Menzies detractors level at him.
The case for 1421
There is some support for the theories expounded in 1421. Professor Wei Juxian, published a book titled Zhongguo ren fa xian Aozhou [The Chinese discovery of Australia] in 1960, Louise Levathes, a former staff writer for National Geographic wrote “When China Ruled The Seas” in 1994 and she has the Chinese making contact with the Americas as early as 219 BCE, but this happens initially by accident and follow up attempts to cross the Pacific Ocean quite literally vanish. Levathes thinks that at least one of these attempts may actually have started Japanese civilisation. However there is no evidence from these authors to suggest that anything remotely like what Menzies presents in 1421 actually happened.
Has Menzies and 1421 been hijacked by Beijing?
The second biggest winner from 1421 after Gavin Menzies bank account has been the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). It would seem that someone in the PRC leadership was so happy with what Menzies has written that he has been awarded an Honourary Professorship at Yunnan University in Kunming, Yunnan.
China has every reason to want to be seen as she is portrayed in 1421. The picture painted by Menzies in 1421 is of a technologically and militarily superior, confident, wealthy and outwardly engaged China. China is at the present time pursuing an outwardly engaged foreign policy, she is active in Africa both diplomatically and economically and she has an active manned space programme. To establish a tie no matter how tenuously to a past that paints China as being a positive force in the world is in the interests of the Peoples Republic. In short: if this history is to be accepted, China wins.
Is 1421 an enduring contribution to scholarship?
There is little chance that 1421 is contributing to anything more enduring than Gavin Menzies net wealth. The book is littered with loose ends in the form research yet to be followed up and unsubtantiated claims. Furthermore the response from both the academic and professional naval communities in the West has been uniformally hostile. Essentially in the West the debate over the material presented in 1421 has two sides: one side is Gavin Menzies, the other is every living academic that has ever expressed an opinion on Ming Dynasty China. There is a complete rejection by these communities to any idea that Menzies has engaged in scholarship with established authorities on Ming China prefering to call 1421 a work of fiction. There is the consensus that seeing how Menzies hasn’t engaged in scholarship in the first place, how can he make an enduring contribution to it?
References
Richardson. W.A. R “GAVIN MENZIES’ CARTOGRAPHIC FICTION:THE CASE OF THE CHINESE ‘DISCOVERY’ OF AUSTRALIA” The Journal of the Australian Map Circle.
Levathes. Louise: “When China Ruled The Seas” Oxford University Press 1994.
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