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Gavin Menzies
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1421: The Year China Discovered Americaby Gavin MenziesISBN 006054094X (0-06-054094-X)
Softcover, Perennial
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› Find signed collectible books: '1421: The Year China Discovered America'Book summary:The incredible true story of the discovery of America before Columbus was even born. Gavin Menzies's extraordinary findings rewrite history.
On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built from the finest teak, 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 whole world in Confucian harmony. Their journey would last more than two years and circle the globe.
When they returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships, now considered frivolous, were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed were how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted to America, Australia, New Zealand and South America the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world.
Now, in a landmark historical journey, Gavin Menzies, who spent fifteen years tracing the astonishing voyages of the Chinese fleet, shares the remarkable account of his discoveries and the incontrovertible evidence to support them. His compelling narrative pulls together ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators to prove that the Chinese had also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years ahead of the Europeans. 1421 describes the artifacts and inscribed stones left behind by the emperor's fleet, the evidence of wrecked junks along its route -- discovered in locations ranging from the middle of the Mississippi River to tributaries of the Amazon -- and the ornate votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, in honor of Shao Lin, goddess of the sea.
1421: The Year China Discovered America is the story of a remarkable journey of discovery that rewrites our understanding of history. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be reconceived due to this classic work of historical detection.
[via]More editions of 1421: The Year China Discovered America:
- 1421: The Year China Discovered America: ISBN 0061564893 (0-06-156489-3)
Softcover, Perennial - 1421: The Year China Discovered America: ISBN 0060537639 (0-06-053763-9)
Hardcover, Harpercollins - 1421: The Year China Discovered America: ISBN 0552211753 (0-552-21175-3)
Hardcover, Transworld Publishers Limited - 1421 : The Year China Discovered America: ISBN 0593050789 (0-593-05078-9)
Hardcover, Transworld Publishers Limited - 1421: The Year China Discovered America: ISBN 006054094X (0-06-054094-X)
Softcover, Perennial
- 1421: The Year China Discovered America: ISBN 0061564893 (0-06-156489-3)
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1421: The Year China Discovered the Worldby Gavin MenziesISBN 0553815229 (0-553-81522-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: '1421: The Year China Discovered the World'Book summary: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 [via]
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1434: China Ignites the Renaissanceby Gavin MenziesISBN 0061562890 (0-06-156289-0)
Softcover, Harperluxe
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1434 Intlby Gavin MenziesISBN 0061632643 (0-06-163264-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissanceby Gavin MenziesISBN 0061492175 (0-06-149217-5)
Hardcover, William Morrow & Co
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China and the Renaissanceby Gavin MenziesISBN 0007269374 (0-00-726937-4)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers Limited
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Zheng He's Voyages to Xiyangby Gavin MenziesISBN 9810508654 (981-05-0865-4)
Hardcover, Monsoon Books Pte Ltd
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Spanish
1421: El Ano En Que China Descubrio El Muby Gavin MenziesISBN 8425337801 (84-253-3780-1)
Hardcover, Random House Mondadori
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1421: El Ano En Que China Descubrio El Nuevo Mundoby Gavin Menzies , Francisco J. RamosISBN 1400084628 (1-4000-8462-8)
Softcover, Random House Espanol
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1421, El Ano En Que China Descubrio El Mundo/ 1421: the Year China Discovered the Worldby Gavin Menzies , Francisco J. Ramos MenaISBN 849793508X (84-9793-508-X)
Softcover, Debolsillo
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German
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1421. Als China die Welt entdeckteby Gavin MenziesISBN 3426777665 (3-426-77766-5)
Softcover
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› Find signed collectible books: '1421. Als China die Welt entdeckte'Book summary:Wenn man dem ehemaligen britischen U-Boot-Kommandanten Gavin Menzies Glauben schenken darf, dann war es weder Kolumbus, der Amerika entdeckte, noch irgendein anderer der üblichen Verdächtigen. Kolumbus habe sich vielmehr, wie andere auch, bereits auf Kartenmaterial stützen können, das unter anderem in wesentlichen Teilen eine Frucht der Weltumsegelung des chinesischen Admirals Zheng He in den Jahren 1421 bis 1423 gewesen sein muss. Bereits 1428 habe mit den Karten von Pizzigano, Mauro, Reis, Cantino, Waldseemüller und Rotz eine insgesamt korrekte kartografische Darstellung der ganzen Welt vorgelegen. Die europäischen Entdecker hätten weitere, frühere Karten erwähnt, wie Tagebucheinträge von Kolumbus, aber auch von Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, James Cook und anderen bewiesen.
Tatsächlich ist historisch belegt und unbestritten, dass Zheng He mit seiner Flotte weit herumgekommen ist, unter anderem bis nach Borneo. Asiatische Hühner in Südamerika, Wracks vielleicht chinesischer Schiffe entlang der damaligen Routen, Töpferwaren mit chinesischen Inschriften in Peru -- Menzies hat zahllose Indizien zusammengetragen, die beweisen sollen, dass Zheng Hes mächtige Armada damals die ganze Welt umsegelt hat und bereits 70 Jahre vor Kolumbus in Amerika anlandete.
Für den Laien ist das Buch in jedem Fall eine spannende Lektüre -- umsonst erhält niemand 800.000 Dollar Vorschuss von seinem Verlag. Und insgesamt klingt das Ganze auch nicht unstimmig, wenngleich es hier und da schon einiger Fantasie bedarf, den kartografischen Beweisen zu folgen. Einer Fantasie, an der es den Mitgliedern der Royal Geographic Society wohl ermangelte, die Menzies mit seinem Vortrag nicht überzeugen konnte. --Alexander Dohnberg [via]
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