Gavin Menzies
Gavin Menzies | |
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Born | Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies 14 August 1937 London |
Died | 12 April 2020 | (aged 82)
Occupation | Author, retired naval officer |
Nationality | English |
Genre | Pseudohistory |
Notable works |
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Spouse | Marcella Menzies |
Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies (14 August 1937 – 12 April 2020)[1][2][3] was a British submarine lieutenant-commander who authored books claiming that the Chinese sailed to America before Columbus. Historians have rejected Menzies' theories and assertions[4][5][6][7][8]: 367–372 and have categorised his work as pseudohistory.[9][10][11]
He was best known for his controversial book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, in which he asserts that the fleets of Chinese Admiral
Biography
Menzies was born in London, England, and his family moved to China when he was three weeks old.[13] He was educated at Orwell Park Preparatory School in Suffolk, and Charterhouse.[14] Menzies dropped out of school when he was fifteen years old[15] and joined the Royal Navy in 1953.[16] He never attended university[15] and had no formal training in historical studies.[15] From 1959 to 1970, Menzies served on British submarines.[16] Menzies claims he sailed the routes sailed by Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook while he was commanding officer of the diesel submarine HMS Rorqual between 1968 and 1970,[16] a contention questioned by some of his critics.[17] He often refers back to his sea-faring days to support claims made in 1421.
In 1959, by his own account, Menzies was an officer on HMS Newfoundland on a voyage from Singapore to Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and on to Cape Verde and back to England. Menzies claimed that the knowledge of the winds, currents, and sea conditions that he gained on this voyage was essential to reconstructing the 1421 Chinese voyage that he discusses in his first book.[12] Critics have challenged the depth of his nautical knowledge.[17] In 1969, Menzies was involved in an incident in the Philippines, when Rorqual rammed a U.S. Navy minesweeper, USS Endurance, which was moored at a pier. This collision punched a hole in Endurance but did not damage Rorqual. The ensuing enquiry found Menzies and one of his subordinates responsible for a combination of factors that led to the accident, including the absence of the coxswain (who usually takes the helm in port) who had been replaced by a less experienced crew member, and technical issues with the boat's telegraph.[13]
Menzies retired the next year, and campaigned unsuccessfully as an
1421: The Year China Discovered the World
Writing and research
Gavin Menzies had the idea to write his first book after he and his wife Marcella visited the Forbidden City for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Menzies noticed that they kept encountering the year 1421 and, concluding that it must have been an extraordinary year in world history, decided to write a book about everything that happened in the world in 1421. Menzies spent years working on the book and, by the time it was finished, it was a massive volume spanning 1,500 pages. Menzies sent the manuscript to an agent named Luigi Bonomi, who told him it was unpublishable, but was intrigued by a brief section of the book in which Menzies speculated about the voyages of Chinese admiral Zheng He and recommended that he rewrite the book, focusing it on Zheng He's voyages. Menzies agreed to rewrite it, but admitted that he was "not a natural writer" and requested Bonomi to rewrite the first three chapters for him.[15]
Bonomi contacted the firm Midas Public Relations to persuade a major newspaper to run a promotional article for Menzies's book. Menzies hired a room at the
Publication, claims, and commercial success
The finished copy of the book was published in 2002 as 1421: The Year China Discovered the World (published as 1421: The Year China Discovered America in the United States).[15] The book is written informally, as a series of vignettes of Menzies' travels around the globe examining what he claims is evidence for his "1421 hypothesis", interspersed with speculation regarding the achievements of Admiral Zheng He's fleet.[7][15] Menzies states in the introduction that the book is an attempt to answer the question: "On some early European world maps, it appears that someone had charted and surveyed lands supposedly unknown to the Europeans. Who could have charted and surveyed these lands before they were 'discovered'?"
External videos | |
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Presentation by Menzies on 1421: The Year China Discovered America, April 25, 2003, C-SPAN |
In the book, Menzies concludes that only China had the time, money, manpower, and leadership to send such expeditions and then sets out to prove that the Chinese visited lands unknown in either China or Europe.
Although the book contains numerous footnotes, references, and acknowledgments, critics point out that it lacks supporting references for Chinese voyages beyond East Africa, the location acknowledged by professional historians as the limit of the
Criticism
Mainstream
Unfortunately, this reckless manner of dealing with evidence is typical of 1421, vitiating all its extraordinary claims: the voyages it describes never took place, Chinese information never reached Prince Henry and Columbus, and there is no evidence of the Ming fleets in newly discovered lands. The fundamental assumption of the book—that the Yongle Emperor dispatched the Ming fleets because he had a "grand plan", a vision of charting the world and creating a maritime empire spanning the oceans—is simply asserted by Menzies without a shred of proof ... The reasoning of 1421 is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous ... Examination of the book's central claims reveals they are uniformly without substance.[29]
Tan Ta Sen, president of the International Zheng He Society, has acknowledged the book's popular appeal as well as its scholarly failings, remarking, "The book is very interesting, but you still need more evidence. We don't regard it as an historical book, but as a narrative one. I want to see more proof. But at least Menzies has started something, and people could find more evidence."[30]
A group of scholars and navigators—Su Ming Yang of the United States, Jin Guo-Ping and Malhão Pereira of Portugal, Philip Rivers of Malaysia, Geoff Wade of Singapore—questioned Menzies' methods and findings in a joint message:[26]
His book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, is a work of sheer fiction presented as revisionist history. Not a single document or artifact has been found to support his new claims on the supposed Ming naval expeditions beyond Africa...Menzies' numerous claims and the hundreds of pieces of "evidence" he has assembled have been thoroughly and entirely discredited by historians, maritime experts and oceanographers from China, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.[26]
Menzies created a website for his readers to send him any information they could find that might support his hypothesis.[15] Menzies said that his website was "a focal point for ongoing research into pre-Columbian exploration of the world."[31] In response, his devoted fans sent him thousands of pieces of purported evidence, which they claimed serve as proof that Menzies's ideas are correct.[15] Menzies also said that he used information his fans send to improve his hypotheses.[31] Academics have emphatically rejected all of this "evidence" as worthless and have criticized what American history professor Ronald H. Fritze calls the "almost cult-like" manner in which Menzies drummed up support for his hypothesis.[15] In reaction to this criticism, Menzies dismissed the experts' opinions as irrelevant, stating, "The public are on my side, and they are the people who count."[15]
A poll of History News Network readers ranked 1421 as the third-least credible history book in print.[32][33]
1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
In 2008 Menzies released a second book entitled 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. In it Menzies claims that in 1434
In regard to Menzies' theory that Taccola's sketches are based on Chinese information, Captain P.J. Rivers writes that Menzies contradicts himself by saying elsewhere in his book that Taccola had started his work on his technical sketches in 1431, when Zheng He's fleet was still assembled in China, and that the Italian engineer finished his technical sketches in 1433—one year before the purported arrival of the Chinese fleet.[35] Geoff Wade, a senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, acknowledges that there was a cross exchange of technological ideas between Europe and China, but ultimately classifies Menzies' book as historical fiction and asserts that there is "absolutely no Chinese evidence" for a maritime venture to Italy in 1434.[34]
Albrecht Heeffer investigated Menzies' claim that Regiomontanus based his solution to the Chinese remainder theorem on the Chinese work Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections from 1247. He arrived at the conclusion that the solution method does not depend on this text but on the earlier Sunzi Suanjing as does the treatment of a similar problem by Fibonacci which predates the Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections. Furthermore, Regiomontanus could rely on practices with remainder tables from the abacus tradition.[36]
References
- ^ "Contemporary Authors: Gavin Menzies". Highbeam Research. 2006. Archived from the original on 5 November 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
- ^ "Lt Cdr Gavin Menzies, submariner turned author of far-fetched oceanic histories – obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 14 May 2020.
- ^ "Gavin Menzies: August 14th 1937– April 12th, 2020". 18 April 2020. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
- ^ a b "The 1421 myth exposed". 1421exposed.com. Archived from the original on 28 March 2007. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
- ^ Zheng He in the Americas and Other Unlikely Tales of Exploration and Discovery, archived from the original on 17 March 2007, retrieved 22 March 2007
- ^ a b Gordon, Peter (30 January 2003). "1421: The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies". Asian Review of Books. Archived from the original on 5 July 2003. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
- ^ a b c Finlay 2004
- ^ S2CID 144521610.
- ISBN 978-1861898173.
- .
- . Retrieved 10 October 2013.
- ^ a b Menzies, Gavin. 1421: The Year China Discovered America (2008 ed.). p. 113.
- ^ a b Interview with Gavin Menzies, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, retrieved 22 March 2007
- ^ "The Times Guide to the House of Commons, 1970", Times Newspapers Ltd, 1970, p. 231.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-86189-430-4.
- ^ a b c Houterman, Hans; Koppes, Jeroen (2011). "Naval Officers (RN, RNR & RNVR) 20th Century (non-World War II)". unithistories.com. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
1968–1970, Commanding Officer, HMS Rorqual
- ^ a b Challenges to Menzies' nautical experience, archived from the original on 10 June 2007, retrieved 22 March 2007; see esp. note 5 of the Appendix.
- ^ Evans, Peter (5 June 1970). "Immigrant girl will vote in despair – Powellism". News. The Times. No. 57888. London. col C, p. 9.
- ^ Menzies, Gavin (11 May 2007). "When the East Discovered the West". Archived from the original on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 22 March 2011.
- ^ "Gavin Menzies: Mad as a Snake or a Visionary?". The Daily Telegraph. 1 August 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2011.
- ^ Chua, Dan-Chyi (29 December 2008). "Did the Chinese Discover America?". The Asia Mag. Archived from the original on 17 March 2012. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
- ^ Ptak, Roderich; Salmon, Claudine (2005), "Zheng He: Geschichte und Fiktion", in Ptak, Roderich; Höllmann, Thomas O. (eds.), Zheng He. Images & Perceptions, South China and Maritime Asia, vol. 15, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 9–35 (12)
- ^ "Vexatious litigants". HM Courts & Tribunals Service. 15 December 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
rights
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
- ^ a b c Guo-Ping, J; Pereira, M; Rivers PJ; Ming-Yang S; Wade G (2006). "Joint Statement on the Claims by Gavin Menzies Regarding the Zheng He Voyages". 1421exposed.com. Archived from the original on 10 June 2007. Retrieved 10 October 2009.
- ^ Newbrook, M (2004), "Zheng He in the Americas and Other Unlikely Tales of Exploration and Discovery", Skeptical Briefs, 14 (3), retrieved 10 October 2009.
- ^ Wade, Geoff (Autumn 2007). "The "Liu/Menzies" World Map: A Critique" (PDF). E-Perimetron. 2: 270.
- ^ Finlay 2004, pp. 241f.
- ^ Kolesnikov-Jessop, Sonia (25 June 2005), "Did Chinese beat out Columbus?", The New York Times, retrieved 8 June 2010.
- ^ a b "Official website". Gavin Menzies. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
- ^ Walsh, David Austin (16 July 2012). "What is the Least Credible History Book in Print?". History News Network. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
- ^ "History News Network Celebrates Bad History Books". The New York Times. 4 July 2012. Retrieved 17 January 2015.
- ^ a b c Castle, Tim (29 July 2008). "Columbus debunker sets sights on Leonardo da Vinci". Reuters. London. Archived from the original on 23 December 2008. Retrieved 26 January 2011.
- ^ The 1421 myth exposed: 1434 – No Way – No Canal. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
- S2CID 170479588.
External links
- Gavin Menzies' website
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation's FOUR CORNERS Program Transcript of "Junk History"
- Criticism
- 1421 Exposed – Website set up by an international group of academics and researchers
- Finlay, Robert (2004), "How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America" (PDF), S2CID 144478854, archived from the original(PDF) on 9 November 2013
- Wade, Geoff (2007), "The "Liu/Menzies" World Map: A Critique" (PDF), E-Perimetron, 2 (4): 273–80, ISSN 1790-3769
- Hartz, Bill. In the Hall of Ma'at. Weighing the Evidence for Alternative History: Gavin's Fantasy Land, 1421
- Esler, Lloyd (7 August 2019). "A Chinese whopper – no evidence of a Chinese city in New Zealand". The Southland Times.