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1434
“…1434, published by Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins, is not a history book in any meaningful sense of the term. That is because, to put it bluntly, a magnificent Chinese fleet did not sail to Italy in 1434 – or, if it did, not a single eyewitness recorded this amazing event. Did the Venetians have their backs to the water when it slipped past?”
“Menzies is an exponent of misinformation disguised as scholarship with the aid of footnotes, dodgy citations and even dodgier logic.”
Damian Thompson
The Telegraph
9 Sep 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3560095/Review-1434-by-Gavin-Menzies.html
‘1434′ is as much junk as ‘1421′
It should go without saying that the Ming voyage to Tuscany never happened, in 1434 or any other year. And the reason it should go without saying is not just that the evidence is missing, but also because this book is written by a notorious historical fantasist. Menzies’ “discoveries” of Chinese voyages to Brazil and New Zealand have been described as “the drivel of a two-year-old” by the distinguished maritime historian Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. This is a rich two-year-old, however. Gavin Menzies is basically an old-fashioned Martians-built-Stonehenge pseudohistorian who has brilliantly exploited the 21st century’s appetite for what I call “counterknowledge” – fiction, quackery or ideology disguised as scholarship.
London Evening Standard
7 July 2008
http://counterknowledge.com/2008/07/1434-is-as-much-junk-as-1421/
Publishers Weekly
In Menzies's 1421, the amateur historian advanced a highly controversial hypothesis, that the Chinese discovered America; in this follow-up, he credits the Renaissance not to classical Greek and Roman ideals (a "Eurocentric view of history") but again to the Chinese. His thesis in both works is based on the seven (historically undisputed) voyages undertaken by a large Chinese sailing fleet between 1405 and 1433; while it is known that they traveled as far as east Africa, Menzies believes that they landed in Italy and sent a delegation to the Council of Venice, held in Florence in 1439. There, they provided the knowledge and technique-introducing the painter Alberti, for instance, to the methods of perspective drawing-that sparked the Renaissance. Menzies sets the stage by recapitulating arguments from his first book, including the ingenious method for calculating longitude that Chinese navigators may have used. Though Menzies writes engagingly, his assumption that the Chinese fleet landed a delegation in Florence is highly speculative, and hardly substantiated by any facts (Alberti could just have easily learned perspective from classical sources; the Greeks knew about the relationship between perception of length and distance in the 1st Century BCE).
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6573866.html?industryid=47263&q=1434
In '1434,' Menzies has a tale for you
There were times I thought I was eavesdropping on a dotty academic, as when Menzies assumes the reader will drop everything to dip into 1421 to round out a story about cartographic discrepancies.
And there are times when the speculation winds on and on for naught. Menzies calls Leonardo da Vinci more illustrator than inventor and spends quite some time trying to prove that da Vinci had access to Chinese documents presaging his own accomplishments. Research proves, however, that that didn't happen, Menzies says. So why make the effort?
Carlo Wolff
St Petersburg Times
July 28, 2008
http://www.tampabay.com/features/books/article739828.ece
Columbus debunker sets sights on Leonardo da Vinci
"It's very suggestive, very interesting, but the hard work remains to be done," said Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University and author of books on Leonardo.
"He (Menzies) says something is a copy just because they look similar. He says two things are almost identical when they are not," Kemp said.
"It's not strong on historical method," he added
Tim Castle
Reuters
Tue Jul 29, 2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL242804420080729?sp=true
1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
IN 1434: THE YEAR THE Chinese Built a Giant Firecracker and Flew to the Moon, Gavin Menzies reveals for the first time that ... Let's try that again. Not satisfied with a story about how the great Chinese mariner Zheng He sailed to the US, Australia and Europe, including such grace notes as the descent of the Maori from Chinese settlers, Gavin Menzies now wants to burble on about how Zheng also sailed to Venice, and travelled on to Florence and presented the Florentines with a Chinese encyclopedia of mathematics, astronomy and technology, which then surfaced in the works of Alberti, Leonardo, and the rest.
It's virtually unreadable, not because of the style but because of the panic induced by senseless mania. Menzies just doesn't operate like a historian, or an ordinary person with their faculties intact. Conjectures, or daydreams, are taken for facts: he has nothing to say about why there is no record of a magnificent Chinese fleet in Italy in 1434, or why the fateful meeting between the Chinese delegation and the Italian savants likewise went unremarked.
It's as if there had been some mass outbreak of cribbing and fibbing, as in a VCE class.
Owen Richardson
The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
July 19, 2008 Saturday
1434
THE title 1434 will be of no significance to most people. But it makes sense with its lengthy sub-title -- ``The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance''.
The past few years have seen an explosion in books about China and all things Chinese. I suppose when almost everything one buys these days is made in China it inspires curiosity about this populous race and its achievements. Hosting the forthcoming Olympics helps make it China's year.
Former Royal navy submarine commander and amateur historian Gavin Menzies is obsessed with gaining recognition for Chinese ``firsts''. His earlier book, 1421: The Year China Discovered America, offers proof that in 1492 when Columbus sailed west he had a map produced by Chinese explorers who had discovered the New World at least 18 years before he set sail.
Menzies offers masses of data to back his assertion, as he does in his latest book 1434 which, he says, was the year a sophisticated Chinese delegation visited Italy when Chinese knowledge inspired geniuses as diverse as da Vinci and Galileo.
Among other Chinese ``firsts'' Menzies records was their discovery of northern Australia centuries before Captain Cook arrived. This claim was soundly debunked in an ABC Four Corners program.
Nevertheless, such revisionist works sell well. People seem to love books that take the history they were taught at school then turn it on its head. Many agree with Henry Ford who said, ``History is bunk!''
Fact, fiction or whatever. The publishers don't care what people think about such books so long as they buy them.
Sue Bond
The Courier Mail (Australia)
July 12, 2008
Frisson of words to keep you warm
China will loom ever larger in the world's consciousness when the Beijing Olympics begin in August. China: A History (HarperCollins) is John Keay's grand though concise narrative spanning thousands of years. Gavin Menzies, meanwhile, focuses on a single year in 1434 (HarperCollins) when he says a Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and while it was there somehow inspired the Italian Renaissance.
Those readers unconvinced by 1421 - the controversial mega-seller in which Menzies claimed, over the fierce objections of leading historians, that the Chinese discovered America and Australia and much else besides - might want to consider having a little salt nearby as they read.
The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
June 14, 2008
http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/frisson-of-words-to-keep-you-warm/2008/06/12/1212863841235.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
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