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    1421: The Year China Discovered America
    1421: The Year China Discovered America
    1421: The Year China Discovered America
    Audiobook13 hours

    1421: The Year China Discovered America

    Written by Gavin Menzies

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.

    When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships 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 had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed was how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted in America and other countries the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world.

    Unveiling incontrovertible evidence of these astonishing voyages, 1421 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 landmark work of historical investigation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 28, 2014
    ISBN9780062343680
    1421: The Year China Discovered America
    Author

    Gavin Menzies

    Gavin Menzies (1937-2020) was the bestselling author of 1421: The Year China Discovered America; 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance; and The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed. He served in the Royal Navy between 1953 and 1970. His knowledge of seafaring and navigation sparked his interest in the epic voyages of Chinese admiral Zheng He. 

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    Reviews for 1421

    3/5

    62 ratings47 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A terrific read, weakend by the author's tendency to make too great a leap with quite a number of conclusions. When he does so, it's reminiscent of Woody Allen's discourse on logic: "All men are mortal. Socrates was a man. All men are Socrates." Still, there's more than enough mystery and intrigue here to whet the imagination and whet one's appetite to learn more about China's history.
    • 4/5
      I loved reading this fascinating account of the Chinese admiral. It's worth reading just for some of the details (trivia such as the dolphins kept in the hold for fishing and the chickens that lay blue eggs--I'd never noticed them in the store in China until I read this book!) More than anything else, I like the kind of expertise Menzies brings to his research. No, he's not an historian, but he is a navigator of wide experience and deep knowledge. That impacts his study of history giving us his novel perspective. How completely accurate the "history" is, I am in no position to judge. I do wonder how much of the uproar raised among historians arises from that very fact about the author. One must certainly acknowledge his openness to criticism as his website is open to comment and refutation. Anyone who goes against received wisdom, though, opens himself up to egregious attack--"this can't possibly be true" obviates rational discourse. No doubt, Zheng He must have achieved more, and deserves more lasting and widespread fame, than any other eunuch in history. (I'd love to be corrected if that is wrong!) And I'm happy that this era of opening in Chinese history is now more widely acknowledged. That the Chinese perceived this endeavor in diplomatic terms rather than militaristic/imperialistic ones certainly contrasts to the soon-to-come European exploitation of their colonial empires commencing mere decades after Cheng He's voyages. What an interesting set of hypothetical scenarios arise when we consider what might have been if the Chinese had not drawn back into such hermetic isolation?
    • 2/5
      An interesting read. I brought it after a trip to China as a way of picking up a bit of Chinese history, and in that respect the book works well. I was less convinced by the driving theory of the discovery of America but it did not detract from the reading experience. Menzies writes well even if you are left with the feeling that he is determined to make the evidence fit the theory rather than the other way round.
    • 3/5
      A speculative series of claims that the great Admiral Zheng He's fleet explored far more of the world than it probably did. Much of the "evidence" is flimsy at best. The Levathes book on Zheng He's voyages is far better and more reliable.About the only reason to wade through this massive construction is for the amusement of contemplating what might have happened if Zheng had chosen to round the Cape and sail north, potentially arriving in European waters where Henry the Navigator was trying out his new 75-foot boats at Ceuta, Joan of Arc was rabble rousing and preparing to influence the 100 Years War, the British were fighting the French with picks and staves at Agincourt, and Hieronymus Bosch was worrying about moral failings.
    • 4/5
      Although the thesis has been disputed, this is a fascinating read about how China could have discovered the New World and circumnavigated the world before the Europeans. It had the resources and navigational skills, and the author puts together tantalizing clues, including wrecks of Chinese junks (the huge sailboats that travelled long distances), genetic & cultural clues in the Americas, and archeological finds.
    • 5/5
      Confirms what most Asians have always believed - that China was the most technologically advanced 'nation' in the world for centuries, until about 500 years ago. Whilst modern Chinese are said to have lost certain advanced technologies in agriculture, historically the Chinese have benefited mankind in so many areas of knowledge. Since a large part of the author's vast list of source material is in China, there is little value in Western historians asking 'where is the evidence?' The book is a timely move away from the Eurocentric perspective reflecting colonialism, when history was re-interpreted to prove that European man was innately superior to all coloured people. Japan's defeat of Russia a 100 years ago, Japan's temporary control about 50 years ago of territories previously dominated by white people, and Vietnam should have put to rest that quaint belief.
    • 2/5
      Some good ideas and work compromised by a true believer.
    • 4/5
      I felt cheated by my eduacation after reading this book. It is so convincing that you feel History books today should change to incorporate many of the theories herein described. Whether you beliive it or not it still is a great read, and provides great insights into Chinese culture and technology dating 600 years ago.
    • 4/5
      Provocative. I will be following some of the global DNA testing that will try and dispute many of Menzies' assumptions. Great read except for the fact he constantly needs to remind us of his service in the navy. any history buff will get a paradigm shift after reading 1421.
    • 4/5
      a great example of why not to take received wisdom for granted. who is going to tell the spanish and portuguese city authorities to revise the inscriptions at the feet of all their columbus and magellan statuary?
    • 3/5
      The book aims to revolutionise history. It was an interesting argument, but further reading did not seem to back up the facts so I felt a bit cheated.
    • 2/5
      While on vacation in Florida, I ran across this book at the condo we stayed in. I wasn't expecting much but I had just finished the book I brought with me to read so I picked it up. I knew I didn't have time to read the whole thing since we were only there a couple of days - and I had heard that it wasn't a very exciting book so I just wanted to browse through it a little. After a call to the owner of the condo, this book came home with me (a good way to eat up 1200 miles in the car). I did like reading it and found it interesting. I think I was ready for a change and a history book was just what I needed. I would assume that this book would appeal to men more than women as it is a history book full of facts, etc. It is not a story book. I do recommend it if you like history type books. You also get a little lesson on the time frame when China decides to isolate herself from the rest of the world and why.
    • 3/5
      1421: The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin MenziesDid Admiral Zheng He and his fellow admirals, crew and families indeed discover the world before anybody else? Menzies has compiled a lot of evidence to suggest that is exactly what happened. I find his argument persuasive and compelling yet I have reservations.When I first saw this book on the shelf in the bookstore I was instantly intrigued. I picked it up, started reading the back cover and added it to the stack of books I planned on buying. Once I got home, this was the first book I picked up because I truly wanted to know if the Chinese deserved the credit for discovering the world before the “official” discoverers.I have always found it hard to believe that Columbus gathered together his ships, received the blessings of the Spanish monarchs, and set forth blindly westward looking to find India on a gut feeling. The truth, as I have suspected all along, was that Columbus somehow, somewhere came into possession of a/some navigation charts and knew preciously where he needed to direct his small fleet. The biggest problem that I have with this book and its argument is that there is very little original evidence available to concretely state that Chinese found the world. There is a plethora of circumstantial evidence to suggest that what the Chinese accomplished resulted in later explorers “finding” the world. It is like saying that Paracelsus is the father of modern chemistry; sure Paracelsus contributed significantly to the early understanding of chemical properties but to suggest he was the father is chemistry is stretching just a little too far.I know it is easy to make these types of suggestions about how different parts of the world seem to have close similarities. Take the pyramids for example; we find pyramids in Central America, China, Middle East, and Egypt. They are all a little different from each other yet we understand that they are pyramids and the reason for their development. I choke this up to the same stage of development and exploration in each of these different areas at the appropriate times in each area, not to the Chinese influencing the local civilizations development.Menzies had done a remarkable job joining all the dots together to make a great story. I would never use this as a class course book but for entertainment value, I give it high marks.Happy Reading,
    • 3/5
      The author creates a seemingly fact-based case that the Chinese actually discovered America. Although he has no academic credentials -- he was a submarine captain -- the author blithely interprets all the facts to bolster his case. Experts in the field -- -including many Chinese historians -- believe he got it wrong. The book, however, engendered lively discussion.01/22/2010
    • 3/5
      This book is totally fascinating. Unfortunately most of it is wild conjecture. The historical background about the Chinese fleets is pretty solid. They traded around the Indian Ocean and its not too farfetched they could have gone to Australia. The case for reaching America is tenuous but still intriguing. The supposed exploration of Greenland is just crazy talk.

      By the way recent scholarship points to the Polynesians as responsible for bringing chickens to South America.
    • 2/5
      This book looks bigger than it really is - the last 200 pages being appendices....

      Whilst the story itself was interesting, I still had difficulty with the way of writing. Plenty of references to "when I was in the Navy" and "When I was in command of xxx submarine" (oh get over yourself!). Also the publication seemed a little rushed as there was plenty of mentions to "investigations are ongoing blah, details will be on the website (the details of which get mentioned the first and possibly the only time buried somewhere in the postscript). Dont know what the rush for the publication was for, or where he got all the money to fund the research.
    • 1/5
      It's rare that I would waste space blasting a book. Life is short and time is a scarce resource. I'd rather just drop a book unworthy of finishing and move on to a new one. This time, though, I think 1421 merits further explanation because of the sensational success it has experienced worldwide.

      Simply put, 1421 is junk history posing as "real history." Gavin Menzies has spun a fantastical and interesting tale out of the very real events surrounding the massive Chinese treasure fleets of 1421. His thesis--that the Chinese discovered the New World in the 1420s, mapped it, and that it was their maps that European explorers used when sailing for the New World (including, he argues, Columbus).

      Built by a Ming emperor to gather in tribute from the ends of the Earth, the fleet was one of the last acts of imperial hubris. Shortly after it set sail, the emperor died. His son, in replacing his father's policies, had the fleets destroyed upon their return, along with records gathered during the voyage. Starting with that sparse introduction, Menzies proceeds to gather bits and pieces of evidence stretching from China itself to the Indian subcontinent, from the Congo to Patagonia and beyond, and levies the evidence to tell a tale of the massive Chinese fleet charting the New World the greater part of a century before Columbus set sail in 1492.

      It is an extremely interesting and, if it were true, a ground breaking discovery and thesis. Perhaps it is true. But likely, it is not.

      As I started reading it, the first question that came to mind for me was this: in the almost six centuries since these events happened, why has no one else suggested that the Chinese arrived first? Menzies explanation is that historians generally lack the skill set necessary to uncover the truth, a skill set that he has as a former captain in the British Navy. Unlike most historians, Menzies argues, he can read a chart, understand what he's looking at, and glean from these 15th century charts things that no historian would otherwise notice.

      Yeah. It's a little bit of a stretch. I would be surprised to find that no historian has ever had the skill set to learn maritime charts and understand how to read them (heck, Theodore Roosevelt when only an undergraduate student at Harvard, researched and wrote a book of naval strategy -- "The Naval War of 1812"--that became a classic and a text book used by both the US and British navies for decades after it was published). That being said, I gave Menzies the benefit of the doubt. I've long been intrigued with China and its history, and I think I wanted to believe that history as we have been taught might not be true. How interesting would it be for America to have been discovered by the Chinese?

      As I read, though, red flags continued to pop up. Out of only sparse details, Menzies would assert "conclusive proof" that his theories were finding relevance. Finally, over two hundred pages in, I decided to check into what critical review might have said about his methods and evidence. I reasoned that if Menzies is correct, or even has a good theory, then the academic community would support his findings with further research. I went to the internet.

      Critical acclaim was anything but what I found. In addition to finding entire sites dedicated to debunking Menzies myths, I also found that historical lectures had been given explaining and demonstrating that what Menzies proposed was just that--a proposal. Be it even true, the evidence was not there, not was the reasoning clearly logical.

      For example:

      --Menzies claims that Chinese anchors have been found off of the coast of California, but fails to document them.
      --1421 says that Chinese DNA is found in North America natives, but fails to account for the influx of Chinese immigrants in the 17th century.
      --Menzies finds what he claims are chickens unique to Asia living in Peru, but fails to note that Peru exported millions of tons of silver to China and brought back silk and porcelain (and presumably other things, like, for example, chickens) throughout the heyday of the Spanish during the 16th through 17th centuries.

      And that's just to start.

      Historian Kirstin A. Seaver says, in disecting claims about the Chinese in Vinland:

      "The study of history is likely to reward anyone willing to undertake it in a quest for better understanding of who they are, how they became what they are, and what they might hope to become. The manufacture of a history that never existed rewards only those who make money by deceiving the public."

      If 1421 is true, Menzies has not found the evidence to support it. If it is false, it's junk and a waste of time to read. Further, it perpetuates a falsehood that makes the acquisition of real history--real, boring, dry and factual history--that much harder to grasp.
    • 2/5
      meh... it was a quick read and not very scholarly research backs up his theories- a lot of speculation. At the end of the day , even if the Chinese did discover the America's first- their presence obviously did not amount to much in a way of changing history.
    • 3/5
      This book has some merit, in that we can reliably say that the Ming explorations of the 1420's covered the Indian ocean and may have gone so far as Australia. His further gathering of evidence is quite controversial, and some of them such as a sailing ship passage of the North-east passage taking only one year, when the WWII German attempt in a steam ship took the better part of two years, seemed far-fetched. (was that a pun?) some of the rest, could lead to the conclusion that he has conflated a lot of other Chinese voyages, some accidental, into his one grand scheme. And that's where I,m standing on this idea of his. But it's readable prose, and entertaining to a degree.
    • 4/5
      This is a wild book -- in both the positive and negative senses of that word. Menzies presents a full-blown (many would say overblown) theory of a wide-ranging and systematic Chinese exploration of the world in the early 15th century. He's assembled evidence with, shall we say, an open mind, drawing on everything from cartography and DNA analyses to pure hearsay.I found many points he makes both provocative and plausible, but this is such an aggressive attempt to overturn conventional historical assumptions that it's simply impossible to agree with all of Menzies's conclusions, or even to believe everything he says.Menzies's style is quite readable, but his frenzied attempts to marshall evidence lead to repetition and a kind of breathlessness common to alternate histories.Still, I think he's on to something, and this book is well worth reading.
    • 1/5
      Just awful. If you believe everything you read this book will fill your head with nonsense. If you have a skeptical bone in your body the authors giant leaps of faith and proofs based on the flimsiest of evidence will drive you completely nuts. Such a pity because there is obviously a great untold piece of history in there somewhere.
    • 1/5
      Originally it sounded like an interesting book (and for only 1$ at a book fair, why not) and the beginning was a good and interesting and quick read..... ....but then things quickly soured. As you get further in and further in you realize its much more speculation than fact, the pages skip into 10s/20s/30s before you see citations, and it comes down to things like "Well you see I was in a submarine once, so when you look out a periscope... which is what the water level would have been in 1421" and it just goes downhill from there. Around page 250 or so I became more piqued about how he might have ascertained his speculations and others thoughts on this; more so than the constant hammer-over-the-head approach of how he viewed Chinese civilization and their voyages and how pathetic Europe was; so looking up GoodReads and Wikipedia as a start and Google and going from there - you find his main prediction which he used to launch his book was based on a fake map.... and that he wrecked the submarine and was forced to resign thereafter. Needless to say; all credibility is immediately shot right there. I finished the book, but I definitely recommend anyone who reads this to do their own studying and see how much of a crack-pot theorist this man is.
    • 1/5
      Ik was 13, las "waren de goden kosmonauten?" van von D?niken, en was meteen verkocht, het leek allemaal zo goed onderbouwd en overtuigend. Met dit boek ("1421") had ik bijna hetzelfde gevoel. Menzies weet heel meeslepend te schrijven en overtuigt je bijna dat het inderdaad kan kloppen dat een reusachtige Chinese vloot in het begin van de 15de eeuw Afrika, Amerika, Australi? en Antarctica ontdekte, bijna perfect in kaart bracht en zelfs op tal van plaatsen kolonies stichtte. Tot je even doordenkt en de "basics" op een rijtje zet: de auteur kent geen letter Chinees, en formuleert telkens weer zekerheden op basis van wel zeer wankele vermoedens. Enkele eenvoudige internet-controles van een aantal van zijn stellingen lopen systematisch op niets uit; en echt wel gevestigde autoriteiten hebben zijn werk intussen als pure fictie afgedaan. Zo zie je maar... Het neemt niet weg dat het boek toch wel boeit als avonturenverhaal!
    • 1/5
      You might have that certain relative in your family who is affable enough, but has some really weird ideas that he loves to go on about. For the sake of this review, let's call him "Uncle Gavin." Uncle Gavin is harmless, and charms your friends, but he has one pet topic that you try to steer him away from. Before you know it, he's started asking your friends who they think discovered the world and after a short time, the friend's nods and smiles go from sincerely interested to polite to barely hanging on, and they're looking around desperately for someone to rescue them from this conversation.Uncle Gavin wrote this book. His premise sounds interesting, and perhaps sane, if far-fetched: he claims that the Chinese sailed essentially the entire world in 1421-23 and made maps of such voyages that were later used to guide the Portuguese and Spanish explorers who "discovered" America and other parts of the world. Why this has been a hidden fact for so long: the Chinese burned nearly every record of the voyages, stopped exploration, and basically forgot about the whole thing over the centuries. Why Uncle Gavin is the only person to have figured this out: he used to captain submarines and therefore knows how ocean currents work and can read a nautical chart. I'll let that sink in for a moment.In any case, I was willing to go along with him at first, but it became apparent pretty quickly that things were spiraling out of control. I rarely make notes on audio books, but I found myself frantically scribbling things down when I was listening to this one. Things like:"Just because Verrazzano compared some lighter-skinned Indians and their manner of dress to the "Eastern" style doesn't mean that they are descended from his [Menzies'] imaginary pregnant concubines that were put ashore from his imaginary overcrowded voyages."I was going to list more, but as I look at that one, I think it sums up everything. Look, it's an interesting idea that the Chinese could have sent an enormous fleet out to see what there was out there, and that they could have drawn up a map of everything, and then decided to close their borders and give up on the outside world, and that the maps could have ended up in the hands of the European explorers, and that those explorers could have found knick-knacks that were Chinese and people who might have been descended from Chinese people who ended up there long-term one way or another. But if you're going to tell me, Uncle Gavin, that the Chinese took out 40 or 50 ships which were wrecked in various places and stayed and lived there, you're going to have to come up with some physical evidence. Wrecked ships off India, or eastern Africa, or Australia simply do not prove that Chinese people built the Bimini Road in the Caribbean to get their ships on land for repairs or had a settlement on Greenland (I am not kidding. I wish I were kidding.).If this were half as long and half as crazy, it might be worth a perusal. As it is, run from this book. Read Foucault's Pendulum, which features the same sort of wild connect-the-dots game and also has going for it that it is fiction.PS - It turns out that Menzies has also published 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. I imagine that he is now deep into the writing of 1468: The Year China Traveled to the Moon and Discovered Life and 1498: The Year China Invented Synthetic Life and Created the Spice Girls.
    • 3/5
      Gives a really hard sell...perhaps too hard. I went for it, then talked to some Chinese-historian friends who didn't swallow it so readily.
    • 4/5
      Wow, this was such an interesting and well written book, with evidence to back up most of the claims. I'm surprised I hadn't heard about China discovering the world and all if their achievements. I would say get the paperback. I read the hardcover, and the author promised even more evidence in the paperback. Well worth reading, the best non fiction book I've read this year.
    • 4/5
      Menzies makes a pretty compelling case for the Chinese fleets discovering America. Not only did I learn about the Chinese fleets but I also learned more about cartography, sailing, and Chinese politics at the time.

      Even if Menzie's theory ends up being wrong the book is well worth the read.
    • 1/5
      Every reputable historian shredded Menzies and his evidence when this was published. Nothing has changed. For a good example, see the PBS documentary by the same name which allows MEnzies to present his evidence before having historians take it apart. Even the Chinese say his evidence is lacking...
    • 2/5
      The teaching of history is, as von Clausewitz said of war, the extension of politics by other means. Different nations teach their own history from their own viewpoint. Even if that history extends beyond their own borders, the story usually reflects the role of each country in the development of the world. So works of trans-national history are comparatively unusual, and even more rarely do they look beyond narrow national viewpoints.So a book that claims that Chinese treasure fleets explored the world's oceans, circumnavigated the globe 100 years before Magellan and made landfall in the Americas some 75 years before Columbus is bound to ruffle some feathers. Menzies' '1421' does just that. His thesis is that the extravagance of the early Ming emperors, which culminated in the building of the Forbidden City, the completion of the Great Wall, and the commissioning of a massive trading fleet, numbering hundreds of ships, caused a subsequent emperor to retrench the nation's activity, to purge the archives of all records and to retreat into isolationism, leaving Portuguese explorers tantalising clues and charts showing distant lands which they then went out and "discovered".Given that China had trade links all over South-East Asia, the coast of India and down the east coast of Africa, this seems plausible. The big problem is the lack of firm evidence. Given that (in Menzies' account) all the main Chinese records were destroyed, this leaves him to pick up scraps from a range of other sources, piecing a story together from fragments. But this is always going to lead to confirmation bias; any evidence will be assessed for how it fits into the grand narrative, rather than looking at the evidence in isolation. Menzies lists a large number of academic institutions that helped him in his researches; what they thought of the outcome is another matter.The style of the writing does not help. Menzies initially started writing a world travelogue, of which the central idea behind "1421" was just one part. This came to the attention of an enterprising publisher who saw the possibilities in a book based on the account of the treasure fleets. Menzies re-wrote that segment of the book with the aid of a ghost writer; but he admitted that he himself was no writer. He uses some of the usual tropes of the pseudo-science writer - "this proves that the Chinese must have...", "the only possible conclusion is that..." and so on. Even if his evidence were sound, the book presents subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) suggestions that it is not, simply because of the style.Of course, if his thesis is true, then all we will have are fragments which need to be pieced together. But this runs the risk of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. China has an extensive history; it was the world's first superpower. But if this claim was viable, would it not be the Chinese who would be making it?Menzies died in 2020. He published further books making more fantastical claims about the role of China in medieval European history; and set up a website asking members of the public to add to the body of his evidence. This has been replaced by a very slick site for a "1421 Foundation" which has picked up this particular ball and is running with it. This is a shame, because it all now smacks of commercialisation and sensation; certainly, any serious historian or archaeologist coming to the field of medieval Chinese naval history might well be put off by all the trappings. And that would be a shame; in a world where narrow national interests are being exploited for political gain, any trans-national or global perspective is helpful in trying to give a sense of balance. But without better evidence, this book and its successors are not helping.
    • 4/5
      A great what if and has links to a poul Anderson short story published as a collection and titled Guardians of Time. The story is " the only game in town" . He is a time policeman protecting the time-lines but in this story he comes to realise that he is to corrupt rather then protect the time lines by preventing a chinese contact and immigration in order to protect the future of the guardians.