Great Historic Maritime book read

[pompey2]

I have been reading a really fascinating book - '1421 The Year China Discovered the World' by Gavin Menzies. It is a big old book but completely captivating. The Author was a British submarine captain and has (obviously) a good knowledge of the worlds winds, currents etc. as well as being a navigator. He has applied this knowledge to the incredible voyages made by vast Chinese fleets in the title year around the whole globe. He then carries out research to back up his presumptions. He uses and unpicks a lot of historic maps that were presumably copies from older maps made by the Chinese, he offers very creditable arguments with a wealth of supporting facts. His research suggests that these fleets discovered and mapped most of the places we currently give Old World Europeans (Magellan, Columbus, Cook etc.) the credit for, including both coasts of North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, rounding Cape Horn and Cape of Good Hope.  Really recommended.

 

Nick

[Jim Lad]

Nick,  I'm afraid serious historians consider that Menzies book should be found on the fiction shelves.

 

John

[Cathead]

I've read the book, and enjoyed it. However, as John points out, it has also been thoroughly refuted.

 

I look at it this way: many things are possible in history, but didn't turn out to have happened. For example, Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki voyage showed that peoples from South American plausibly COULD have sailed west in balsa rafts to colonize parts of the South Pacific. Yet modern genetic evidence refutes that otherwise quite plausible scenario.

 

In the same way, the Chinese fleets COULD have made the voyages, they seem to have had the technical capability of doing so. But due to various whims of history, it seems clear that they didn't. It doesn't change the entertaining nature of the book, which is compelling and interesting as a work of scholarship and conviction, as is Kon-Tiki. But a compelling argument presented in narrative form is not the same as a true one backed up by hard evidence.

[scottpollack]

I've seen the book in the store and have often thought of getting it. Sounds like an interesting read, plausible or not. What's interesting to me is that whether it was Columbus, the Chinese or Vikings who " discovered " the new world, why do we credit them when the native Americans were already here. Shouldn't they be given that credit?

[pompey2]

I have read some of the evidence refuting the claims.

And certainly there are certain facts disputed.

However they are single targeted facts with different explanations given.

The papers I saw did not claim to deny the possibility that the underlying trips were possible.

 

Either way I don't offer it as truth, just a good read.

 

Nick