"1421; the year China discovered the world" by Gavin Menzies

In 1421 a huge Ming fleet set out on a voyage of exploration. By the time they returned, the Ming foreign policy had done an about face and forbidden any further voyages. The records of the voyage were systematically destroyed.

Menzies believed that this fleet sailed round India and South Africa, across to the Cape Verde islands and down to Cape Horn. Some travelled through the Magellan straits and then doubled back to the Falkland and then across to Australia. Others went up the Chilean coast and to Mexico and California. Others travelled back north to the Caribbean, some eventually going to North America and circumnavigating Greenland (Menzies claims it was a hot year and the ice had melted).

They left maps of fantastic accuracy that were subsequently copied and taken to Europe. Dom Pedro, the brother of Henry the Navigator, took maps to Portugal where they were subsequently seen by Vasco da Gama, Diaz, and Columbus and his brother (the last then drawing a map which showed a much elongated South Africa suggesting that the voyage to the Spice Islands would be quicker travelling West than via the Portuguese route of round the Cape of Good Hope). These maps show Australia and parts of Antarctica with great accuracy; they show the Magellan straits before he got there (indeed he told his sailors that he had seen a map with the passage on before he got there); they show the Caribbean; they even show all of Greenland (the Vinland map).

Menzies claims that Columbus and Magellan and Cook were not great discoverers because they had already seen maps of where they were going.

He cites a lot of evidence including obelisks with writing on them in a Tamil script (I am not sure why he doesn't draw the obvious conclusion that Tamils put these there rather than that the Chinese did). He claims that the early European explorers discovered plants and animals that are native to China in the Americas. He interprets folklore of light-skinned or yellow-skinned people as recording Chinese visitors. He finds Chinese DNA and diseases in the Americas.

I wholeheartedly accept his evidence as showing that there were great voyages of exploration and trade with Australia and Africa and the Americas long before Columbus, da Gama and Diaz. Merchants will always seek new markets. Where I disagree is that all his evidence necessarily points to this one great fleet on their one great voyage. Why should there not have been trading links down to Australia and across the Pacific for centuries before 1421; why should not other nations such as the Indians and the Arabs not have made wonderful voyages? The maps are clearly records of travel.

Other books about exploration and explorers, and travel, that are reviewed in this blog, can be found here.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God