1421: The Year China Discovered America | 
| Author: Gavin Menzies
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  244 reviews
Sales Rank: 8244
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 656
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.4
ISBN: 006054094X
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.951
EAN: 9780060540944
ASIN: 006054094X
Publication Date: January 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: used-remainder mark on page edges-front cover has tear-corners are tattered-cover has creases-book is curled
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Book Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 239 more reviews...
 I've Got an Answer July 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I received this book from my daughter, so it is with regret that I have to blast it. It seems so ungrateful. It was sweet of her to think of me.
But the book, from start to finish, is unvarnished bunk. I'm not a professional anything, but I know hokum when I read it. For examples, read the other one-star reviews.
The real question is, how does stuff like this ever get published? I think I have an answer, and it is slightly conspiratorial. I think it is part of a Chinese plot to disseminate pro-Chinese propaganda. The effort correlates with the Beijing Olympics and numerous other big-budget efforts to get everyone to like the Chinese. Menzies is on their payroll.
To borrow one of Menzie's own techniques, I'll declare this because there can't possibly be another explanation! It must be the Chinese!!!
 interesting at times but logic is weak July 9, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Overall I did not like this book. The premise is interesting, and there may be some truth in some of the points made in the book, but I was dissappointed with the weak reasoning, and the exaggerated tone of the book. By half-way through I felt I was reading a book about "Bigfoot" or the "Yeti", rather than a well researched history. I will avoid this author in the future.
A look at his highly unsound linguistic arguments June 28, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
From time to time, this reviewer comes across a publication so crackpot that I hardly know where to start in reviewing it here. I'm happy to see that Gavin Menzies' thesis in 1421: The Year China Discovered America, that a Chinese fleet launched in 1421, embarked on a tour around the world, discovering all major points before Europeans and leaving artifacts, has already been generally debunked by numerous sources. Perhaps the most substantial is Robert Finlay's review "How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America" in the Journal of World History, June 2004, where Finlay shows that there are no "lost years" in Ming dynasty sailing, and so Menzies' book is completely without foundation. My fellow reviewers here have also offered some important critiques. I would like to offer a perspective from my own individual profession, linguistics. Menzies writes, for example:
"Linguistics provide further evidence. The people of the Eten and Monsefu villages in the Lambayeque province of Peru can understand Chinese but not each othera(tm)s patois, despite living only three miles apart. Stephen Powers, a nineteenth-century inspector employed by the government of California to survey the native population, found linguistic evidence of a Chinese-speaking colony in the state."
The first assertion, on the Peruvian village, is not sourced at all and is either the personal fancy of the author or some minor crank idea. The second, however, is cited to an 19th-century bit of scholarship evidentally done without appropriate field methods. He goes on to claim that Chinese sailors shipwrecked on the East Coast of the United States would have been able to communicate with locals, as these would have included Chinese who had walked over the Bering Strait. Chinese walk across to Alaska and across all North America, but end up speaking Middle Chinese, and yet leave no trace of this dialect on neighbouring Native American languages? Risible fantasy. There's even an assertion that Navajo elders understand Chinese conversation, and an assertion that the Peruvian village name Chanchan must be Chinese because it sounds (at least to him) like "Canton". Perhaps the silliest Peruvian connection is between Chinese "qipu" and Quechua "quipu"; Menzies seemingly doesn't understand that "q" represents a completely different sound in each language. So, I hope that the reader with some training in linguistics can see what kind of arguments are used in the book, and beware accordingly.
If I may be permitted one final indulgence, I should like to protest Menzies' weird view of Chinese culture. He blasts European explorers for committing genocide, claiming that continued Chinese expansion would have led instead to a world of peace and Confucian harmony. This is the naive romantic view of the Orient held by a child flipping through National Geographic. A man of Menzies' age and experience should have realized that all civilizations have it within them to commit do in indigenous peoples--the marginalization of Tibetan and Uighur language and culture and the disappearance already of a distinct Manchu people stand as proof that the Chinese are no exception.
 Around the World in English by Chinese Zheng He - 1421 June 19, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Gavin spent over a decade in researching and following the sea route in writing this impressive volume - 1421 the year China discovered America. With his professional training, experience, and the determination to find the historical truth, he came to the logical conclusion with convincing objective support of plants, architecture, drawing, animals, DNA, culture, custom, language, rituals and Chinese influence on the local people. He documented in great details in this Chinese expedition around the world. This pioneer adventure was under-covered even in China. He did intensive and extensive scholarly work in reminding the world this forgotten first round the world voyage which paved the seaway with maps for Europeans to follow with different impact and outcome. This book attracted world-wide interest. The Chinese version updates and corrects some of the mistakes in this American text.
China in the Ming Dynasty was advance in technology, powerful culturally, politically and economically. With the surplus of free trade, China was capable of building the Chinese Armada - a fleet of over hundred of ships and thirty thousand crews. With compass, sun dial and the guide of the Stars, the China fleet set up observatories in making calculation and charting maps with amazing accuracy. China brought and shared the well-developed civilization and technology to people around the world without conquer, convert or discrimination, contrary to subsequent imperialist, colonist and missionary in suppression, massacre and brutality. China earned respect, trust and honor without shock and awe nor establishment of a Chinese Empire even she was capable of. With gifts, goodwill and friendship, China won hearts and minds and people of distant lands were willing to learn and follow.
This book is an eye and mind opener especially for American hawks who currently cry "CHINA THREAT". If Ming Dynasty China behaved as European Christians, Africa, America and Australia would be Chinese speaking, Confucian culture Empire with towns New Peking instead of New England, New Nanking instead of New South Wales.
Reading this book help review the history of these three continents under the doctrine of "love your neighbor as yourself" and Confucius' teaching of "among four seas, all are brothers & sisters". This book is meaningful and significant in our annual celebration of Columbus Day in America.
 What! Columbus didn't discover America? June 10, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
OK, so Columbus didn't discover America, no big news here since from the sound of it the Americas must have been a major crossroads of commerce when Columbus joined the party late.
But here's a bit of a surprise. Not only didn't he discover America, he wasn't a brave adventurer going out into the vast unknown with no maps and the fear falling off the edge of a flat earth, and in fact even the premise of his trip wasn't above board--his own brother cooked the (map) books to make it look impossible to go the other way.
And here's the real kicker--Columbus knew where he was going because he had maps of the world prepared by the Portuguese who copied from the Chinese who not only discovered America but discovered and mapped the world in 1421!
Menzies begins with basic knowledge of navigation by wind and sea currents, appends ancient Chinese history, then piles on layer after layer of circumstantial evidence that, while thin in places, builds to critical mass.
Interesting followup: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (P.S.) uses Menzies ideas to help build a circumstantial case that some of Magellan's actions on his circumnavigation were based on knowledge of and from the Chinese expeditions.
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