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International: From 12/13 October 2005
Re: Gavin
Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World. London,
Bantam Books, 2002. Billed as follows in promotional literature: “The
book that's rewriting history! - The Chinese were the first to
discover America, 70 years before Columbus - The Chinese discovered
Australia, 350 years before Captain Cook - The Chinese reached the
so-called Magellan Straits 60 years before Magellan was even born.
The Chinese discovered the vital secret of Longitude 300 years before
Harrison did in England.”
For the 1421 website, go
to: http://www.1421.tv/
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NB: In September 2005 is published a new book by a technology writer: Anatole Andro, The 1421 Heresy: An Investigation into the Ming Maritime Survey of the World. Authorhouse, September 2005. English language, ISBN 140873490. Check website: www.1421heresy.com/
LOST WORLDS has lately (mid-October 2005) been receiving much e-mail critical of Menzies' book, 1421. So much, that the time has come to ask: should 1421 be consigned to the fiction shelves? If so, who should be doing the re-consigning? Readers? Librarians? Webmasters in cyberspace? Makers of TV documentaries? Or, the publishers of 1421?
For a variety of anti-Menzies information, visit a website for scholars, being the H-Asia We Homepage, a Net-list set-up, at: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
An overview of the controversy about 1421 is available at: http://hnn.us/articles/18698.html
See also for critique of the controversy: http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/11/2005/01/
On riddle of a lost Chinese city on the American Atlantic Coast (dated 24 Feb 2005) see: http://www.asianpacificpost.com/news/article/332.html
Preamble: To whom it may concern: I have just
submitted the following complaint against Transworld Publishers
to http://www.consumercomplaints.org.uk/complaintmap.asp
The
complaint derives from Transworld publishing and advertising
1421 as a history book, which I believe is a violation of the
British Trade Descriptions Act of 1968.
Best wishes,
Geoff Wade
Follows, the substance of a complaint from Dr. Geoff Wade, Singapore, October 2005 (lodged with this website on 12/13-10-2005 - Ed)
I [Geoff Wade] have purchased a copy of
Gavin Menzies' book, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World,
published by Transworld on the basis that it was classified as
"History" in their catalogue. A detailed reading of the
text revealed that the work is a fairtytale and fiction of the worst
kind. I detail some of the outrageous fiction perpetrated within the
volume:
Claims by Mr. Menzies followed by facts...
1. Claim: Four eunuch admirals - Hong Bao, Zhou Man, Zhou Wen and Yang Qing - led fleets to the Americas, Australia, Greenland and the Antarctic during voyages between 1421 and 1423.
Fact: There are no Chinese or other texts which suggest in any way that these four eunuchs, or any other Ming commanders, traveled anywhere at all beyond Asia, the Middle East and the East coast of Africa. All other voyages derive solely from Mr. Menzies' imagination. Further, the currents, winds and dates Menzies cites in support would not have carried the ships anywhere near where he claims. In short, there is no archaeological, textual or archival material to support the Menzies thesis as set down in 1421. In this book Menzies intentionally distorts known materials and deliberately alters known facts in order to support his thesis.
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2. Claim: Sailors and concubines from these fleets settled in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and islands across the Pacific. In evidence, he cites studies of "recent" inflow of "Chinese genes" and "East Asian DNA" into the Americas.
Fact: There is no evidence of Ming settlement sites in, or even Ming knowledge, of these places until the arrival of the Jesuits in China in the 16th century. The genetic evidence on which Menzies relies is provided by a company whose genetic tests have been labelled a "scam" by Stephen O'Brien, the US National Cancer Institute's laboratory chief.
3. Claim: There exists a range of wrecks of the ships from these voyages spread around the world, and these are proof of the voyages claimed by Menzies.
Fact: Not one wreck which can be linked with the eunuch voyages in the first 30 years of the 15th century (or indeed any Chinese wreck) has been identified outside of the Asian region.
4. Claim: The Ming voyagers built celestial observation platforms at 24 places across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Menzies names and provides coordinates for these platforms. (1421, p. 416/17, 457)
Fact: There is no textual or archaeological evidence to even begin to suggest that the Ming voyagers built observation platforms anywhere in the world. Again, their existence derives only from the fertile imagination of Mr. Menzies.
5. Claim: The Ming armadas left a range of other built structures around the world, particularly in Australasia and the Americas, including the Newport Round Tower, the Gympie pyramid and other structures and mines. They also left a ship's slipway made of stones on the Bimini islands in the Caribbean.
Fact: Not one of the structures Mr. Menzies cites has been shown to have any links with China. The Bimini "slipway", which is in any case parallel to the shore, has been shown to be a completely natural formation.
6. Claim: The Chinese "were aware that the earth was a globe and had divided it into 365 and a quarter degrees (the number of days in the year) of latitude and longitude." (1421, p. 449)
Fact: There is no evidence that during the early Ming [period], the Chinese had any knowledge of the earth as a globe and certainly none that they were aware of latitude and longitude.
7. Claim: The Ming voyagers surveyed South America, Antarctica, North America and the Atlantic as well as Australasia. "The whole world was accurately charted by 1428." (1421, p. 411)
Fact: There is no text or other evidence which suggests that the Ming voyagers went anywhere near these places and no Chinese maps which indicate any surveying of these places. Further, there are no contemporary Ming artifacts found in any of these regions.
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8. Claim: A range of European maps show anomalies which can only be explained by accepting the Chinese voyages proposed by Mr. Menzies as having taken place.
Fact: The cartographic anomalies which Mr. Menzies points to, real or imagined, can be explained through many avenues, the most likely being that Arab navigators, who had been traveling these waters for 600 years before the Chinese, had produced maps of areas they traveled to.
9. Claim: Mr. Menzies noted that the Venetian Niccolo da Conti was the crucial and only link between Chinese and European cartographers. Menzies claims that he participated in the voyages over several years and carried Chinese maps back to Europe. He notes that Da Conti "had spent years aboard a junk of the treasure fleet" and that "Chinese maps passed from Da Conti to Fra Mauro, and from him to Dom Pedro of Portugal and Prince Henry the Navigator". (1421, pp. 369, 84-87, 92-93).
Fact: Da Conti, who left us detailed accounts of his travels, recounts neither meeting any Ming envoy in Calicut, nor traveling on any Chinese ship for even a day, nor seeing or receiving any Chinese maps showing a new world. The utter and complete contempt for truth with which Menzies depicts these events is disheartening.
10. Claim: Mr. Menzies claims that a number of mylodons (a type of giant sloth) had been taken from South America to New Zealand and China by the Ming ships.
Fact: All available evidence suggests that the Mylodon has been extinct for several thousand years, which militates somewhat against the likely veracity of Mr. Menzies claims in this respect. But such sloppy research is found throughout the volume. He notes, for example, rubber trees in Malacca 450 years before they had been introduced from South America by the British etc etc, ad nauseum.
In short, representing this work as history is a flagrant violation of the [UK] Trade Descriptions Act of 1968 which makes it an offence both to apply a false description to any goods and to supply or offer to supply any goods which have a false trade description applied.
To be an offence the Act notes that the indication must be false to a material degree. To represent fiction as history does indeed meet this criterion.
The role of the Local Trading Standards authorities is to enforce the provisions of this Act and they are able to take whatever steps they consider necessary to prevent others from being deceived. I trust that appropriate action will be taken in this case.
If you require further information, please do not hesitate to contact me [Geoff Wade in Singapore].
With best wishes,
Geoff Wade
NB: Dr. Geoff Wade is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. He previously co-ordinated the China-ASEAN Project in the Centre of Asian Studies at University of Hong Kong. He is a historian with interests in China-Southeast Asian historical interactions and comparative historiography - Ed.
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See also: Dennis De Witt, 'Cheng Ho and the Ming Treasure Fleets', Dutch Courier, February 2003., page 20 and 29. (The author is from Malacca, of Dutch descent, and maintains interest in the Dutch influence in Malaysia. Check a Dutch Descendants website: http://www.geocities.com/dutchdescendants/ (For a non-detailed debunking of Menzies' 1421 by an Australian, see article, '1421: The Year China Didn't Discover Terribly Much', by Peter Barrett, (vice-president of Canberra Skeptics), The Skeptic, Vol. 25, No. 3, Spring 2005., pp. 48-51. - An Australian magazine) For wider information on the history of the use of the Indian Ocean more so by Islamic mariners in the periods treated in 1421, see the lavishly-illustrated cyber-magazine presentation from Saudi-Aramco World (issue in print July-August 2005) at: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/
The Note below is from the Editor of Lost Worlds The Website, Dan Byrnes, who in another life has long-term interests in the maritime history of the British Empire, generally, and more especially, regarding Australia.
Of course, it can't be proved, but when I first read Gavin Menzies' book, 1421, I put it down thinking, “What a marvellous sci-fi tale, and what an unusual setting, early Ming dynasty!” Whatever, I found it an enjoyable, stimulating read, quite imaginative, and thought it would make a marvellous movie, perhaps of the ilk of Dune, by Frank Herbert, which is a marvellous sci-fi novel, but a horrible dog of a movie. But is 1421 proper history? I really didn't think so! Slowly, a decision gells...
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This website, Lost Worlds, maintains an editorial policy as follows - "Lost Worlds has the ambition of enhancing the influence of the New Age Movement through an appreciation of historical accuracy." At times, my associates and I pursue this policy with tongues firmly in cheeks. In fact, we are sceptics with a due sense of mystery-about-the-universe and about life-in-general. We try to report in a disinterested way. We do, however, happen to take science and historical accuracy very seriously, versus wishful thinking, magical thinking and blind faith, more so due to the fascinating scenarios and arguments which can arise when historical accuracy finds itself markedly improved – which happens from time to time. The issues arising can be quite absorbing. (That is, and very often, and just for fun, we are sceptical about scepticism... and we admit that we happen to find the maths of fractals rather fascinating. We also find that human history is replete with moral, intellectual and psychological fractals, though we don't pretend to understand this well, either.)
But in reporting this fracas re 1421, this website now puts aside its usual disinterested attitudes about issues, our attitude current since 1998, and we become involved. This is because we take these particular issues seriously – what in history is fact versus what is fiction?
After I first read 1421, I carefully went through it again and made notes which soon appeared on timeline pages of this website by way of advertising what I thought one day might become an entertaining debate. Before upload, I edited these notes severely, due to respect for Menzies' ordinary rights in terms of ordinary copyright law.
About chronology: The notes from 1421 I did NOT put on the Net concerned the following: the activities of naval fleets can be illuminated well, and easily enough, if historians go through the ships' logs and compare and contrast the experience of each ship. This could be done, but has still not been done, with the case of the First Fleet to Australia, 1786-1789. As far as I know, for any report on just when the First Fleet ships arrived home to British ports, Australians had to wait till around 1989 for the noted Australian researcher on the First Fleet, Mollie Gillen, to report on such matters. This question had interested me – when did the First Fleet ships arrive home? - and I wrote to Gillen on such matters. So my views on such research matters here in maritime history comes from real-and-recent experience on a relatively recent historical scenario. If interested, see: http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/blackheath/)
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It is rare for historians to compile a holistic view of a fleet's activity, even a wartime fleet, in order to find out anything. (If you doubt this, try to find a useful report, in English, translated from Spanish historians, of the English repulse of what the English usually regard as the problem of The Spanish Armada!)
There are no Chinese ships' logs for Gavin Menzies to consult, as far as we are aware. Menzies with 1421 I feel has stepped unwittingly here into a historian's trap – what is the best methodology for treating the experience of an entire fleet? As far as I know, the activities of Nelson's war fleet which won the Battle of Trafalgar was not compiled from the various ship's logs till about 1922 – which means, that despite British patriotism for decades about winning the Battle of Trafalgar, no Britisher actually knew just how the French lost, or how Nelson won, in terms of maritime battle tactics. Conclusion? Across the Twentieth Century, even experienced university historians can remain inexperienced at overviewing the activities of entire fleets of ships!
I also happen to know, as a maritime historian, that British historians have still not written an acceptable history of Britain's Russia fleet, which used in the heydays of sailing ships, say 1800 or so, to be about 120 ships per year. (That by 2000 or so, Britain's Russia fleet still remains unexamined by British historians is, on reflection, quite remarkable! Quite remiss, too! Where did I gain this impression? By visiting the archives of the Port of London Authority in mid-1989! But that is quite another story!)
So it seems here that despite his “naval experience” as a British submariner, this had not crossed Menzies' mind as he wrote 1421, about the methodological problems of the historical logging of naval (full-fleet) activity. Curious here, I re-chronologised Menzies' claims about his Chinese mariners' progress by way of re-chronologising his comparative information on where the ships of each Chinese squadron would be, by date, at any one time. That is, if one squadron is busy coasting parts of Antarctica, where, day-by-day, is his Chinese squadron which rounded Africa and allegedly went into the Atlantic? Where is his Chinese squadron which is allegedly criss-crossing or current-hopping the Pacific? In fact, I never got back to this set of notes, but I shall go through them again soon to see what I made of Menzies' information at that time. (If any netsurfer reads this and is interested in the exercise, I'll do this even more quickly). Suffice to say, this re-chronologising exercise, which became rather detailed, made me even more sceptical about Menzies' book. I distracted myself by reading Louise Levathes' worthwhile book on the Chinese voyages about the 1420s.
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Time went on and I happened in early 2005 to be asked by New Dawn magazine in Australia to write an article on Menzies' claim in 1421 vis-a-vis the mystery of The Mahogany Ship at Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. (In October 2005 I find that this article has been lifted in entirety from New Dawn's website, and with proper attribution, though with no contact with myself as writer, by an African news digest-type website which appears, on examination, to actually emanate from Germany! If not England (?). See: http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=243516)
Menzies feels the Mahogany Ship is a Chinese junk, circa 1421-1422, but Menzies did not show at the September 2005 symposium held in Warrnambool on this very mystery, claiming ill-health. Generally, Menzies via his website seems to feel that, long-term, Australians have confronted his claims in 1421 with “a screen of silence”. (Read: Australians simply don't believe it. I happen to know that New Zealanders view Menzies' claims about “Chinese in NZ” in a very livid way, they are much more negative to Menzies' book than Australians are.)
I am entirely unconvinced that The Mahogany Ship of Warrnambool might have been be a Chinese junk. If there is no Chinese connection at Warrnambool, what happens to other aspects of Menzies theory?
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Researching for this article, I e-mailed Menzies' website, and got a screen of silence as response. Delving deeper, I began to wonder especially about Menzies' claims that Chinese mariners had circumnavigated Papua-New Guinea, as one of his maps indicates. My 500 words on this were edited out of the article which appeared in New Dawn, as too complex for the average reader, so I have already put that version of the article on the Net on another website. I find no reason at all to believe, as Menzies suggests, that Chinese mariners ever circumnavigated New Guinea! If they did, the information never came to the attention of any European navigator at all. Since most people regard New Guinea as a trifling geographic prize, it might become very ironic, if Menzies' claims about Chinese interest in New Guinea/Australia may one day lead to the downfall of Menzies' theory (?). Which is all it is; a theory, yet unproven.
In the meantime, I became familiar with the Web material from Menzies' critics on the Net, particularly Hartz and Da Silva, who as North Americans try to comprehensively debunk Menzies' claims concerning North America – viz: Menzies' claims re the achievements or otherwise of Columbus.
My own view is that of an Australasian. As I've worked on Lost Worlds website since 1997 - eight years now - I've grown very annoyed about Northern Hemispherean writers considering their Northern Hemispherean readership, dreaming up scenarios for some theory they have, and invoking non-factual views on Australasian historical scenarios. All these writers are doing is exploiting the ignorance of their readerships. The case has arisen in the USA of a silly-minded woman writing New Age nonsense about the beliefs of Australian Aboriginals of pre-contact and post-contact times. Publicity on this ludicrous situation ended somewhat after official bodies for Australian Aboriginals made official complaints (to the USA, as best they could) about the absurd ideas publicized via this book.
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(In one major case, a New York writer went to the trouble of mailing me his latest book on matters global to Lost Worlds for review, whereupon I critted the book negatively for its views on Australasia, and this website has never heard from that writer since. An added problem, I felt, was that this writer had made remarks I thought unwise about the religion, Islam. Guess whose city was later slammed? 9/11! To quote here from an ancient-but-polite old Chinese curse, we nowadays live “in interesting times”.)
The fact of the matter is that book publishers with large budgets in the Northern Hemisphere have often been regarding Australasian situations as a last and little-known cultural frontier, a free resource, a kind of whoopee-doo tabula rasa, to be mucked-about with, misconstrued, distorted by their writers, for whatever set of reasons. It is now high time that this trend was stopped dead in its tracks. In which case, in the contexts of post-colonial history(s), a variety of South-East Asian people(s) might inevitably become meat in the sandwich of any in-fight between Hemispheres north and south, about history(?) South-East Asia was moderately well-known to navigators long before Cook discovered eastern Australia. As Louise Levathes indicates in her book, When China Ruled The Seas, The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994), Chinese mariners were comfortably knowledgeable about South-East Asia.
This misuse of Australasian scenarios is why Lost Worlds The Website decides to become involved in the 1421 debate!
Forget the 1421 publicity machine and “North America and Columbus”, if you can. I feel, that Gavin Menzies has been trading on the ignorance of the world not just about Chinese maritime history, and about maritime history in general, world-wide - but ignorance about Australasian history and prehistory as well. It's sad, though, that this might disappoint any chauvinists who are keen on promoting any histories of a more activist Chinese world curiosity – as it pits region against region and people against people. But who is to blame here for such underlying subtleties as seen across centuries - the critic of Menzies? Or Menzies for promoting fiction? (By the way, why does Menzies' website come out of Tuvalu [domain name suffix, tv], in the Pacific? Why, domain-name-wise, does a well-bankrolled UK writer come out into cyberspace from a group of British-influenced islands in the Pacific? Cheapness? What? Why is Menzies' website not suffixed – uk/?)
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Lost Worlds The Website, then, which is quite proudly suffixed, .com.au/, feels that extra controversy about 1421 might well put publishers around the world on notice in a useful way – stop screwing around with Australasian history!! Stop exploiting it for mere financial advantage. Cease ignoring Australasia and realise – make your writers and their readers realise – what kind of a world it is that includes Australasia in the general schemes of history. The pathways to a usefully holistic view of world history are not, I think, as outlined by Gavin Menzies.
In short, behind its visible cyber-scenes, Lost Worlds The Website has considerable information resources already compiled, so far not called on, which could quickly be brought to bear on behalf of all who find Menzies' book, 1421, somewhat unconvincing. Given Menzies' public persona created so far, debate on the issues should be enjoined by Gavin Menzies in the usual ways enjoined by historians, in journal articles, and/or on the Web. As a historian of any kind, myself, I find it objectionable that Menzies has been quoted – words to effect - “There's not one chance in a million that I'm wrong” about his theory on Chinese mariners.
In fact, no proper historian would ever put his or her case in such words; this is simply how historians do NOT think about issues, or express themselves. Historians are far more cautious, because they have to methodically, patiently, compare/contrast sets of evidence about individuals of achievement, or eras of note; they compare sets of evidence from various countries in a disinterested way. Proper historians do not aspire to be absolutely correct, they merely aspire to see their views and findings becoming serviceable for the researchers and thinkers of the future. Gavin Menzies and his publishers simply do not have the humility that historians normally have. By his own words, Menzies indicates that he is NOT in fact a useful historian.
And as a webmaster myself, I personally find that I have to say that as a vehicle which can allegedly handle the issues which arise from the publication of 1421, Gavin Menzies' website is a pretence, a bad joke' intellectually the website is an entire disgrace, technically and informationally (I rechecked it on 16-10-2005.) Menzies' website is, quite frankly, a fabric of cyber-fakery and a protracted, well-deliberated exercise in sustained avoidance of the more substantive issues. As a webmaster, I would even say that in terms of the arcane technicals of website production, the technology hardly exists yet, which would easily/conveniently allow the kind of “academic” back-and-forth of discussion, which would allow Menzies' website to properly assist any of his proper [academic] defence of his claims. So if the information technology for the proper conduct of the argument doesn't exist yet, or is still primitive, ergo, Menzies' website has to be - web fakery of a kind. Q.E.D. (And I do hope that serious computer programmers interested in the technicals of IT vis-a-vis website enhancement will read this viewpoint and suggest some useful improvements for the technical situations complained of! It's about time something more useful was done!)
If Menzies and his publishers, and their amazing budgets, might prove untrustworthy on such issues, this is why this website, Lost Worlds, is stepping outside its usual editorial policy of being disinterested, and is taking the side of Geoff Wade and other critics of 1421, as above. As an issue, this is the first time in eight years on the Net, and quite entertaining years they have been, that this website, which deliberately/thoughtfully canvasses controversial issues, has decided publicly to take a side. We do so on behalf of Australasia and the integrity of its histories since the dawn of time! We do so out of a suitable respect for world history. In the interests also, in terms of our long-stated editorial policy, of emphasizing historical accuracy.
- Dan Byrnes – 16/17 October 2005
(But I still have to say, I'd love to see a movie on Zheng He and “1421”!)
Further on 1421...
In terms of literary criticism, the situation has already become alarmingly complicated. Menzies' critics by now have been reading all available editions/versions of 1421, which has deliberately been titled and marketed in the USA [ie, differently to titles seen in other countries including Australia] to capitalise on “a major challenge” to the reputation of Columbus. As a result, there is already little point in citing which remark of Menzies, on which page of which edition of which book, is being challenged by which critic from which Hemisphere of the globe – it's complicated!!
This problem will become even worse if the critics happen to contradict each other for any reasons at all – which could happen very easily. So this page is forced to deal in generalities, not pedantic and scholarly specifics. Normal courtesy to Gavin Menzies does not oblige anyone, we think, to go to the trouble to re-edit the now vast amount of material which could be reproduced, critting 1421 in the negative.
But already, it seems clear that after adventurously (and single-handedly) issuing a major challenge to world scholarship on matters of the history and historiography of world exploration, Menzies, even on his website, is unwilling to debate his critics on points of argument arising. It seems to this website that this is an untenable and inherently unreasonable position. It is also a position which leaves the critics free to natter amongst this themselves, which is exactly what our e-mail indicates is happening, from South East Asia and Australia to Florida and elsewhere in the USA.
Oddly, very oddly, people in Europe seem to be ultra-relaxed that Menzies indicates that his Chinese mariners entirely ignored Europe!
Meanwhile, I as an Australian cannot believe that Chinese mariners made their way to Antarctica, then sailing north, and with amazing luck, island-hopped the awesome expanses of the Southern Ocean to arrive about Western Australia. Nor can I believe that several large, lumbering Chinese junks actually made their way east-west through Torres Strait without grave mishap. It only makes it worse here to ask, given the Torres Strait wind patterns, at which time of year?
One wonders, what happens after 1421 loses most of the Southern Hemisphere to disbelievers? Can the remaining material in 1421 keep the Northern Hemisphere safe for – or safe from? - Menzies' book?
1421: Item: Following is part of a review of Gavin Menzies' book 1421 by Jeffrey Mellefont, a researcher at Australian National Maritime Museum in a magazine, Signals...nd. "Menzies writes well, bringing vividly to life the Ming court with all its intrigues, and what's known of actual Chinese voyaging. It's a shame that he didn't present his theory as fiction. It would have made a great tale, of airport novel size. But presenting his ideas as scholarship requires that they be judged accordingly and too often, by these standards, they fail. One is left wondering, too, at the integrity of the publisher who leaped into print with a work that is supported widely by neither Western nor Chinese scholars, yet has been promoted as though it were."
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Readers be warned – this page is going to become very extensive. By 19 October, this webpage has either read material from, or had e-mail from, or otherwise seen material originally supplied by, the following critics of 1421 (given here in no particular order):
a variety of New Zealanders, a person associated with the Mahogany Ship Committee in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. Bill Hartz in the US and his associate, Dr. da Silva (medical). Edward Dreyer in Florida, from the University of Miami. Geoff Wade, an Australian academic in Singapore. It is also easy to find chatroom flame-sessions about 1421 coming from a location such as Hong Kong.
Also, Captain Malhao Pereira, Portuguese Navy officer (ret.) After 38 years of duty in the Navy). Teacher of Navigation on the Portuguese Naval Academy for 7 Years. Captain of the three-masts bark Sagres, a Portuguese sail training ship, for 4 years, sailing in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Captain of the Portuguese Naval Academy's 65 ft sloop Vega (a sail training ship) for four years, cruising and racing in the Atlantic Ocean. Port Captain of Inhambane and Mozambique for four years. Masters degree on “History of Portuguese Expansion and Navigation”. Has published extensively on historical navigational matters. Lectured extensively in Portugal and abroad.
Also, Captain Philip. J. Rivers, Master Mariner and naval reservist who sailed as master and mate in the seas of south-east Asia (1954-59) and was a lecturer, School of Nautical Studies, Singapore Polytechnic (1960-66). Relevant publications: '1421' voyages: Fact & Fantasy for the Perak Academy and 'Monsoon Rhythms and Trade Patterns: Ancient Times East of Suez', Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, December 2004. Lately resident in Malaysia and often visiting Singapore.
Lost Worlds has also had e-mail (not necessarily related to 1421 issues) from an activist from the north of South America who talks, but not specifically enough, about alleged “pre-Columbus maps”.
See also: Dennis De Witt, 'Cheng Ho and the Ming Treasure Fleets', Dutch Courier, February 2003., pp. 20-29. (The author is from Malacca, of Dutch descent, and maintains interest in the Dutch influence in Malaysia. Check a Dutch Descendants website: http://www.geocities.com/dutchdescendants/ (For a non-detailed debunking of Menzies' 1421 by an Australian, see article, '1421: The Year China Didn't Discover Terribly Much', by Peter Barrett, (vice-president of Canberra Skeptics), The Skeptic, Vol. 25, No. 3, Spring 2005., pp. 48-51. - An Australian magazine)
Other critics of Menzies include: Prof. Su Ming-Yang (a Taiwanese living in the US in Torrance, California, and an associate of Wade), Prof Jin Guo-Ping (a Chinese scholar living in Portugal, Maria Cristina Marques Pedroso Malhao Pereira (who has written a report dated 29 January 2005 on interchanges between her husband and Menzies entitled, The Book by Menzies is a Grotesque Fraud). Also, Dr. Cheng Zeng-Hong of Taiwan.
Louise Levathes has confined herself to saying that Menzies has “found nothing new”. She evidently meant, nothing new that is real. It is notable that as a scholar, Levathes can read Chinese, Menzies cannot.
Also contra Menzies, see website: http://hnn.us/articles/1308.html which is from History News Network. An article by academic Timothy Furnish, "Is Gavin Menzies Right or Wrong?", dated 3 October 2003.
More detailed information on what Menzies' critics are discussing is given in a section below.
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Suffice to say, the codes that maritime historians have developed across centuries for discussing their topics, and it often amounts to world-history, seem not to suit the author of 1421 at all. Meanwhile, the histories of world exploration are not exactly hot topics that become well-known and rivet the general public. (For example, I recently read, when researching on Torres of Torres Strait, that a man named Torres had sailed earlier with Columbus. So does this indicate a century-long interest in world exploration by the Torres family? It would seem unwise to jump to any quick conclusion! But it is tantalising, no?)
I feel that Menzies has been cheerfully exploiting this widespread, worldwide ignorance. But what to do about that? To be reasonable, and obvious about it as well, anyone who imagines that they have found something new in world maritime history naturally puts themselves under the obligation of trying to abide by the conventions of such discussions. An article or two in some journal usually read by maritime historians cannot go astray – while today, a website would be handy. Menzies of course, has a website, but the problem is that it's a useless website, given the directions that discussions of 1421 are lately taking.
Also obviously, world travel/exploration is international, so if several peoples, around the world, cannot well remember visits from a particular people (in this case, the Chinese), maybe those visits never occurred? Unless seriously-convincing evidence can be advanced, of course. We have by the way just been amazed, around the world, by the supposed discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores, of evidence of “hobbits”, some new kind of species of humanity. If there can be controversy about this, why not about 1421? But it remains a problem with some publishers, that “controversy” is not part of a search for truth, it is merely a marketing tool!
If Menzies does not wish to observe the usual courtesies, there is also no reason why he should be treated with excessive-courtesy-from-a-distance. So this webpage is going to be harsh if necessary. For example, it seems to this webpage that from world history, after1600, both the Moghul Empire of India, and the Chinese government, made the grave mistake of taking Europeans so unseriously, they never bothered to express curiosity, to send diplomats to European nations, or to develop suitable defensive navies. As it happened, both India and China were later influenced excessively by Europeans, to say the least! Given this painful experience, it is hard to believe that the Chinese from 1421 once explored the entire world, but ignored Europe – and then made a similar mistake a few centuries later? Ignoring Europe? The Europe which had so long been legendarily aware of China/Cathay due to the Silk Road connection!
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These days of our new millennium, popular history is at risk of becoming a debased medium, promoted by cynical publishers. There are other books and matters of so-called "popular history" which are all-too-objectionable from the points of serious historians and other researchers. Among them are books by: von Daniken; Immanual Velikovsky (though Velikovsky might have helped to reposition the role of catastrophe in the consideration of geology?); David Irving, the professional Holocaust-denier; the story of the exposing of Margaret Mead, “anthropologist”, in her own youth gulled about free love by a humourous group of Pacific Island women who saw her coming; (See Derek Freeman, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead. Westview Press, 1999., 279pp.)
... the embarrassing Helen Demidenko case in Australia, about a fabricated set of “truths” re Balkans matters during and after World War II; the Hitler Diaries, an hilarious hoax which embarrassed News Limited worldwide, subject of a morbidly-funny movie which happens to star two world-famous comedians, including the Australian Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage).
The author of 1421 is often accused by his critics of – wishful thinking. True, the wishful historical thinker will generally not get far with the usual kinds of tough-minded writers/researchers who manage journals which publish formal articles on topics in history. But since 2002, Gavin Menzies, manfully, lone and single-handedly, and very adventurously, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, has taken on just about every scholar in the world, past and present, who has ever considered the entire maritime history, and/or the entire economic history of the trade patterns of China! And he wishes to succeed... ? Really? Well yes, this is actually what Gavin Menzies has done!!
It is now time to begin to examine the basic chronologies Menzies uses in 1421. And why chronologies? Because of simplicity – textual/contextual analyses will be too-complicated a design for a webpage. Major attention will be given to the years of the claimed voyages – 1421-1423. The chronology to be presented soon on this website will be derived from many sources including Menzies' own 1421. ///Re global sea levels and the beginning of a so-called Mini-Ice-Age (often dated at about 1420-1450AD)... NB: Lost Worlds is now developing a new page to handles this information – Go to: more to come ////
From Singapore, some of Dr. Geoff Wade's views are given below.
Capt. Philip Rivers has produced a monograph contra to Menzies: “1421” Voyages: Fact and Fantasy. [monograph No 11.] 2004. Malaysia, first edition. ISBN 9834 055641. Rebutting Menzies on three fronts: re documents, nautical and geographical aspects, and general lacks of evidence.
Dr. Wade and Dr. Su Ming-Yang have issued a joint criticism of 1421, first drafted 11 March 2005, and dated 16 May 2005. Part of it is given below (heavily edited for this webpage for legal reasons).
(Situation: US Library of Congress for 16 May 2005 had arranged to help present Gavin Menzies' views of his “discoveries”. Various concerned scholars organised a protest to Library of Congress about this. First draft on 11 March, 2005, see below for final draft from concerned scholars of 8 April 2005)
COMMUNIQUE:
A joint criticism on Gavin Menzies' new claims about the Zheng He Voyages
Issued: 16 May, 2005
On 15 March, 2002, in the lecture hall of the Royal Geographical Society in London, Mr. Gavin Menzies (hereafter GM for brevity) made several fantastic new claims about how the fleets of the Chinese admiral, Zheng He, circumnavigated the globe during 1421 to 1423. Not so obvious was the fact that GM had rented the hall at his own expense, without the sponsorship of the RGS. He later issued the book, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, in November, 2002. Ever since then, his book has met with extensive expert criticism and he has had to continually change the so-called “evidence” in support of his claims.
Despite his numerous claims and the hundreds of pieces of evidence he has collected from all over the world, all have been definitely and entirely discredited by historians, maritime experts and oceanographers from China, the US and Europe. Not a single shred of extant documents and artifacts has been found to support his new claims on these early Ming naval expeditions. GM has discovered that he is now no longer welcome in China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Portugal, as his outright fabrications about Zheng He’s 6th voyage going far beyond the African east coast are totally contradictory to Chinese scholars' understanding of their own history.
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Now, GM has switched his targets to Singapore and Malaysia, as can be seen in a recent article, “Riddle of a lost Chinese city on the Atlantic coast,” in Asian Pacific Post, dated 24 February, 2005. In this article, GM makes newer claims that a Canadian architect (no name given) has discovered a lost Chinese naval base about 2/3 the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing on the Atlantic coast (again no exact location given), and that he will make a public disclosure of it in a scheduled Zheng He meeting at the US Library of Congress (Asia Department) on 16 May, 2005 and that GM hopes to raise funds for research about this lost city.
Now, GM’s release of some tantalizing claims to whet newspaper readers’ curiosity and promising more disclosures three months later at the world renowned Library of Congress meeting clearly reminds us of his similar ploy in London three years ago. He hopes many world newspaper reporters will go to the LC meeting and gather lots of publicity for his next edition of 1421. What a clever publicity scheme for GM in replacing the Royal Geographical Society in London with the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for promoting his new edition of 1421 re his inventions at the expense of China’s Ming history!
In the above article, GM further claimed that he had found that Kublai Khan (1260-1294), Emperor of the Yuan dynasty, had charted almost all of the world, including the Americas, and that Zheng He owed a huge amount to Kublai Khan. According to GM’s new claims, it was Kublai Khan, rather than Zheng He, that had discovered/charted the Americas. GM then went even further to say that he had found ancient Chinese maps of the Americas predating even Kublai Khan. So, after all, it is not Kublai Khan, but some other un-named Chinese that had charted the Americas. Who knows what Chinese dynasty and what deeds GM will give them credit for?
GM called these maps the “Kublai Kahn world maps” at a Lisbon meeting last November (2004). GM flashed them without any explanation as to their sources and other details. Two of the undersigned (Dr. Jin and Captain Pereira ) were at that meeting and their impressions were that these maps looked too precisely-drawn to have been done in the Yuan dynasty. In fact, many copies of the world maps made during the Yuan dynasty exist in China today. None of these maps have any inkling of the presence of the Americas. No official document from that dynasty ever alluded to the knowledge of the Americas either.
We wish to refresh readers’ memories that GM is playing his usual tactics... by giving a few examples:
1. At the March, 2002 Royal Geographical Society meeting, GM claimed most confidently that he had located the wrecks of nine huge Zheng He treasure ships (about 440 feet long and 180 feet wide) in the Caribbean Sea, but that he could not disclose their exact locations till his book was published (about nine months later). These wrecks turned out to be nothing more than sand mounts about several hundred feet long near the beach of Bimini Island, without one single piece of old rotten wood from the ancient wrecks.
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2. In his book, GM claims that only Zheng He’s great fleets with their advanced knowledge of determining longitude could complete a survey of the entire African coastline. His evidence is a copy ( c.1470) of the Kangnido world map, the original of which was made in 1402 by Korea, based on Chinese sources. GM shows only a portion of the map covering Africa and Arabia. The shape of Africa is indeed triangular as it should be. Readers could readily accept GM’s cartographical map as an excellent proof of his claim.
Why did he not then show the entire map if it was such an impressive piece of evidence? The simple truth is that the size of China in the Kangnido world map is about ten times larger than that of the African continent, whereas in reality Africa is twice the size of China. Had GM shown the whole map, who would have believed that Zheng He’s fleets possessed an advanced method for determining longitude, several hundred years prior to its commonly accepted availability, and were able to complete a survey of the entire African coasts? This case casts doubt on the methodology of GM’s handling of his so-called evidence. In fact, there exists an original 1389, Chinese-made “Great Ming World Map” at a Peijing national archive, very similar to the Kangnido Map. Both of these world maps had been made definitely prior to the Zheng He seven voyages ( 1405 -1433 ) and [were] surely available to Zheng He. So why did the Zheng He fleets have anything to do with the survey of the African coastline in 1421 to 1423, as claimed in GM's book?
3. About one year ago, GM lauded what he said were large docking sites, building foundations and large ship wrecks of Zheng He’s fleets that could be found along South Island of New Zealand. These so-called great discoveries, proving Zheng He had reached New Zealand, were first reported by Mr. Cedric Bell and listed on GM’s 1421.TV website. So far, the only solid artifacts supporting these claims are several dozen huge round boulders scattered on the beach near Moeraki (the largest about 1.3 m in diameter). These are the well-known Moeraki boulders ( see Figure 3), which GM suggested were blasts from the huge Zheng He ship wrecks. Some of these boulders weigh more than two tons each. There were never such heavy blasts employed in any of Chinese ancient sailing ships. In fact, these boulders are formed naturally through known geological process.
4. Mr. Zhu Chang-Qieu, Chinese Naval Survey Bureau; Captain Philip Rivers, retired Canadian Navy officer; and Captain Malhao Pereira, Portuguese Navy officer each have considerable expertise on nautical subjects of the world’s oceans. They have found many cases of impossibilities in the sailing routes of Zheng He’s fleets, as proposed in GM’s book. In the words of Mr. Zhu, all of the global sailing expeditions beyond the African east coast described in 1421 are fictitious at best.
There are many more examples we could provide to illustrate the [misunderstandings...] in 1421, but we haven’t the space to present them in this short article...
Being serious educators, researchers on Chinese history, and experts on nautical techniques and oceanography, we feel a strong obligation to speak out publicly about the mistakes we have found regarding the early Ming naval expeditions in Gavin Menzies’ 1421. We are deeply concerned about his making further errors at the Library of Congress on 16 May [2005].
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The numerous claims on early Ming maritime history presented by GM have seriously compromised many readers' understanding[s] about Chinese history, worldwide. This misuse of world history has to be stopped as soon as possible.
We sincerely plead with the international community of historians, nautical experts and media to join us in this worthy effort to spare millions of honest readers from further misinformation.
Prepared jointly and signed by the following ( names are arranged in the alphabetical order ) :
Dr. Jin Guo-Ping, a senior researcher at the Sino-Portugal Cultural Research Center, Lisbon.
Captain Malhao Pereira, Portuguese Navy officer.
Captain Philip J. Rivers, a retired Canadian Navy officer [and author of titles as noted above]
Dr. Su Ming-Yang, Senior Research Oceanographer (retired) at US Naval Research Laboratory (1976–2001); visiting professor at two Taiwan national universities (2001-2003); editor of Zheng He Research Newsletter (in Chinese) (2001 – 2003) in Taiwan; and author of: Seven Epic Voyages of Zheng He in Ming China: Fact, Fiction and Fabrication ( in English ), May, 2005
Dr. Geoff Wade, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Point of contact: Please send all responses to this joint criticism to Dr. Su Ming-Yang and Dr. Geoff Wade, simultaneously, at the following e-mail addresses (here deleted - Ed):
(Issued on 16 May, 2005)
:::::::::::: Ends :::::::::::::
Later-drafted version of 8 April 2005 of protest of scholars to US Library of Congress: - and heavily re-edited by the present webmaster/Lost Worlds
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16. The author states that the accuracy of Piri Reis map is due to the Chinese observations, but when they sailed along the east coast of South America they still could not calculate the latitude, since Canopus was not yet located. Besides only Hong Baoâ's fleet located the Canopus, and Zhou Man's fleet , which later on sailed the whole Pacific Ocean, was not qualified to determine latitudes in the southern hemisphere !
17. The author says that the ships of Yang Quing calculated longitudes using a total eclipse of the Moon, but during the [their] stay in the Indian Ocean the only [only-seen] eclipse of the Moon was not visible in the area. Besides, it looks very odd that only one fleet, which left China before the others, had [a] capacity of determining longitudes. It seems that the secret would only be justified if the latter fleets belonged to other countries.
Follows some edited versions of e-mail received by this website from 2 November 2005, a somewhat scumbled gathering of international e-mail various of recent origin. The rendition here of the e-mail may or may not have been heavily edited by this website editor – the reader may well have to make a protracted netsearch search for the interconnections being discussed here - Ed
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Subject: FW: [Maphist] Menzies Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:44:23 +0800 Message-ID: X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: [Maphist] Menzies thread-index: - &c
Original Message - From: maphist-bounces@geo.uu.nl
[mailto:maphist-bounces@geo.uu.nl]
On Behalf Of Dorothy F
Prescott Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 6:43 PM To: Discussion
group for map history Cc: Discussion group for map history Subject:
RE: [Maphist] Menzies:
Thanks, Francis for the additional reference sources for Bill's article I am sure they will be useful to others. Dorothy, As I was in Edinburgh from Friday last I have only this morning caught up with some interesting exchanges on the above subject. To enlarge - Dorothy's mention of Bill Richardson's latest published (and continuing) fine detective work - chiefly on place-name corruption in cartographic items - I subjoin the two different publications in which this work is available; these are in my previous traditional 'Imago Mundi' Bibliography style (i.e. with notes added to help explain the contents):-'Gavin Menzies' cartographic fiction : the case of the Chinese 'discovery' of Australia' / W.A.R. (Bill) Richardson. - In: Journal of the Australian Map Circle (Melbourne), 2004, 56, 1-11 : ill. - c.20, refs & notes.
Refutes erroneous interpretations and selective data used by G. Menzies as arguments in his book 1421 : the year China discovered the world. (London, Transworld Publishers, 2002) and 1421 : the year China discovered America. (New York : W. Morrow, 2003). As reprinted in Journal of the International Map Collectors' Society, Autumn 2004, 98, 23-32 + 'Correction' note in Winter 2004, 99, 3. - ISSN 0311-3930 Cf., Gavin Menzies' cartographic fiction : the case of the Chinese 'discovery' of Australia / W.A.R. (Bill) Richardson. - In: Journal of the International Map Collectors' Society (Oakhanger, Crewe : c/o S. Gole), Autumn 2004, 98, 23-32 : ill. (some col.) + 'Correction' note in Winter 2004, 99, 3. - c.20 refs & notes. - "Reproduced from The Globe (Journal of the Australian Map Circle)' 56 (2004) with kind permission". &c- Refutes erroneous interpretations and selective data used by G. Menzies as arguments in his book 1421 : the year China discovered the world. (London: Transworld Publishers, 2002) Issues of the 'Imago Mundi Bibliography' from vol. 40 (1988) onwards will enable interested readers to excavate other examples of Bill's objective - and non-commercial - research work from, to my knowledge at least, 1986: ... Cf., 'Jave-la-Grande: the interpretation of evidence' in (significantly) The Globe: Journal of the Australian Map Circle, 1986, 26, 42-57: ill., maps, c.35 refs & notes, ISSN 0311-3930 Francis Herbert - f.herbert@rgs.org http://www.rgs.org [see 'Collections' (including some online catalogues, e.g., many maps up to ca 1940)]] http://images.rgs.org [including maps]
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Original Message - From: H-Net list for Asian History and Culture on behalf of Ryan Dunch Sent: Sat 22/10/2005 03:13 To: H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Cc: Subject: H-ASIA: Popular History and Bunkum -- on *1421, The Year China Discovered America* H-ASIA October 21, 2005 Popular History and Bunkum -- on 1421, The Year China Discovered America.
From: Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg>
Dear H-Asia
members, I have just submitted the following complaint against
Transworld Publishers of Britain to the Consumer Complaints body of
the United Kingdom http://www.consumercomplaints.org.uk/index.asp The
complaint derives from Transworld publishing and advertising "1421:
The Year China Discovered the World" , authored by Gavin
Menzies, as a work of history, which I believe is a violation of the
British Trade Descriptions Act of 1968 Best wishes, Geoff Wade
######### Copy of complaint submitted: I purchased a copy of Gavin
Menzies' "1421: The Year China Discovered the World,"
published by Transworld, on the basis that it was classified as
"History" in their catalogue. A detailed reading of the
text revealed that the work is a fairtytale and fiction of the worst
kind. I detail some of the outrageous fiction perpetrated within the
volume: Claims by Mr. Menzies followed by facts 1. Claim: Four eunuch
admirals?-Hong Bao, Zhou Man, Zhou Wen and Yang Qing --led fleets to
the Americas, Australia, Greenland and the Antarctic during voyages
between 1421 and 1423.
Fact: There are no Chinese or other texts
which suggest in any way that these four eunuchs, or any other Ming
commanders, traveled anywhere at all beyond Asia, the Middle East and
the East coast of Africa. All other voyages derive solely from Mr.
Menzies' imagination. Further, the currents, winds and dates Menzies
cites in support would not have carried the ships anywhere near where
he claims. In short, there is no archaeological, textual or archival
material to support the Menzies thesis as set down in *1421*. In this
book Menzies intentionally distorts known materials and deliberately
alters known facts in order to support his thesis. 2. Claim: Sailors
and concubines from these fleets settled in the Americas, Australia,
New Zealand and islands across the Pacific.
In evidence, he cites
studies of "recent" inflow of "Chinese genes" and
"East Asian DNA" into the Americas. Fact: There is no
evidence of Ming settlement sites in, or even Ming knowledge, of
these places until the arrival of the Jesuits in China in the 16th
century. The genetic evidence on which Menzies relies is provided by
a company whose genetic tests have been labelled a "scam"
by Stephen O'Brien, the US National Cancer Institute's laboratory
chief.
3. Claim: There exists a range of wrecks of the ships from
these voyages spread around the world, and these are proof of the
voyages claimed by Menzies. Fact: Not one wreck which can be linked
with the eunuch voyages in the first 30 years of the 15th century (or
indeed any Chinese wreck) has been identified outside of the Asian
region.
4. Claim: The Ming voyagers built celestial observation platforms at 24 places across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Menzies names and provides coordinates for these platforms. (*1421*, pp. 416/17, 457) Fact: There is no textual or archaeological evidence to even begin to suggest that the Ming voyagers built observation platforms anywhere in the world. Again, their existence derives only from the fertile imagination of Mr. Menzies. 5. Claim: The Ming armadas left a range of other built structures around the world, particularly in Australasia and the Americas, including the Newport Round Tower, the Gympie pyramid and other structures and mines. They also left a ship's slipway made of stones on the Bimini islands in the Caribbean. Fact: Not one of the structures Mr. Menzies cites has been shown to have any links with China. The Bimini "slipway," which is in any case parallel to the shore, has been shown to be a completely natural formation. 6. Claim: The Chinese "were aware that the earth was a globe and had divided it into 365 and a quarter degrees (the number of days in the year) of latitude and longitude." (*1421*, p. 449) Fact: There is no evidence that during the early Ming, the Chinese had any knowledge of the earth as a globe and certainly none that they were aware of latitude and longitude. 7. Claim: The Ming voyagers surveyed South America, Antarctica, North America and the Atlantic as well as Australasia. "The whole world was accurately charted by 1428." (*1421* p. 411) Fact: There is no text or other evidence which suggests that the Ming voyagers went anywhere near these places and no Chinese maps which indicate any surveying of these places.
Further, there are no contemporary Ming artifacts found in any of these regions. 8. Claim: A range of European maps show anomalies which can only be explained by accepting the Chinese voyages proposed by Mr. Menzies as having taken place Fact: The cartographic anomalies which Mr. Menzies points to, real or imagined, can be explained through many avenues, the most likely being that Arab navigators, who had been traveling these waters for 600 years before the Chinese, had produced maps of areas they traveled to. 9.
Claim: Mr. Menzies noted that the Venetian Niccolo da Conti was
the crucial and only link between Chinese and European cartographers.
Menzies claims that he participated in the voyages over several years
and carried Chinese maps back to Europe. He notes that Da Conti "had
spent years aboard a junk of the treasure fleet" and that
"Chinese maps passed from Da Conti to Fra Mauro, and from him to
Dom Pedro of Portugal and Prince Henry the Navigator." (*1421*,
pp. 369, 84-87, 92-93) Fact: Da Conti, who left us detailed accounts
of his travels, recounts neither meeting any Ming envoy in Calicut,
nor traveling on any Chinese ship for even a day, nor seeing or
receiving any Chinese maps showing a new world. The utter and
complete contempt for truth with which Menzies depicts these events
is disheartening.
10. Claim: Mr. Menzies claims that a number of
mylodons (a type of giant sloth) had been taken from South America to
New Zealand and China by the Ming ships. Fact: All available evidence
suggests that the Mylodon has been extinct for several thousand
years, which militates somewhat against the likely veracity of Mr.
Menzies' claims in this respect. But such sloppy research is found
throughout the volume. He notes, for example, rubber trees in Malacca
450 years before they had been introduced from South America by the
British, etc., etc. ad nauseam.
##### In short, all major
claims within the work are fictional. Representing this work as
history is a flagrant violation of the Trade Descriptions Act of 1968
which makes it an offence both to apply a false description to any
goods and to supply or offer to supply any goods which have a false
trade description applied. To be an offence the Act notes that the
indication must be false to a material degree. To represent fiction
as history does indeed meet this criterion. The role of the Local
Trading Standards authorities is to enforce the provisions of this
Act and they are able to take whatever steps they consider necessary
to prevent others from being deceived. I trust that appropriate
action will be taken in this case. If you require further
information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I do not know
if similar legislation to the British Trade Descriptions Act exists
within the United States, but William Morrow, the publishers of the
US edition of the book "1421: the Year China Discovered
America", and an imprint of Harper Collins, lists the book under
Non-fiction/History/World:
http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060537639
With best wishes, Geoff Wade National University of Singapore
fix h1 re 29 October 2005 blut
-----Original Message----- From: Dorothy Prescott [mailto:dorothyp@unimelb.edu.au] Sent: 29 October 2005 04:31 To: Discussion group for map history Subject: RE: [Maphist] Menzies Here is some further reading on Menzies claims that the Chinese visited Australia. This article is by W. A. R. Richardson otherwise known as Bill. 'Gavin Menzies' cartographic fiction: the case of the Chinese 'discovery' of Australia' appearing in The Globe (Journal of the Australian Map Circle), no. 56, 2004, pp 1-11. Bill Richardson is a Spanish and Portuguese linguist from Flinders University in South Australia. He has many works to his credit and has written on this subject for several years taking on such 'notoriously unreliable, speculative works of Kenneth McIntyre [an Australian – Ed/LW], Eric Whitehouse, Rex Gilroy [an Australian – Ed/LW] and Wei Chuh-Hsien' (his quotes). For Australians, Menzies is just another in the growing list of fictions published on the cartographic knowledge of this [Australian] continent. The subject has appeared regularly for the last three centuries. The danger as I see it, is when such nonsense gets into the school curricula as it has in the case of McIntyre's work with not even a counter argument presented for [high school] students to study. It is important therefore that refutations such as [written by] Rivers and Richardson are written and should be publicized for all to read:
Dorothy Prescott At 03:39 AM 28/10/2005 -0700, you wrote: I have found the reaction to my comments about Gavin Menzies very interesting. I look forward to reading Capt. Rivers' book. As I said in my original note, I am not against constructive criticism and probing debate, and recognise the place of peer review in protecting standards in science and elsewhere. However, Gavin Menzies has probably done more to increase the general public's awareness of, and interest in, early Chinese navigation than any other single person, and that is surely a good thing. I have met Gavin a couple of times, initially in the British Library Map Room, and know that he put considerable effort into his research. This led him to formulate a hypothesis that the Chinese navigations were even more widespread than had already been established, and to try to explain some of the knowledge that seemed to be implied in European maps that predated known exploration of those areas. Several of the conclusions that he came to were not individually supportable by the evidence currently available, but in joining up so many dots, he managed to produce an overall picture that addressed lots of interesting areas. For example, how did Magellan know that there was a strait in the area that he eventually found it, and how did the Waldseemueller map show the unexplored areas of the Pacific coasts so well?
It is always a problem to decide when to end the research and publish. I have spent twenty five years researching the early European exploration of the American west coast, and have reached conclusions that I have not published because of insufficient evidence, even though I think they are soundly based. In researching one of my areas of interest, Hernan Cortes, I came across the case of Dr. Franz Scholes, a professor at the University of New Mexico, who was probably the greatest recent authority on Cortes, and who spent something like twenty years amassing what may be the best collection of Cortes material with the intention of writing a book. He died before doing so because he felt that he had not, even then, reached the very high standards of scholarship he set himself for publishing something. In contrast, Gavin Menzies published his book without proving every aspect of his conclusions, but as a result has had many thousands of e-mails and letters from around the world bringing to light possible evidence of early Chinese contact. I am away from home, so do not have access to my notes, but there seems plenty of emerging evidence to support his views on Chinese contact with Australia, for example, and I am looking forward to hearing details of the Chinese junk that has apparently been found up the Sacramento River, inland of San Francisco. I do not think that Gavin Menzies would claim to have produced the definitive work on early Chinese voyages, but I, for one, am glad that he published 1421, and wish that Dr. Scholes had written his book on Cortes without waiting for that final piece of confirmatory evidence. Bob Ward - --Original message----- From: Dorothy Prescott dorothyp@unimelb.edu.au Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:04:32 -0700 To: Discussion group for map history - maphist@geo.uu.nl -
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Subject: RE: [Maphist] Menzies - I suggest the debate would be enhanced if those taking part read P. J. Rivers, which I mentioned the other day. The Foreword to this work by Dr. Geoff Wade of the National University of Singapore concludes with these two sentences :"With these few words I must congratulate Phil Rivers for producing an excellent volume, one which will help people both now and in the future to assess the value or otherwise of 1421. May it see wide distribution and readership and encourage more people to engage in grounded and factual investigation of the East Asian maritime traditions." Dorothy Prescott. At 12:37 PM 27/10/2005 -0500, you wrote: I would find this much more interesting if the supporters of Menzies would defend him by supporting his (Menzies') evidence instead of attacking the skeptics. - Allen Hjelmfelt ______________
From: Gala Argent <gala@argentco.com> > > With
reference to the October 31 posting from Dr. Geoff Wade: > >
Dear H-Asia members, > > Regarding the request for complainants
with the FTC over the > non-fiction status of the book 1421: the
Year China Discovered > America, Mr. Wade notes that "freedom
of the press is of course an > essential element in any
democracy." I would simply ask how the > filing of such a
complaint furthers this goal? > > The validity of Menzies'
theory is irrelevant.
More on point is that > the academic
community suffers a grave public relations problem with > the
general public, in that we are -- for the most part -- perceived >
as intellectually conservative, immutable, and so driven by internal
> politics that dissent is quickly stifled. This type of complaint
only > furthers, in the worst way possible, those notions. > >
Give the reading public the credit they deserve.
People reading >
Menzies' book certainly do not fall into the demographic of >
bon-bon-eating romance novel readers. They have the ability to >
ascertain strength of argument, theory versus fact, and the academic
> credentials (or lack thereof) of the author. Rather than
complain, we > should be glad that Menzies book, like The Da Vinci
Code, has > fostered interest in other times and places, and
driven curious > readers to look further -- to sources perhaps
more academically > credible -- in order to come up with their own
conclusions. That is > the purpose of freedom of the press. The
"autocracy" Mr. Wade fears > is promoted precisely by
the type of legal or regulatory squabble he > is promoting, which
boils down to having the public's reading > material, or
classification thereof, monitored by an academic elite. > Shall we
now set up a censorship committee to hand down such > judgments?
Finally, I would encourage Mr. Wade and his several colleagues to
> avail themselves of freedom of the press by taking their
concerns > with the scholarship and credibility of the book to the
people he > thinks are incapable of understanding theory versus
fact, by > countering Menzies with an intellectually accessible
book targeted to > that audience.
Intellectual discontent
should be wrangled thus, not > through legal, regulatory or
governmental oversight. That is the > point of freedom of the
press. > > Gala Argent, Ph.D. candidate > School of
Archaeology and Ancient History > University of Leicester > >
>
MapHist: E-mail discussion group on the history of cartography hosted by the Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht. The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Utrecht. The University of Utrecht does not take any responsibility for the views of the author. List Information: http://www.maphist.info Maphist mailing list - Maphist@geo.uu.nl - http://mailman.geo.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/maphist/
Original Message From: Geoff Wade Sent: Mon 07/11/2005 10:36 –
Subject:: another 1421 critique book: Dorothy Prescott at
@unimelb.edu.au – Sent Mon 07/11/2005 10:31 - To: Geoff Wade -
Geoff, Are you aware of this work? Just posted by Brendan White the
GLOBE Secretary...
Title: "The 1421 Heresy: An Investigation
Into the Ming Chinese Maritime Survey o the World", by Anatole
Andro. Hardcover: 404 pages. Publisher: Authorhouse (September,
2005). Language: English. ISBN: 1420873490. US$31.
Available
from: Amazon as
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1420873490/102-1857606-4326545?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
From:
Dr Brendan Whyte, Assistant Map Curator, ERC Library, University of
Melbourne, Vic 3010 AUSTRALIA at: @unimelb.edu.au – From
Andros' 1421heresy site ...
Blurb follows: “For two and a
half years Mr. Andro searched for such evidence, examining each piece
of suspected artifact and following up on every lead. Not only was he
able to uncover such evidence he found the evidence to be widespread.
Further, scholars had examined such evidence and either discarded,
ignored, or obscured it. To top it off, Mr. Andro finds the evidence
overwhelmingly suggests that not only had the Chinese circumnavigated
the world, they reached its extremities perhaps even before the Ming.
Columbus and his fellow explorers sailed on Chinese navigational
directions, and Renaissance European cartographers created their new
maps of the world based on new geographical data of Chinese origin.”
Follows a copy of email from Menzies' 1421 team of about 7
November 2005 per Geoff Wade: Mon 07/11/2005 23:51 To: Geoff Wade
Cc: Subject: 1421 November message Greetings and welcome to the
1421 November mailout. We have had a few very busy months, and are
sorry that the mailouts have not been as forthcoming as they have
been previously. As well as some (well earned!) summer holidays for
Gavin and the team, there has been a lot going on recently. The
Singapore Zheng He celebrations went ahead as scheduled. Gavin and
Cedric Bell went out to deliver a series of talks and tours around
the 1421 exhibition, down at the bustling Marina promenade.
The
exhibition was one of the largest of its kind that Singapore has
held, sprawling an incidental 1421 sq metres, a stand-alone structure
built from scratch and made to last over 3 months from June to
September 2005. The exhibition has now moved to Malacca, and is
situated in the Zheng He Cultural Museum, kindly hosted by Dr. Tan Ta
Sen. It is hoped the exhibition will remain in Malacca for six
months, and from there travel to China, the Middle East and beyond!
Gavin has been busy as always, with further trips to Hong Kong,
Shanghai, Italy and Spain. He has delivered keynote speeches at
several high profile events, as well as carrying on his research
during several trips to Europe. He travels to Shenzen, Hong Kong and
Beijing in the third week of November for continued efforts in
raising funds for further research, several book signings, and to
give a presentation at the Hong Kong International Computer
Conference 2005.
We are pleased to announce the publication of
the Finnish and Estonian editions of the book, published by Gennimap
Corp. in October 2005. Furthermore, the literary rights to the French
edition of 1421 have now been acquired by 'Editions Intervalles', who
aim to publish in spring 2006. As a result, 1421 will thence be
available in over 100 countries and 20 languages! New additions to
look for on the website are the new "Links" section, and
the option to download the short documentary film made by members of
the 1421 team at the Singapore exhibition here:
See
http://www.1421.tv/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=121
As always we look forward to hearing any comments and suggestions you may care to share with us about the 1421 project. All the best, The 1421 team”
Original Message - From: H-Net list for Asian History and Culture
on behalf of Frank Conlon
Sent: Tue 08/11/2005 05:12 To:
H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Cc: Subject: H-ASIA: Publisher/Library
responsibility in Classification of Fiction/Non-Fiction Works (was
*1421*) H-ASIA November 7, 2005 Issues of the responsibility of
publishers and libraries in the classification of works of
non-fiction/fiction (extension of the discussion off Menzies',
Menzies's 1421: The Year China Discovered the World_
From:
Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear H-Asia members, At the risk
of boring my H-Asia colleagues and being seen to be perhaps as
off-the-planet as my bete-noirs, I would like to bring your attention
to a real problem which is emerging in the publishing of fiction
books masquerading as history. Those of you who have been following
the Menzies 1421 fairytale thread and my ongoing attempts to hold the
publishers to account through the respective fair trading and fair
description statutes, might be interested to know that the problem
runs even deeper than first oberved. That is to say, it is not just
the authors and publishers who are major elements in such deception
of the public, but also public institutions in their acceptance of
the publishers' descriptions of their works.
An excellent example
has come to light in the last few days. Random House Canada (which
comes under the umbrella of media giant Bertelsmann AG, as do the
publishers of the U.K. and U.S. editions of "1421") is
planning to publish a book by Paul Chiasson, entitled "Island of
Seven Cities: the discovery of a lost Chinese settlement in the
Americas."
See here for details:
<http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679314554>
This is a spin-off of the 1421 myth and, having seen the "evidence"
offered for the "Chinese settlement" on Cape Breton Island
in Nova Scotia, I can affirm that it has even less credence than most
of Menzies' claims. That is, this is again fiction masquerading as
history. And the publishers have the audacity to be marketing this
work under the twin categories of "History - Canada -
Pre-Confederation (To 1867); and History - China".
This
leaves the publishers open to charges under Section 74.01 of the
Canadian Competition Act, whereby "A person engages in
reviewable conduct who, for the purpose of promoting, directly or
indirectly, the supply or use of a product or for the purpose of
promoting, directly or indirectly, any business interest, by any
means whatever, (a) makes a representation to the public that is
false or misleading in a material respect; etc" The travesty
does not end there, however.
Even before the book is published,
the august institution of Library and Archives Canada has already
assigned (or accepted) a description of the work (under "History")
as follows: Chiasson, Paul. The island of seven cities : the
discovery of a lost Chinese settlement in the Americas / Paul
Chiasson. -- Toronto : Random House Canada, 2006. Includes index.
ISBN 0-679-31455-5 : $34.95 1. Cape Breton Island (N.S.)--Discovery
and exploration--Chinese 2. Chinese--Nova Scotia--Cape Breton
Island--Antiquities 3. Cape Breton Island (N.S.)--Antiquities
This
LAC listing can be found here:
<http://www.collectionscanada.ca/newbooks/g4-900-e.html>
I
[Geoff Wade]have sent the following letter to Library and Archives
Canada to try and achieve some reclassification of the volume. Those
interested in veracity of description and prevention of deception in
the publishing industry and library systems are urged to follow suit.
Any comments on related trends and issues in terms of publishing and
library description would be appreciated.
Thanks, Geoff Wade
National University of Singapore
Dear LAC, I note with grave sadness that you have catalogued the
upcoming book by Mr Paul Chiasson as follows: Chiasson, Paul. The
island of seven cities : the discovery of a lost Chinese settlement
in the Americas / Paul Chiasson. -- Toronto : Random House Canada,
2006. Icludes index. ISBN 0-679-31455-5 : $34.95 1. Cape Breton
Island (N.S.)--Discovery and exploration--Chinese 2. Chinese--Nova
Scotia--Cape Breton Island--Antiquities 3. Cape Breton Island
(N.S.)--Antiquities
This assigns it a respectability of which it
is completely undeserving. That is to say, you are describing this as
a work of history when the explorations of historians and
archaeologists reveal it to be nothing but fiction.
How can you
have a category for "Cape Breton Island (N.S.)--Discovery and
exploration--Chinese" when no such thing ever took place? Was
this category created simply to meet the needs of Random House? This
is indeed a sad day when Canadian government agencies are tools in a
publisher's plans to deceive the public. Please further ascertain the
nature of this work and reclassify the work accordingly as fiction.
Thanks , Geoff Wade National University of Singapore ----------- <>
Ed. note: I was curious about other publications whose factual
content has been challenged by historians; the _Journal of Historical
Review_--a publication dedicated to the work of Holocaust denial
appears in the United States Library of Congress catalogue under a D
(history) classification. D is also the classification at the
University of Minnesota Library for Ignatius P. Donnelly's _Atlantis:
The Antediluvian World_ (originally published 1882). I believe that
cataloguers may be bound to follow the information provided by
publishers, but perhaps one of our librarian members who is familiar
with library cataloging protocols may be able to clarify this issue.
FFC -
To post to H-ASIA simply send your message H-ASIA November 9, 2005
Observations on some publishing and on library classifications -
From: Frances Wood <Frances.Wood@bl.uk>
<mailto:Frances.Wood@bl.uk> The publication of rubbish as
history is very depressing and reveals quite clearly how
irresponsible many publishers have become.
David Selbourne's _The
City of Light_ was condemned as riddled with errors by several
Arabists, a handful of Sinologists, a couple of Hebraists and an
historian of Medieval Italy, all eminent and highly respected
scholars- I remember it well as I wrote a long piece on its critical
reception in the UK for publication in Shanghai to clarify the
situation for Chinese colleagues.
Despite this, I received a
query only about a year ago asking if this (travesty) was suitable
for use by undergraduates? From this perspective, Geoff Wade's
campaign is very important and deserves general support unless we
want to spend the rest of our lives explaining patiently why 1421 or
whatever it is is not just a waste of time but seriously misleading.
I am happy to say that I've never met the author but I understand
from colleagues who, to their mortification, are mentioned in his
preface that they are invariably misquoted.
The question of
subject indexing is, to me, slightly less important. Cataloguers, who
are not always subject specialists, take subject cataloguing far too
seriously. These days title-word searches will suffice for most
puposes and many of us would do well to avoid subject indexing and
classification which in specialist areas can get pretty fraught. As a
cataloguer of Chinese books, I've never been able to take the Dewey
Decimal system seriously since I discovered that it had a special
number for elastic-sided boots but nothing for eunuchs. In my youth,
I used to consider it harmless fun to classify obvious works of
exaggerated political propaganda as 'fiction' but my colleagues now
tell me that this is very bad indeed, the librarian is supposed to be
a mere filter for the classification proposed by publishers- which if
they continue to publish such rubbish seems a position of almost
equally irresponsible passivity. Frances Wood (I've probably gone too
far!)
Ed. note: Well, I don't think so! Dr Frances Wood is Head
of Chinese, Manchu & Mongolian Collections at the British
Library. A major figure in East Asian Librarianship, she is also
author of a number of important books including:
_The Silk Road:
two thousand years in the heart of Asia_ (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002) ISBN 0520237862 (orig. published London:
Folio Society, 2002) _Did Marco Polo go to China?_ (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1995) ISBN 0436201666 [and Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1996) ISBN 0813389984; 0813389992 (pbk.) _No dogs and not many
Chinese: treaty port life in China 1843-1943_ (London: John Murray,
1998) ISBN 0719557585 _Oriental gardens_ (with Norah Titley) (London:
British Library, 1991) ISBN 0712302395 _Chinese illustration_
(London: British Library, c1985)ISBN 0712300538 (and San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 1992) ISBN 0811801322 FFC H-ASIA November 11, 2005
Publisher/Library responsibility in Classification of Books (was
*1421*) LONG ******
November 10, 2005 Further comment re:
complaining to the FTC about *1421* ****
**** From: Geoff Wade
<arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear List, Professor Goldin's response to
my earlier postings is encouraging in that it suggests that people
are thinking about the propositions and possible methods for dealing
with some of the problems faced. However, there seems to be some
misunderstanding between us on key aspects of this issue. I was
certainly not advocating approaches to the FTC over every history
book that offers a different take on an issue to that which one
holds.
There is no need to tell H-Asia readers about the diversity of opinions which exist in respect of historical events, the breadth of explanation possible for phenomena of the past, and the need for there to be healthy debate among the persons who hold such views. That is all taken as given. But with Menzies' *1421* and the upcoming *The Island of Seven Cities*, we are speaking of a very different phenomenon.
We can illustrate this by taking Professor Goldin's example of the history proffered by Charles and Mary Beard in *The Rise of American Civilization*. In this work, the authors proceeded from recognised historical phenomena (that there were people known as "Founding Fathers", that there was a system of slavery in place, that there was a Civil War, etc.) and interpreted these things in a way which differed from the mainstream.
Most historians will accept this as a valid manifestation of the diversity of historical explanation (surely, one of the great beauties of the discipline). But with *1421* and *The Island of Seven Cities*, we are addressing accounts which are completely fictitious. Objections to these volumes do not lie in differences in "interpreting historical evidence" or an "author's interpretations of historical evidence," suggested by Professor Goldin.
There were, by universal academic
recognition, no such 15th-century Chinese voyages in the Atlantic,
Arctic, Antarctic or Pacific Oceans, no such celestial observation
posts established, no global mapping, and no Chinese settlement on
Cape Breton Island. The claims are all fabricated, and the books were
created with intent to make money by deceiving the public. I do hope
that the majority of H-Asia members will recognise a quite marked
qualitative difference between the two examples. I initially
considered such works to be simply the products of charlatans who had
convinced publishers of the commercial merit of their fabrications.
However, the complicity of the publishers has become increasingly
apparent. Those who know the publication process of *1421* affirm
that the original text offered to the publishers was nothing like the
published work. It was half the size and had a very different focus.
Menzies himself admits that the publishers rewrote it for him,
obviously to suit their marketing needs.
In the *1421*
acknowledgements, Menzies cites 12 Transworld staff members and
"their teams" who had been instrumental in bringing the
book the market. The deception and responsibility for it is thus very
much joint. What we have therefore is not a person proposing a new
thesis, or "interpreting historical evidence". It is a
corporation manipulating a manuscript, in itself already false, and
then classifying it as history, in order to improve marketing and
maximize profits. As such, it is a false product, deceitfully
labelled and it is thereby subject to the various statues which guide
the advertising and sale of products within our respective societies.
It is thus that I took my complaints to the Consumer Complaints body in the UK and the FTC in the United States. If Professor Goldin considers this to amount to my opposition to the right of historians to "interpret historical evidence", so be it. The three books I have cited (*1421* in its British and US versions and *The Island of Seven Cities*) are all published by corporations subordinate to the Bertelsmann media group and undoubtedly these works form parts of an integrated global marketing strategy. Whether other publishers are intending to catch the same wave is moot, but the trend is worrying.
Why worrying, some may ask. The classification of fiction as history is already an obvious problem, and the chauvinism which Menzies' book has induced in East Asia on the basis that *1421* is "history" is powerful evidence of this. But more importantly (and the significance of this has only begun to sink in this week as I have learned more about library systems, classifications and cataloguing), is that publishers can basically create their own library categories for the books they publish. Thus, the repositories of public knowledge reflect not what their personnel determine a book might be, but what the publisher says that it is.
