1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
by Gavin Menzies
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Book Summary Information
Author: Gavin MenziesEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-01
ISBN: 0061492175
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: William Morrow
Book Reviews of 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
Book Review: The historical panorama is much clearer after this book
Summary: 5 Stars
I have just finished 1434 and have been impressed with the research and the conclusions Menzies draws from that research. I read all the negative opinions about this book before writing this comment and I am afraid I was not convinced by their arguments against the book. Of course, intellectual jumps must be made in order to accommodate Menzie's conclusions but I have prowled around in history, both East and West, enough to realise that history is riddled with missing links and I am convinced that because of Menzie's particular set of talents he has found gaping anomalies in Western history; anomalies that his detractors are more than upset by his finding.
Throughout this earth moving book, I had to put it down and sit back and try to absorb what I had just read. Menzies made so many quite astounding (yet totally substantive) statements that, modestly knowledgeable in world history, I had difficulty absorbing what he had just written but what had been overlooked or subsumed by academics for whatever reason. Granted the trust of his arguments are subject shifting but I am incredulous that people are so angry about what seems to be so obvious; none of what I read seemed to be beyond belief.
I know that commentators have trashed his conclusions in this book as well as 1421 particularly regarding the original Chinese sources that make no mention of Zheng He's voyages beyond the Indian Ocean; however, I am prepared (many would say stupidly) to place Menzie's greater theory above the mundane theory of accepted historiography. I fully admit that the idea of a Chinese fleet sailing up the Adriatic to Venice is, superficially, preposterous. However, buttressed as he does with myriad facts that cannot, in my opinion, be countered easily, the reader is left with the problem (more difficult than accepting his theory) as to what to do with this strange collection of facts that will not just disappear. For instance, page 87 -Asiatic blood in Tuscany; page 108-early maps of South America and Antarctica; page 128-maps of South and Central America; all of chapters 15 through 20; Chinese inventions, page 242; Columbus' pre1492 voyagers to America; pages 259 to 263-Bell's discoveries in New Zealand and on page 259 the Foreign Minister of New Zealand stating that Maori mitochondrial DNA proves that they originated in China and further discussions of the Mahuika comet's impact that had massive geological and historical ramifications throughout the Southern Hemisphere.
Obviously, I believe 1434 to be an extraordinary book and any person with historical curiosity should seek it out and give it a careful read.
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