I SEE that retired naval officer Gavin Menzies is at it again with another fantasy, 1434: The Year A Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, published under his name.

Following the title page, we are informed that "Gavin Menzies asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work".

The emphasis is added because it could be that the actual written output was by another hand, possibly the ghost writer of 1421: The Year China Discovered the World.

I haven't read all of this latest book, 1434, evidently the year China kick-started the Renaissance.

Undoubtedly, China's accomplishments did have an effect on the West but not as described in this latest fantasy of Menzies, who claims, but never proves that there was a direct sea passage between China and Europe.
Obviously, the Isthmus of Suez blocked the way from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, so it is necessary to consider the "evidence" he presents in the chapter on "Cairo and the Red Sea-Nile Canal", which should, but doesn't, show how this obstacle was overcome.

Without this indispensable canal link, the theory of his new book remains impossible.

Indeed, Menzies has not produced one iota of proof to support a 1434 direct sea route from the Mediterranean to Red Sea.

I am puzzled that from "hundreds of thousands of emails" which brought "new evidence", he extracted only one statement about "a traveller who sailed the canal from Alexandria to Clysma on the Gulf of Suez" and that was dated from about 170 AD.

He discovers that the Italian "Taccola was responsible for every technical illustration" of the Renaissance, having benefited from "the great transfer of knowledge that took place in 1434 between China and Europe".

However, Menzies trips over his feet again because he has already recorded elsewhere that "at the 1431 he [Taccola] started (his) writing which he finishes on Jan 14, 1433". That was even before "the Magnificent Fleet" purportedly showed up at Venice.

In fact, at that time, they were off Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, preparing to return to China.



Furthermore, when Taccola began his work "at the end of 1431", the Magnificent Fleet was still preparing for sea on the coast of China.

Menzies' presentation is worked entirely with suppositions in the same manner of the 1421 fantasy about global voyages.

Reaching America before Columbus only became plausible by Menzies' distortion of monsoon seasons and invention of Atlantic ocean currents to carry his armada along.

It was slightly surprising to see that Menzies will be speaking at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, but I suppose academics need their lighter moments as well.



If you want a factual account about this voyage of the Magnificent Fleet and other expeditions of Zheng He, these can be found, excellently edited by Dr J.V.G. Mills in Ma Huan: Ying-Yai Sheng-Lan 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores' (1433), published in Bangkok by White Lotus Press in 1997.

CAPT P.J. RIVERSTanah Rata