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Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies (born 14 August 1937) is a British historical author and retired British Royal Navy submarine lieutenant-commander who has written history books based upon his discovery of old maps and historical documents that provide some proof that the Han Chinese Ming navy dragon fleet sailed to America before Columbus. The response to his book in the academic community has been mixed with some historians rejecting Menzies' theories and assertions while other academics and historians have expressed strong support for his discoveries.

He is best known for his controversial history book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, in which he provides discoveries, genetic evidence, old documents and old maps that provide some tangible evidence that the naval fleets of Ming Chinese Admiral Zheng He visited the Americas prior to European explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, and that the same fleet circumnavigated the globe a century before the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan. Menzies' second book, 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance extended his discovery and showed evidence the Ming Chinese Navy Dragon Fleet had sailed to post-Dark Age Europe and transmitted some Chinese science and Chinese technology to Europe, thus helping to stimulate the beginnings of the Renaissance in post-Dark Age Europe. In his third book, The Lost Empire of Atlantis, Menzies claims that Atlantis did exist, in the form of the Minoan Civilization, and that it maintained a global seaborne empire extending to the shores of America and India, millennia before actual contact in the Age of Discovery.

Biography

Menzies was born in London, England, and his family moved to China when he was three weeks old. He was educated at Orwell Park Preparatory School in Ipswich, and Charterhouse School. Menzies joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from 1959 to 1970. Menzies, serving as a British Royal Navy submarine officer sailed the routes that had previously been sailed by Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook, while he was commanding officer of the diesel submarine HMS Rorqual between 1968 and 1970, a contention questioned by some of his critics.

In 1959, Menzies was a British naval officer on the HMS Newfoundland, on a maritime voyage from Singapore to Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and on to the Cape Verde Islands and back to England. Due to his extensive maritime navigational experience in the British navy, Menzies gained the complex knowledge of the wind patterns, currents, and sea conditions on this voyage which was essential to reconstructing the 1421 Ming Chinese navy voyages that he discusses in his first book. ; see Appendix.</ref> In 1969, Menzies was involved in an incident in the Philippines, when the Rorqual rammed a U.S. Navy minesweeper, the USS Endurance, which was moored at a pier. This collision punched a hole in the Endurance but did not damage the Rorqual. The ensuing enquiry found Menzies and one of his subordinates responsible for a combination of factors that led to the accident, including the absence of the coxswain (who usually takes the helm in port) who had been replaced by a less experienced crew member, and technical issues with the boat's telegraph.

Menzies retired from the British navy the following year, and stood unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in Wolverhampton South West during the United Kingdom general election 1970, where—standing against Enoch Powell—he called for unrestricted immigration to Great Britain, drawing 0.2% of the vote. In 1990, Menzies began researching Chinese maritime history. Menzies trained as a barrister, but in 1996 he was declared a vexatious litigant by HM Courts Service which prohibits him from taking legal action in England and Wales without prior judicial permission. Menzies is an honorary professor at Yunnan University in the People's Republic of China (PRC).

1421: The Year China Discovered the World

In 2002, Menzies published his first history book: 1421: The Year China Discovered the World (published as 1421: The Year China Discovered America in the United States). he book is written as a series of vignettes of Menzies' travels around the globe examining what he has provided as archaeological and historical evidence for his "1421 discovery", interspersed with some educated theories and description of the achievements of Admiral Zheng He's fleet. Menzies states in the introduction that the book is an attempt to answer the question:

On some early European world maps, it appears that someone had charted and surveyed lands that were previously unknown to the Europeans. Who could have charted and surveyed these lands before they were 'discovered'?

In the book, Menzies concludes that only Ming China, being the worlds only superpower at the time, had the scientific knowledge, time, enormous wealth, technology, gigantic 400ft-600ft long Treasure ships, huge manpower and intelligent leadership to send such expeditions around the world and then sets out to prove that the Chinese visited lands unknown in either Southeast Asia, Australia, India, Arabia, Africa and Europe. He shows that from 1421 to 1423, during the Ming Dynasty of China under Emperor Zhu Di the fleets of Admiral Zheng He, commanded by the Han Chinese captains Zhou Wen, Zhou Man, Yang Qing, and Hong Bao, discovered Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India, Arabia, the Americas, Antarctica, and the Northeast Passage; circumnavigated Greenland, tried to reach the North and South Poles, and circumnavigated the world before Ferdinand Magellan. The book has been published in many languages and countries around the world and was listed as a New York Times best seller for several weeks in 2003. Although the book contains numerous footnotes, references and acknowledgments, critics point out that it lacks supporting references for Chinese voyages beyond East Africa, the location acknowledged by professional historians as the limit of the fleet's travels. Menzies bases his main theory on original interpretations and extrapolations of academic studies of minority population DNA, archaeological finds and ancient maps.

Menzies shows historical evidence, backed up by old Ming Chinese documents, that knowledge of Zheng He's discoveries was subsequently lost because the Confucian Mandarin bureaucrats of the Imperial court feared that the costs of further voyages would ruin the Chinese economy. It is a well established historical fact that when Zhu Di died in 1424 and the new Hongxi Emperor came to power he forbade further land or naval expeditions, the Confucian Mandarin officials either hid or destroyed the records of previous exploration to discourage further voyages. Kolesnikov-Jessop, Sonia (25 June 2005), "Did Chinese beat out Columbus?", The New York Times, retrieved 8 June 2010.</ref>

Within the academic world, the book (and Menzies' "1421 hypothesis") is both dismissed by some but supported by other sinologists and professional historians.

1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance

In 2008 Menzies released a second book entitled 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. In it Menzies provides evidence that in 1434 A.D. Ming Empire Chinese delegations reached Italy and brought books, technology and science as well as maps and globes that, to a great extent, launched the Renaissance in post-Dark Age Europe. He provides a letter written in 1474 by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and found amongst the private papers of Christopher Columbus indicates that an earlier Chinese ambassador had direct correspondence with Pope Eugene IV in Rome. Menzies then shows that the ancient historical books from the Han Chinese Book of Agriculture, the Nong Shu Technical Innovations, published in 1313 by the Yuan-dynasty scholar-official Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333), were possibly copied by European scholars and provided direct inspiration for the illustrations of mechanical devices which are attributed to the Italian Renaissance polymaths Taccola (1382–1453) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).

Amongst scholars, historians and academics, the book (and Menzies' "1421 hypothesis") is both dismissed by some but has also received support by other sinologists, archaeologists and professional historians.

References

1. "Contemporary Authors: Gavin Menzies". Highbeam Research. 2006. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
2. ^ Interview with Gavin Menzies, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, retrieved 22 March 2007
3. "The Times Guide to the House of Commons, 1970", Times Newspapers Ltd, 1970, p. 231.
4. Houterman, Hans; Koppes, Jeroen (2011). "Naval Officers (RN, RNR & RNVR) 20th Century (non-World War II)". unithistories.com. Retrieved 23 June 2011. 1968-1970, Commanding Officer, HMS Rorqual
5. Challenges to Menzies' nautical experience, retrieved 22 March 2007; see particularly note five of the Appendix.
6. Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (2008 ed.), p. 113
7. Enquiry regarding the collision of the USS Endurance and Rorqual, retrieved 22 March 2007
8. Peter Evans (5 June 1970). "Immigrant girl will vote in despair—Powellism". News. The Times. No. 57888. London. col C, p. 9. template uses deprecated parameter(s) (help)
9. Gavin Menzies, When the East Discovered the West 11 May 2007; retrieved 22 March 2011.
10. Gavin Menzies: Mad as a Snake or a Visionary? 1 Aug. 2008; retrieved 22 March 2011.
11. Did the Chinese Discover America? 29 Dec. 2008; retrieved 22 Mar. 2011.
12. Ptak, Roderich; Salmon, Claudine (2005), "Zheng He: Geschichte und Fiktion", in Ptak, Roderich; Höllmann, Thomas O. (eds.), Zheng He. Images & Perceptions, South China and Maritime Asia, vol. 15, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 9–35 (12)
13. ^ Naval Historian Gavin Menzies' Unique Take on History, 13 Apr. 2011, retrieved 25 May 2011.
14. Goodman, David S. G. (2006), "Mao and The Da Vinci Code: Conspiracy, Narrative and History", The Pacific Review, 19 (3): 359–384 (371f.), doi:10.1080/09512740600875135, retrieved 14 March 2011.
15. http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/courts-and-tribunals/courts/vexatious-litigants/index.htm UK Justice list of vexatious litigants
16. Cite error: The named reference finlay2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
17. Hitt, Jack (5 January 2003). "Goodbye, Columbus! - NYTimes.com". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 12 March 2011. rights
18. "BEST SELLERS: January 26, 2003 - Page 2". The New York Times. 26 January 2003. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
19. Cite error: The named reference 1421expLoC was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

External links

• Gavin Menzies' website
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation's FOUR CORNERS Program Transcript of "Junk History"

Criticism

• 1421 Exposed — Website set up by an international group of academics and researchers
• Finlay, Robert (2004), "How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America" (PDF), Journal of World History, 15 (2), doi:10.1353/jwh.2004.0018
• Wade, Geoff (2007), "The "Liu/Menzies" World Map: A Critique" (PDF), E-Perimetron, 2 (4, ): 273–280, ISSN 1790-3769{{citation}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
• In the Hall of Ma'at. Weighing the Evidence for Alternative History: Gavin's Fantasy Land, 1421

• Use dmy dates from April 2012
• 1937 births
• People educated at Charterhouse School
• Living people
• People from London
• Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
• Pseudohistorians
• Royal Navy submarine commanders