1434
Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 7:24 pm
A quick book report.
I just finished reading Gavin Menzies second book, 1434, about a Chinese fleet visiting Italy and setting off the Renaissance.
First off, I think it is a better book than his first one titled “1421.”
Two obvious things happened.
The first book got the whole Chinese sailing efforts onto front pages around the world and people started giving him a lot more information that had been found but never really publicized.
Second, he has clearly plowed the money he made on the first book back into his research and that has produced a lot more evidence.
In the first book he depended on his personal research and volunteers.
For this book he has hired good researchers at key locations and followed up on a lot of leads.
To answer the first question that came to mind for many of us when we heard the basic concept of the book:
“Why isn’t there any history of the visit?”
He makes a good argument that Chinese sailors and boats were not all that rare in Italy at the time.
He makes the argument that there were good sized Chinese trading settlements in both Cairo and Alexandra at the time, and some Chinese boats paid the needed taxes to continue all the way to Florence.
These boats made use of an equivalent of the Suez Canal to get from the Red Sea to the Nile and then north.
This was the first government sponsored and gift bringing fleet, but not the first overall, so it just wasn’t noteworthy.
He gives a good argument on why the Chinese would have just given away an entire encyclopedia of technical information covering virtually all aspects of their civilization.
And attributes good old fashioned ego to the reason none of the so called European “discovers” of the various devices, processes, maps, etc gave as to where they stole their ideas from.
In the last chapters he reverts to his 1421 theme of why some of the Pacific fleet ships never returned to China.
(E.P. you will be interested to know he attributes it to a comet impact off New Zealand in 1430.)
He also wanders into where the Conquistadores came from, why they were the kind of men they were, and therefore why they were so successful in the New World.
It is a 368 page book with over 70 of them as Acknowledgments, notes, index, etc.
It could have been a much biger book, but he makes a lot of referances to his web site for more details on a number of subjects.
In the end, I felt it was a good read.
He definitely stirs up the pot.
But, in my mind, that is a good thing.
I just finished reading Gavin Menzies second book, 1434, about a Chinese fleet visiting Italy and setting off the Renaissance.
First off, I think it is a better book than his first one titled “1421.”
Two obvious things happened.
The first book got the whole Chinese sailing efforts onto front pages around the world and people started giving him a lot more information that had been found but never really publicized.
Second, he has clearly plowed the money he made on the first book back into his research and that has produced a lot more evidence.
In the first book he depended on his personal research and volunteers.
For this book he has hired good researchers at key locations and followed up on a lot of leads.
To answer the first question that came to mind for many of us when we heard the basic concept of the book:
“Why isn’t there any history of the visit?”
He makes a good argument that Chinese sailors and boats were not all that rare in Italy at the time.
He makes the argument that there were good sized Chinese trading settlements in both Cairo and Alexandra at the time, and some Chinese boats paid the needed taxes to continue all the way to Florence.
These boats made use of an equivalent of the Suez Canal to get from the Red Sea to the Nile and then north.
This was the first government sponsored and gift bringing fleet, but not the first overall, so it just wasn’t noteworthy.
He gives a good argument on why the Chinese would have just given away an entire encyclopedia of technical information covering virtually all aspects of their civilization.
And attributes good old fashioned ego to the reason none of the so called European “discovers” of the various devices, processes, maps, etc gave as to where they stole their ideas from.
In the last chapters he reverts to his 1421 theme of why some of the Pacific fleet ships never returned to China.
(E.P. you will be interested to know he attributes it to a comet impact off New Zealand in 1430.)
He also wanders into where the Conquistadores came from, why they were the kind of men they were, and therefore why they were so successful in the New World.
It is a 368 page book with over 70 of them as Acknowledgments, notes, index, etc.
It could have been a much biger book, but he makes a lot of referances to his web site for more details on a number of subjects.
In the end, I felt it was a good read.
He definitely stirs up the pot.
But, in my mind, that is a good thing.
