It is now time to honor other men who have languished in obscurity for too long. These remarkable Chinese admirals rounded the Cape of Good Hope sixty-six years before Dias, passed through the Straight of Magellan ninety-eight years before Magellan, surveyed Australia three centuries before Captain Cook, Antarctica and the Arctic four centuries before the first Europeans, and America seventy years before Columbus. The great Admirals Zheng He, Hong Bao, Zhou Man, Zhou Wen and Yang Qing deserve to be remembered and celebrated too, for they were the first, the bravest and most daring of all. Those who followed them, no matter how great their achievements, were sailing in their wake. (456)

So Christopher Columbus was a genocidal conqueror, you say, and you don’t want him to be the “discoverer” of the New World? Great! Then Gavin Menzies has a perfectly logical, historically viable alternative for you.

Lose Columbus and his underhanded ways: enter the Chinese under Admiral Zheng He and his Treasure Fleet spearheaded by Hong Bao (who surveyed Africa, South America, Antarctica, and Australia), Zhou Man (Africa, South America, Australia, North America), Zhou Wen (North America, Greenland, the North Pole, Russia), and Yang Qing (Africa and India). After reading this book, I promise that you’ll never again look at the history of navigation and discovery the same.

Gavin Menzies, a retired submariner for the Royal Navy, puts his interests and expertise to work in this riveting proposal of how the world was first “discovered.” Though China itself had long ago destroyed all but a handful of records describing the great Treasure Fleet of the 1420s, Menzies travels the world in search of the evidence that still exists. Apart from recording the countless Chinese period-artifacts that have been uncovered across the coasts of numerous nations and islands—not to mention the mysterious Chinese wrecks dredged up over the centuries, the Asian birds and diseases in areas they ought not exists, and Chinese DNA in coastal native groups the world over—Menzies introduces one of the most spectacular insights into our misunderstanding of history.

By scouring the details of ancient maps, and by using his unique understanding of currents and wind patterns, Menzies re-formats the “mistakes” of cartographers from 600 years past in order to show that the wildest coastlines that at first appear to be guesswork are in fact accurate representations of the true continents of our world. He goes further to explain how only this special fleet organized and sent by China could have surveyed, recorded, and spread this information to the world (mainly, to the Portuguese).

Every chapter of this book is as fascinating as the previous, and I’m shocked at how quickly I zoomed through it! Virtually every detail is considered in support of his thesis—from animal and human DNA to plant-life and cartography—-though it’s important to note that only a handful of counter-arguments are challenged head-on in the text. As he remarks his updated postscript (May 2003), he initially published his findings with a heavy dose of anxiety, fearing how the world might respond. Only after thousands helped corroborate his evidence and offer even more insights to help verify his claims did he grow in his courage and willingness to stand up against his detractors.

I must admit, however, that his mere postscript-worth of confidence doesn’t quite outshine his almost apologetic moments in the text. Nevertheless, I find myself far more prone to believe this Chinese theory of world discovery than anything I’ve been taught in this past (perhaps it’s my “dispassionate view”, 452), and I’d be shocked if his evidence isn’t corroborated over the next half-century and if his theory doesn’t carry as much weight as the traditional Spanish/Portuguese theories of old currently do.

I loved this book and highly recommend it. He fills the text with fascinating maps and charts (it makes me long for a return to The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey), not to mention over one hundred pages of supporting evidence. I haven’t done much research to see if his theories have been debunked since the book’s initial publication 15 years ago, but I doubt it (see www.gavinmenzies.net for more information). In fact, I look forward to someday reading his follow-up books such as Who Discovered America? and 1434. If you’re one of those people who hates Columbus Day for all the troubles he caused the native peoples of America, then this is a book that should salve your white guilt a bit.

©2017 E.T.