1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance by
Gavin Menzies is an audio book that I picked up when looking for another book that was titled with a number. This book claims that China inspired the renaissance and suggests that Da Vinci was really a decent draftsman, but not inventor. Reviews of this book pretty consistently label it as fiction (as here in the
Telegraph) or at least an effort by the author to willfully misconstrue "evidence." This perception is not helped by his subsequent publication of a book on Atlantis. Menzies is not taken seriously by any established historian.
Started: 09/09/2016
Completed: 09/10/2016
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: Nobody
Review:
I stopped listening to this book part way through. I enjoy history. I have noticed that books that purport to be history, but are not, tend to give very detailed information about undisputed things and then make casual assertions about highly debatable things. In this book, exhaustive analysis was provided for the location of certain islands (lat/long down to the the second) which is easily found numerous places. Exhaustive analysis was given on plausible ways to calculate lat/long from information given by the star charts available to the Chinese in the 12-1400s. No evidence was given, however, that any of the methods of calculation were actually used (the assertion that something could be done implied that it must have been done in that way). I overlooked the assertion that because the Chinese used some method of calculating something like lat/long, then they must have known that the Earth was spherical, that they must have assigned lat/long, etc. I also overlooked obvious non-correlations like the Chinese word for the distance of a star from Polaris being called "ascension." The actual word is 入宿度 and I have no idea how to seek out the etymology of this word in Chinese, but I doubt seriously that it corresponds to "ascension" and it seems more likely that the word is simply translated to "ascension." The author claims that the current European understanding of "ascension" comes from the Chinese which just seems remarkably unlikely given that the concept of "ascension" predates interaction between the cultures.
What really got me, however, was the discussion of the attire of students at Al-Azhir University in Cairo, Egypt being the ancestral source of the clothing worn at Oxford, England. There is little doubt that the 11th century University predates Oxford (founded in 1326). But the similarity in attire is surface only and it seems highly unlikely that a Muslim practice which originated at the same time as the crusades started would be adopted by a Christian nation. Moreover, the Oxford attire is characterized by a hood (worn for warmth) which is not present at all in the attire of Al-Azhir. The assertion that one derived from the other was thrown off as a casual comment in the work, but it stopped me cold. If it were true, then it would suggest an enormous influence over education between the Muslim and Christian world. While such a link is clearly possible (they had in common the works of the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans), to suggest such a strong link that the English even don the style of the Muslim's dress seems to suggest an intimate relationship and even a paternal relationship which simply does not exist.
That this was casually thrown out by the author with none of the detailed certification linked to the obvious facts and the nonsensical use of a translated word to imply derivation suggested to me that this author was no historian at all. Further research bore this out. I wish I could enjoy whatever portion of his work is genuine, but it is so entwined with what can only be described as fanciful that I cannot figure out how to resolve one from the other. I'd rather not have such a combination lingering in my subconscious, so I stopped listening to the book.
