1434: Igniting the Resaissance | History Today

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

http://www.historytoday.com/john-haywood/1434-igniting-resaissance

In 1421 Menzies claimed that these recorded voyages of Zheng He were but the tip of an iceberg. Between 1421 and 1423 Zheng He masterminded a series of voyages of exploration under subordinate admirals that circumnavigated the world, reached the North Pole and charted the coastlines of, and founded colonies in, every continent except Europe. When China turned its back on the sea, all records of these voyages were deliberately destroyed. The inexplicable failure of the Chinese to visit Europe made 1421 implausible enough even before it was comprehensively debunked because of Menzies’ misleading use of evidence and circular arguments.

In 1434 Menzies now claims that Zheng He did, after all, visit Europe: he sailed to Italy in 1434 to present the pope with wonderful gifts from the emperor Xuande, who reigned from 1426 to 1435. These included maps of the world, astronomical tables and technological treatises that ‘ignited the Renaissance’ and gave European mariners, like Columbus and Magellan, the knowledge to make their own so-called voyages of discovery, and the weapons to overcome the peoples they met.

1434 is at least as implausible as its predecessor, and a great deal duller, since it lacks 1421’s strong narrative. Not the least of a multitude of objections that can be raised to Menzies’ claims is the fact that Zheng He could not have been in Italy in 1434 because by then he was dead. Menzies conveniently sidesteps this by resurrecting him. For reasons the author does not give but promises, ominously, to explain in a future book, Zheng He did not die at Calicut but, after visiting Europe, sailed to America, settling near Asheville, North Carolina, where he later died. Really.

Among Menzies’ many startling claims is that every one of the inventions in Leonardo da Vinci’s sketchbooks can be traced back to a Chinese treatise called the Nung Shu, a copy of which was supposedly delivered to Pope Eugenius by Zheng He and subsequently copied by the Sienese engineer Mariano Taccola. In reality, Taccola, whose earliest drawings of machines date to 1427, had no need of Chinese books to inspire his weird and wonderful contraptions. Such books were already being produced in Europe. Taccola was probably aware of the 14th century treatises of Guido da Vigevano and Konrad Kyeser, which included designs for wind powered chariots, screw powered boats, mobile bridges, tanks and multiple barrelled cannons. Taccola may also have known the Roman work, De Rebus Bellicis (On Military Matters), which includes a design for a paddle-wheeled boat – an idea Menzies claims was unknown in Europe before 1434.

Menzies obviously thinks the Middle Ages in Europe was a time of technological regression from the glories of classical Greece and Rome. It was not. Medieval Europeans made far greater use of wind and water power than the Romans; they invented the mechanical clock and were using blast furnaces for iron production in the 14th century (something else Menzies claims was unknown in Europe before 1434). No one disputes that Europe did benefit from Chinese inventions  such as paper, gunpowder and block printing, but, however these arrived in Europe,it was not with with Zheng He.

The unrelenting silliness of 1434 is demonstrated by this passage from the concluding chapter: ‘Europeans learned of Chinese gunpowder coupled with advanced Chinese weapons – bazookas, mortars, exploding shells, rockets, and cannons. The poor Incas, armed with their feather tunics and clubs, were mown down by the brutal, ruthless, but incredibly brave band of conquistadores under Pizarro. Atahualpa stood no chance; neither did Montezuma’. If the Chinese had already colonized the Americas, why were the conquistadors not met by a barrage of cannonballs?

John Haywood is the author of The Great Migrations: from the earliest humans to the age of globalisation (Quercus).