1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered the World - Gavin Menzies

This is one of the most interesting, controversial and enlightening books that I have ever read, and while it goes against almost everything we were taught as children, I think reading it was a very valuable use of my time. In 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered the World, former British naval officer Gavin Menzies makes the claim that between the years of 1421 and 1423, the Chinese launched what was at the time the largest fleet of ships known to man, and not only circumnavigated the globe, but landed in North and South America, Australia, the west coast of Africa, everywhere other than Western Europe, which they deemed to backward and beneath them at the time. Before delving deeply into this book, these claims sound quite extreme, but as I read this text, I became quickly convinced that Menzies claims are for the most part accurate. The amount of evidence that he lines up behind his theory, while at certain points circumstantial and based on conjecture, eventually become so concrete that they are impossible to refute. Menzies even shows DNA evidence that proves the presence of Chinese people all throughout the world prior to the European voyages of exploration. Now, a lot of the claims that Menzies puts forth are based solely on his personal opinions, on what he assumes would have happened, but those are minute details. His broader claims about the Chinese voyages are all but indisputable. He takes a lot of credit that maybe he does not entirely deserve, and tries not to say that he found something no one else was smart enough to, but in doing so is making that exact point. Nonetheless, this book, while not filled with the greatest prose I have ever read, is groundbreaking, and should be looked at by anyone who is really interested in a complete history of the human race. If the Chinese had not changed their foreign policies and shut their borders shortly after these voyages, who knows what the world would be like today. I give 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered the World 3 and a half stars.