Gavin Menzies’ Voyages

Gavin Menzies Essay Gavin Menzies was a royal navy submarine captain that worked for the British government and now is trying to let the world know his opinion on the discovery of the Americas: did the Chinese discover the Americas before Columbus? Menzies takes on a voyage where he tries to find evidence to support his thesis and comes up with several different theories; his first stop: Calicut. Menzies claims that the Ming dynasty’s famous navigator Zheng He managed to reach the cape of good hope and from there he should have reached the Americas too.

Gavin also claims that a famous Italian writer of the time, Nicolo ‘ Di Conti, might have made contact with Zheng ‘s fleet in Calicut and might have also left with them for the New World; Unfortunately for Menzies this idea was quickly discarded for there are historical records that suggest that Di Conti immediately returned back to Italy after his trip to Calicut ( he might have also carried some Chinese maps of their voyages with him).

Menzies then pulls out some more evidence that a map found was possibly a Chinese map that led to the islands of the Antilles, but according to a few historians and cartographers, the maps were confusing inaccurate and the islands were displaced in random places. The possibility of a slipway on one of the tropical islands was rejected by many geologists that state that those rocks where there for no peculiar reason.

Still not giving up on his quest, Gavin Menzies slightly alters his theory: he affirms that an Italian, Verazzano, went on a voyage with the Chinese and stating that he saw “people running like Chinese”; but as we already know, even Columbus, thought that the people he thought were Chinese but they were just the Native American tribes that lived on the coastline.

It was also verified that Indigenous people were descendants of other Asian tribes that might have reached the Americas by crossing an icy passage in North America. There is no concrete information or evidence that the Chinese ever got to America, because if that were so than the Chinese would have set up outposts, settled or maybe started trading the tropical goods with Europe and probably could have made a fortune!

Lastly, Menzies tries convincing the people when he claims that an old Chinese report states that the Ming fleet arrived at the shore of about 3000 different countries(the only way to do this was by reaching the Americas too)! The Chinese historian that owned the archives rejects this last of Gavin’s theories because of a simple calligraphy misunderstanding: the Chinese character ” ” means 30 and ” ” means 3000 so the record can be misunderstood because the record actually just meant 30 different countries…

Any claims concerning history, especially when it has been firmly accepted by historians and other professionals on that certain topic, should have reliable and plausible evidence along with clarifications and explanations to be supported; That is how history has been built up so far and it’s how it will continue to be built. When an argument concerning history that relies on inaccurate evidence and unsupported theories, such as that found in Menzies’ show. The argument does not deserve to be reconsidered.