Bad History - 1434 by Gavin Menzies
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 มี.ค. 2022
- Video Sponsored by Ridge Wallet. Check them out here: ridge.com/emperor
Use Code “EMPEROR” for 15% off your order!
After Gavin Menzies' first book claimed China discovered America before Columbus, his second book claimed China was responsible for the Renaissance. And this time the argument's even weaker.
➤ Support this channel with my Patreon!: / emperortigerstar
Thanks to Stefan Milo for the intro narration: / stefanmilo
The full book, if you really want to read it for yourself:
archive.org/details/1434yearm...
Additional sources used:
- Cooper, John P. “Egypt's Nile-Red Sea Canals: Chronology, Location, Seasonality and Function.” University of Exeter. Archaeopress, 1970.
- Davidson, Miles H. Columbus Then and Now: A Life Reexamined. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
- Ma, Huan, Feng Ch'eng-chün, and John V. Mills. Ying-Yai Sheng-Lan: The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores (1433). Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1970.
Thanks to Ridge for sponsoring the video! Use Code “EMPEROR” for 15% off your order! ridge.com/emperor
bridge binge
Zheng He did in fact journey all the way to Somalia, by hugging the coasts. His ships could not and did not cross the pacific and reach the Americas, Australia and even the polar regions as the fraudster claims.
Chinese "envoys" in this era would be merchant traders, following the silk road, possibly Han, but maybe not. It's entirely plausible the Papacy one way or another met a random trader from the East, claiming to have some sort of imperial authority, that's entirely possible because how else to flog all that silk? By 1400 China was doing regular business with Europe, though most of the merchants who reached Europe were Turkic and went OVERLAND and not by sea.
China neither went through a by then non-existent canal nor circumnavigated africa, though that would have been credibly by more coast hugging.
This fraudsters book is a big myth propounded by the CCP to justify / explain / motivate its current maritime strategy ("maritime silk road").
there was once a canal to the nile via the red sea, it fell into disuse fairly quickly.
Columbus wasn't going east to the Indies because that was already a Portuguese monopoly granted by the Papacy, no?
I believe that the theory by Gavin Menzies, just like a lot of other "crazy" ideas in history which have been proven true much later after they had been proposed, will also be proven true. And your opinion right now of it will be proven to worth nothing. Bad opinion, du-fus! Remember my words. ROTFLMAO!
_1447: The Year China Landed on the Moon_
If that happened it would be a year earlier
1452: The Year China Traveled Back in Time and Invented the Wheel
@@gwest3644 1453 the year that China traveled the multiverse
1457: the year China Invented the Nuke
1458: the year China started WW2
1401: the year China time travelled and broke space time
@@stephenquinn3447 2000: The Year Gavin Menzies Traveled Back in Time and Founded China
If Native Americans were really Croatian in origin, this would be the best news for Croatian Nationalists.
Native Americans are Bhutanese in origin
to quote the great Apache chief
Bog i Hrvati
Please make this happen.
@@drkclshr The Native Americans are definitely 100% Albanian smh
No. Obviously they were serbs
A thing about Zheng He's fleet: the boats were massive, like absurdly huge, apparently, maybe 3 or 4 times the size of the things Columbus sailed to America in. They were quite deliberately intended to inspire awe and leave an impression to all the places it went to, a bit of power projection there I think.
There's no way they would have gone to Egypt and Italy without anyone writing about it, save for that one letter.
I wonder if they could have even fit inside the Egyptian canal mentioned?
@@-caesarian-6078 I was wondering that myself.
unless they weren't that big and the size was embellished and that's assuming it even happened.
@@theJellyjoker even so, I'm sure they weren't simple fishermen boats that would go unnoticed wherever they went.
@@theJellyjoker Zheng He's voyages were pretty well documented.
The Croatian-Croatan tangent feels like a perfect summary for this book: an absurd theory built on the flimsiest of connections that the author did not have to make to "prove" his greater point, but did so anyway.
Serious bruh, they would have wrote hrvatska if they were legit croats lmao
At that stage you wonder if he's taking the whole thing seriously at all.
@@DoubleNN Indeed. Croatians are called as such in the English language, not the Croatian one. We know for a fact that the Croatans were native to America. The theory provides no evidence whatsoever for the grand point. That, of course, isn't to say that any of his other remarks gave much evidence either. The overwhelming failure of most of his points to prove anything, combined with remarks like these that don't even feel like attempts at evidence, it's all just too much.
@@deleetiusproductions3497 If this guy had just written the books as explict alternate history novels, we wouldn't be in this conundrum. Oh wait...(thinks about the fanbase)...yes we would.
Another thing to take into account is that medieval Dubrovnik, Ragusa, was an Italian-majority city, and would have refered to themselves as either Ragusan, Dalmatian or Italian
"Native American Croatians" now this sounds somwhat epic xD
thanks for an idea for my next eu4 campaign
Still more realistic than Mormonism
Native American Ustasha
@@l.j.6918who are the Serbs in this scenario
This Menzies guy sounds like a reverse Von Däniken: instead of claiming that non european architectural wonders could only be achieved thanks to aliens, it's the europeans this time that are incapable of achieving anything without the chinese help.
xi jinping approves
@@Tdelliex social credit + 1000
Contrary to popular politically correct belief Von Daniken never claimed that non Europeans are incapable of architectural wonders he simply proposed the hypothesis that the ancients (including ancient Europeans) built those wonders to please alien gods but of course the crusaders of anti racism are incapable of understanding anything not in Marxist terms
@@Tdelliex You mean Winnie the Pooh.
12:49 Next he'll be claiming Aboriginal Australians are originally from Austria 😂
Or that Spaniards are actually from the Caucasus, because there’s a region called Iberia there
Don't be ridiculous, aboriginals are obviously chinese as well! 😏
So he will attribute the destruction of most of the groups there to Schlamperei, which left them less capable of resisting the British...
@@gwest3644 and that they are related to the Albanians as the Albanians of the Caucasus were right next to Iberia
@@gwest3644 Iberians, Siberians, and Liberians must all be related because the names are similar!
Even if we accept, just for the sake of argument, this absurd premise that the Renaissance couldn't possibly have gotten going without the aid of Chinese invention ... does Gavin not know about this thing called the Silk Road?
Pffft, everyone knows the silk road is just for silk. It's in the name. Obviously the only way for china to have interactions with europeans is to have a dead man sail an invisible fleet up a non-existent canal.
No, you don’t understand, the man we know as Marco Polo was really the secret super hero identity of Zheng He, who traveled not only between Europe and China, but went as far south as Dar es Salaam on foot, as well as personally swimming between Indonesia and Australia. Literally no cultures in the world were safe from having all their advancement made for them by the Chinese in a period of like two years
@@tyllarium this is also a movie I would watch
That Bionicle opening and closing was perfect. 👌
Lol, I thought that was familiar
At this point Gavin Menzies is basically copying the styles of ancient travelogue writers, needlessly embellishing travel stories with wild fantasies to increase the "wow" factor and sell more
At my local used bookstore, there a copy of Gavin Menzies' 1421 that's been sitting on the bottom shelf of the 'history' section for like half a year now. Can't say I'm surprised.
Put it in fiction and hope it last there for while
Move it somewhere else
Oh hi comrade.
@@DaisyGeekyTransGirl Yo
"Funny," I thought to myself "Emperor Tigerstar and Gavin Menzies, haven't I already seen this video?"
And then you hit me with China starting the Renaissance
Some suggestions on what to do next:
- Lechina (you promised Lechina in a previous episode please show us Lechina)
- A full look at “Chariots of the Gods”
- “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (if you’re up for that one, it’s a doozy of a topic)
- “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail”, the Bible conspiracy theory that inspired “The Da Vinci Code”
Edit: For something really, really old (though not technically pseudo-history), you could look at Ctesias’s “Indica” (an Ancient Greek account of India that’s hilariously inaccurate in places but weirdly spot on in others)
As a Polish person am looking forward for the dumb madness of Lechina.
"Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is like 90% plagiarism from "The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu", i don't know if there's much of a video there
You mean "Lechia"?
Yes do chariots of the gods and probably do the elders protocol of Zion and holy blood and grail into parts since one quotes the other. Those are the major ones I want to see be debunked or another video about debunking Barry fell
@@nottherealpaulsmith and holy blood and grail quotes elders which I’m not even kidding about it
Are we sure this guy wasn't paid by the Chinese government? The amount of mental gymnastics in this guy's works is ridiculous
He probably already had a thing for Chinese exceptionalism, but I can't imagine he got this popular with it without a helpful push from the CCP
I don't know about that, but the CCP actively marketed for his book soon after it was published. They even cited it while visiting Australia at year later, which Gavin then circularly used as additional evidence in support of his theories. That said, I don't think they pushed the second one as strongly.
That was my first thought, too.
Clearly he's a mod on r/Sino
He's a honorary professor of Yunnan University after all :)
Love the intro from the Mata Nui game
Weren't the Chinese treasure ships basically floating cities with hundreds if not thousands of sailors and more wood than some towns on the same time period? Would the canal of the pharaohs, even at the height of its use during the ancient world, even have been able to accommodate ships of that size running through them, especially considering how MANY of them there were? You'd end up with the most massive ships of their era grinding single file through a channel made for pre classic sea ships.
That would entirely defend on how much of the ship was below the water and how deep the canal was.
Yeah, even if they did manage to fit, I can't imagine that any Egyptian, seeing these enormous things barely squeeze through the canal onto the Nile, would not take a moment to write down the event or preparations for them. It's like if an ocean cruise ship somehow went through the Mississippi River and no one batted an eye.
that and they lost a war in Vietnam in order to build the damned things. They use trees sourced from Vietnam, By the time of the last voyage, a peace treaty had been signed - so no more voyages. Then of course the Emperor died, and the new administration was going to purge the previous ones.
Plot twist: the lost colonists of Roanoke went to Croatia.
That would at least be consistent with the fact that "Croatan" resembles the English "Croatian" rather than the Croatian "Hrvatska."
Classic bionicle 2001 opening. I applaud you sir :3
Just wait until Gavin Menzies publishes "1447: the year the Chinese explored the Amazon" or "1447: the year the Chinese met the Aliens".
How about "1452: The year China discovered Antarctica"
That would be quite a feat since Menzies died in 2020.
He's dead, so unfortunately there won't be any more.
It's a shame. I was really looking forward to 1668: The Year China Colonised Alpha Centauri!
@@sowietdoge6259 Someone ought to write that, just because.
He's dead
This would make for a pretty interesting alternate history scenario, but not as a real history.
My biggest criticism is that Menzies didn’t talk about how China jump started the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
I suppose you could make an argument about the desire for Chinese resources - the Opium Wars- pushing the desire for more and better steam ships rather than sail.
Now we need a video about Tartary and all that crazy pseudo-history.
Yeah i even saw a comment being flooded by people saying that the buildings in the video were made by the tartarians
Menzies: the Chinese went everywhere! No civilization has ever traveled as far!
The Polynesians, Norse, and Islamic Worlds: are we a joke to you?
I had a geography teacher who claimed that she really believed that 1421 was a true story and tried to convince us that the Chinese had discovered America.
Thats rough
I'm going to throw out a guess and say you went to school in Florida. Having been to public school in Florida, this sounds like the caliber of teacher you dealt with
I had an AP world history teacher who tried convincing us of the same thing lmao
Most history teachers are ignorant. Including AP teachers. A friend of mine had "A World Lit Only by Fire" assigned as his AP world history textbook. And the biography part of that book is pretty mediocre but the opening chapters are cringy and retarded, patently ahistorical garbage (including the assertion most peasants were naked & graphic descriptions of sex orgies that almost certainly didn't happen)
@@kevinarteaga3824 i'll say also in South America, heck you don't know the minimize what the Europeans did in the XVI century i know they weren't the center of the world but cut them some slack, they only wanted to reach the Indies because their food sucked, i can relate to that
Gavin Menzies was the first "Source? I made it up"
4:08: I fully believe that it's the most common complaint he _listened to._
As a New Zealand native born with a background history of arrival around 1250 in large double hulled vessels known as mahanga capable of carryimg approx 120. It was interesting to read dear Gavin Menzies exciting big boys comic. Typical british ethnocentric knowledge "I am a british submarine navigator therefore I am!" His assertion that the Kaimanawa horses were left by Zenghe was garbage.Maori were surprised by the first appearance of a horse in the Far North Taitokirau area introduced by missionaries and traders circa 1830's Soon after they became experts in care and management of livestock. Our tribes descendents of Te Arawa waka Tuwharetoa perhaps Ngati Hotu would have taken a goldern opportunity to harness this new mode of transport but they didn't exist. Actually a desertion of horse power from Boer War 1890's and later WW1. His claim of a tsunami overwhelming Moeraki leaving signs and evidence behind e.g the hull of a chinese junk embed in a sandy bank. His first example of Junk science. The famous Moeraki Boulders in his self-esteemed knowledge were anchors and ballast flotsom and jetson apparently lost by the Zenghi expedition. Boulder-dash! They are unique concretions that are produced by sea action on sedimentary rocks tossed eventually on this coast. Unfortunately these ancient relics are being removed to adorn the driveways of family homes due to such false claims such as Menzies. They call people like Menzies assertions historic and the history of Maori mythology. The Menzie myth should be dispelled. Just as a aside maori history has been vindicated recent evidence and descriptive oral history shows that maori discovered Antartica prior to 1000 ad. The number of pakeha folk who say to me " The chinese discovered New Zealand before the maori! When asked were their evidence came from the usual answer is "' A bloke who read this book about it told me " When asked " Who wrote the book " I wouldn't have a clue!" That's the truth of your fiction. " You wouldn't have a clue." But hey; that's your retirement paid for."
Oh, but see, the treasure fleet deployed their clockpunk wheels and rolled over the Sinai, so who needs a canal?
Or something...
Zhen He was dead when he visited Rome? So what! He was such a good Sailor, that he crossed the Styx and returned from the dead.😂
I was taught in AP World History that the Renaissance/Early Modern period proper began when Mehmed the Conqueror captured Constantinople and destroyed the Byzantine Empire in 1453.
It helped expand the renaissance further since byzantine refugees brought new information and ways of thinking.
@@normalperson2462
There were several distinct renaissances, or facets of The Renaissance(artistic, architectural, literary, diplomatic) and they didn't have the same start dates.
That seems to also be the EU4 way of thinking, which got many in the younger generations into history.
13:00 This is the EU4 equivalent of thinking portugal already started colonizing america because of than one similarly colourted tribe on the coast. The ones who know, know.
Oh the Portughese have began colonsing ! It's even written Pot- oh nvm its Potiguara.
Hilarious that the source citing Menzies book has the auto corrected sunglasses emoji
Gavin Menzies next book: How the Chinese actually built the Egyptian Pyramids.
I went down this path after looking at the claimed Republic of Ragusa colony in India and I ended up finding the guy obsessed with Croatia saying the Croatoan and Croatians were the same. This is nice.
13:00 This has the same energy as an American saying that Montenegro is racist.
Don't you mean "MonteAfrican-American"?
I can remember seeing that book in a bookshop when it was first released, and as it was in the History section rather than fiction, (where it SHULD have been!) I bought it expecting to learn a new and interesting facet of world history. As I recall, It started out OK, but after a while the "uh,really?" moments started happening too often for my liking; I could find no evidence from other sources to back the assertions in the book, and rapidly concluded that the book was a cynical fraudulent attempt to simply part others from their money. I even told a leading UK bookstore chain that they shouldnt be placing that book in their history section, but in fiction instead. Sadly, they did not move it. I disposed of the book within a year of buying it.
Hrvatska, Croatia. (Horvath)
It was the change of Dynasty that halted the building of more fleets.
Not the change of a dynasty. It was economic decline after the death of the Yongle emperor as well as the treasure fleets costing way too much money to sustain
Sounds like Menzies is projecting a lot onto his historical characters (I call them that since there is such a drastic departure from reality here that they may as well be fictional mockeries of their historical selves), making them as dim and forgetful about monumental historic events as Menzies himself. Honestly I'd love a version of history where everyone just ignores major happenings, beyond what people already ignore/forget.
I’m ashamed to say when I was younger I got caught up in reading both of these books because of my fascination with Chinese history but now it’s just absurd.
I wasn't familiar with this as a kid, but I did get caught up in the theory that Atlantis was the Minoan Empire, which I think was thought up by the same guy. Issue with that theory, as with all Atlantis theories, is that it's clear when Plato wrote the first reference to Atlantis that Atlantis was _fictional,_ made up for allegorical purposes. It was no more real than More's Utopia.
"There's nothing saying it didn't happen so I can say it happened"
Should add Ragusa was primarily inhabited by Dalmatians
I do have to wonder why Menzies didn't just write alternative history fiction. His ideas could have been the basis of a series of novels in the same genre as what S.M. Stirling has written.
But actually good and not excessively edgy.
Wait a second... noodles... pasta...? Chinese invented Italy 1434 confirmed!!!
They even were the first to make wine so they must've invented Italy !!!!
If it weren’t for the fact that a huge amount of people bought his books, I’d believe that Gavin Menzies solely made these books for the CCP.
Then how come I never even heard of Menzies until the first Bad History video was released?
@@jeffreygao3956 His 1421 book was a bestselling one, I can wager most people haven't heard of most best selling books.
@@jeanhunter3538
It was prominently displayed in bookshops.
I remember thinking it looked interesting but I never actually read it.
In our next episode: How China invented civilization and how the CCP ended the nazis.
I like how the narrator in the beginning half-sounds like he's going to break into laughter as he's speaking. I can't blame him.
Plot twist: Menzies is an angry Chinese guy who hates Italy his next book is about how Rome was actually founded by the Han dynasty
Duty. Destiny. Unity
Bionicle. Thank you so much
Stefan Milo narration!! Sweet. Dude has the voice for it.
Bionicle intro? Lmaooo
I don't believe a single thing Menzies says, but your point about "why wouldn't Colombus use this imaginary fleet to the Indies" sort of forgets the whole point about the Mamluks and Ottomans controlling trade between Europe and the Indies. Not saying any of that means Menzies has credibility, but that the lack of Europeans using a Muslim controlled canal is not a compelling argument
Holy Gadunka, MNOLG! Took me straight back to my childhood! Was 2001 really that long ago?
2001 one is now old enough to drink.
If you think that time went fast, well, hold on to your butt but it gets worse.
Fantastic work!
Man I can't wait to see the next video.
Stefan's intro. Nice!!!!!
Dang I missed this excellent Menzies book. LOL!!!! You know, one of his books was enough for me.
Love seeing a long video!
Fantastic video! One of my favorites from you. Keep up with the unique content I know it may not get the views but it’s truly remarkable content.
Another Bad History suggestion is The Chalice and the Blade but that falls a lot into anthropological research
ah the story that was the inspiration for the chinese campaign in Age of Empires 3
Request for a Bad History episode:
The Hiram Key by Chris Knight and Robert Lomas (1996).
There is a LOT there. It is a wild, wild hypothesis.
Love the new intro
Note that there have been Christians in China since roughly the 7th century AD. The Church of the East found success in China under the religious tolerance of the Tang dynasty (see the Xi'an Stele), and that (somewhat) continued into later centuries. One of the most notable examples of these was a Turkic Chinese man named Bar Sauma, a Rabban in the Chinese Church of the East, who served as a Mongol ambassador to Europe in the late 13th century. During the 1280s, Bar Sauma embarked on a trip of Europe, going across Anatolia, Italy and even into Southern France. In 1288, he met with the newly elected Pope Nicholas IV in Rome, but this meeting (and a majority of Bar Sauma's trips through Europe) failed to create any lasting impact.
My point is that while it isn't impossible for a Chinese Christian to have made the dangerous pilgrimage to Rome in the 1300s and 1400s, it was definitely NOT a Chinese diplomatic voyage, especially considering the rising isolationism of the Ming dynasty by 1434 (the treasure fleets would end the next year).
I'm honestly surprised Gavin Menzies wrote the books himself not someone from the Chinese government.
He is a professor at the University of Yuan.
I picked this book up at my local bookstore. Man I feel duped
I can’t wait for your review of his third book!
You should do the Lechina empire in the next episode of this series
2:00 I thought the Renaissance started later lol
The intro was CLEAN
Great video as always, Tiger! But it's pronounced closer to "Juhng Huh"
I hope to see these books in the fiction section one day.
The Bionicle intro brought me back to my childhood
2600 BC: The Year China Showed the Pharaohs how to build a Pyramid.
Maybe the letter from Tosconelli is referring to Raban Bar Sauma? I feel like that’s the only reasonable interpretation (If it’s authentic)
Could be
Of course it's perfectly possible that there were later Chinese envoys.
From the pov of a medieval pope these guys were an interesting curiosity but not of any great importance.
That Bionicle intro nostalgia hit me like a 797f launched out of an orbital railgun
There's gotta be at least eight (😎 things wrong with this book.
Great video 10/10
And now the third book the trilogy : 1469 : Zheng He sailed to the Moon 500 years before Apollo 11 !
Menzies is STILL cranking out garbage? Keep me posted.
Well, currently he is dead. But he was doing this.
@@SamAronow his most recent book came out in 2013 and died in April 2020
@kursk23 patreon supporters get to watch stuff first
Her: Why do you have trust issues?
Me:
Gavin Menzie's, Erich von Danikan's, illegitimate love child.
1475: The Year China Reached Mars
Love the Bionicle reference at the start!
Love the MNOG animation at the start
Quick note, the 60 or so Croatan today are probably.... probably, not the same as the Croatan of Roanoke, because their ancestry is unverifiable and the name was kinda thrown on them. Not saying that the Croatan were Croatian, just that the idea that the Native tribe the lost colony can't really be said to still be around.
IIRC, it's not even certain that the word "Croatan" left by the lost colony was even intended as a tribe name. That's a common theory, but unless there's been a newer discovery I haven't heard about, everything is still somewhat speculative.
1447: the year China built planet earth and the whole galaxy
1492: China becomes the Galactic Empire
obviously China jumpstarted the renaissance by inventing noodles however long ago which spread to Italy where the renaissance began
wasn't notified, had to serach the exact name of the video after seeing twitter
Gotta love the long bionicle reference haha
the Chinese shared their advanced pasta technology with Italy on this voyage
As soon as i saw the Croatian flag i knew this gonna get funky
In the Chinese myth an old ancient dude builds a big ol kite, straps himself to it, and is the first to fly. But it was tethered flight and he was lucky to survive which is why it never got taken up, but it probably happened.
1444, when the Chinese went to the moon and took a dump there
My man's got them stealthed treasure ships. xD
Interesting deep dive as always! If you're looking for more Bad History content, Wilkens' "Where Troy Once Stood" might be a good candidate-- my dad earnestly asked me if I'd heard the theory after he read about it in one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels, which borrowed Wilkens' thesis for the plot. I don't think anyone else has picked it apart yet on TH-cam!
In 2008 Menzies released a second book entitled 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. In it Menzies claims that in 1434 Chinese delegations reached Italy and brought books and globes that, to a great extent, launched the Renaissance. He claims that a letter written in 1474 by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and found amongst the private papers of Columbus indicates that an earlier Chinese ambassador had direct correspondence with Pope Eugene IV in Rome. Menzies then claims that materials from the Chinese Book of Agriculture, the Nong Shu, published in 1313 by the Yuan-dynasty
^Wikipedia copy-paste
Without making use of China's 4 great inventions i.e. gunpowder, compass, paper and block printing, the West would not have been able to discover and colonise the New World. Which was why Gengis Khan was able to conquer his way to the heartlands of Europe. The Renaissance produced icons like Leonardo da Vinci whose many machinery drawings were copied from Taccola who copied many of the drawings from an early 14th century Yuan Dynasty encyclopedia called the Nongshu, completed in 1313.
You should do a video on America Unearthed i remember seeing some weird stuff in there like saying the Templars went to new mexico and other weird stuff
NEW BAD HISTORY WHOOOOO
Feel like he watches a lot of Ancient Aliens