THE
ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY - HONG KONG
presents
“1434: The Chinese
start the Renaissance”
by
Gavin Menzies
on
Thursday, 29 May 2008
2/F
Olympic House, So Kong Po, Causeway Bay
Drinks
Reception 6.30 pm; Lecture 7.30 pm
We are delighted to welcome to
Hong Kong Gavin Menzies, to lecture again on his important new
discoveries. On 15 March 2002, a sensation occurred in the lecture
theatre of the Royal Geographical Society in London as Gavin Menzies
presented the results of fifteen years of research: he argued that
the Chinese had discovered most of the world by 1421, before any of
the famous European explorers. The lecture was broadcast to a
television audience of almost a billion people and made the front
pages of newspapers worldwide, from the New York Times to the
SCMP. The Royal Geographical Society Hong Kong was then
privileged to host the first public presentation of Mr. Menzies’s
theories on Chinese soil. Ever since, hundreds of scientists and
historians have joined the increasingly controversial debate.
In this lecture, Mr. Menzies
returns to the Royal Geographical Society to launch his new book,
'1434', and while much of the contents of the book is still
confidential, it is likely to be even more controversial than
'1421'. Mr Menzies now argues that Zheng He's fleet's 1434 visit to
Venice and Florence was not only the spark which set the
Renaissance ablaze, but the visit’s resulting revolution in
European thought fundamentally changed the history of the world.
Whether you believe in Mr. Menzies’s theories, disagree or are
“on the fence”, this is a lecture not to be missed.
Two years ago, a Chinese
Canadian scholar, Tai Peng Wang, discovered Chinese and Italian
records showing that Chinese delegations had reached Italy during the
reigns of Zhu Di (1403-1425) and the Xuande Emperor (1426-1435).
‘1434’ is based around the highly significant meeting of
that year and the great transfer of knowledge which Mr Menzies argues
it resulted in. The consequences, Mr Menzies argues were of great
importance because this transfer took place just as Europe was
emerging from a millennium of stagnation following the fall of the
Roman Empire. While the ideals, engineering and civilisations of
Greece and Rome undoubtedly played an important role in the
Renaissance, Menzies submits that the transfer of Chinese
intellectual capital to Europe was the spark that set the Renaissance
ablaze.
Emperor Zhu Zhanji, 1426–1436,
ordered Zheng He and his eunuch crew to embark on another great
sailing expedition in 1431, with some three hundred and forty-three
ships available. Zheng He’s fleets had every weapon then known
to the Chinese: sea skimming rockets, machine guns, mines, mortars,
cannon, exploding grenades and much more. Zheng He’s fleets
were powerfully armed and well supplied by water tankers, grain and
horse ships, which enabled them to stay at sea for months on end. In
addition, the ships were repositories of great wealth – both in
material objects such as silk and ceramics and in the intellectual
treasure contained in astronomical tables and encyclopaedias covering
every subject known to the Chinese.
On the voyage was the
“Yong Le Dadian”. This massive encyclopaedia was
completed in 1421 and housed in the newly built Forbidden City. Some
3,000 scholars had worked for years compiling all knowledge known to
China for the previous 2000 years, in 22,937 passages extracted from
over 7,000 titles, a work of 50 million characters; an encyclopaedia
of a scale and scope unparalleled until the publication of
Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1768. The encyclopaedia covered every
subject on the planet – geography and Cartography, agriculture,
civil and military engineering, warfare, health and medical care,
building and town planning, steel and steel production, how to paint
ceramics, biochemistry including cross fertilisation, how to make
different types of alcohol, silk production and weaving, how to
produce different types of gunpowder, ship construction – even
codes, cyphers and cryptography.
Of equal importance were the
calendars carried by the fleets. The calendars contained a mass of
astronomical data running to thousands of observations. It enabled
comets and eclipses to be predicted for years ahead as well as times
of sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset. The calendars enabled
longitude to be calculated by using the slip between solar and
sidereal time, by eclipses of the moon, or by the angular distance
between the moon and selected stars or planets. Thus Zheng He was
able to provide Europeans with maps, navigational tools and an
astronomical calendar beyond anything they had yet been able to
produce on their own.
Paulo Toscanelli, the great
Florentine mathematician, geographer and astronomer described his
meeting with the Chinese as having gleaned “copious and good
and true information from distinguished men of great learning”.
In letters, Toscanelli told Canon Martins and Christopher Columbus
that the earth is a sphere and that China might be reached by sailing
west from Spain, which information he obtained from Chinese who came
to Florence in the time of Eugenius IV, thus around 1434. Yet in
1474, when Toscanelli wrote these letters, Europeans had not reached
southern Africa and it was another eighteen years before Columbus set
sail for the Americas, so Mr Menzies argues this information can
only have come from the Chinese.
Thus, Mr Menzies argues Magellan
was not the first to circumnavigate the globe nor was Columbus the
first to discover the Americas. Christopher Columbus discovered
America in 1492. Yet 18 years before he set sail, he had a map of the
Americas, which he later acknowledged in his logs. Even before his
first voyage, he had signed a contract with the King and Queen of
Spain that appointed him Viceroy of the Americas. The straits that
connect the Atlantic to the Pacific bear the great Portuguese
explorer Magellan’s name. When Magellan reached those straits,
he had run out of food, but he continued, having seen the straits in
a chart in the treasury of the King of Portugal, and made by Martin
of Bohemia thirteen years before Magellan set sail. Mr Menzies asks
where but the Chinese did the mapmakers gain this invaluable
knowledge.
Mr. Menzies also controversially
argues that everything which Taccola, di Giorgio, Regiomontanus,
Alberti, Fontana and Leonardo da Vinci invented was already there in
Chinese books: notably ephemeris tables, maps, mathematical treatises
and books about civil and military machines. The information would
have been handed over to the Pope and his advisors when the Chinese
visited in 1434.
Mr Menzies also argues that the
introduction by the Chinese of innovative rice cultivation and silk
manufacturing processes had widespread consequences. By the 1450’s,
Florence had silk and rice. The Medici family had derived
unprecedented riches from the silk trade and had used their wealth to
fund astronomers, mathematicians, engineers, sculptors, artists,
explorers, cartographers, historians, librarians, archaeologists and
geographers. The Renaissance was in full flood, thanks in part, Mr.
Menzies argues, to the Chinese inventions. For instance, the
introduction of locks which enabled an all-weather, all-season system
of navigable canals to be constructed in northern Italy was of
immense importance to the economic development of Lombardy. The
introduction of Chinese rice, mulberry trees and silk was all the
more valuable once the rice could be carried downriver on the Po.
Marble, too, could be carried from the mountains to the new cities of
northern Italy. The printing of books did not produce new ideas in
itself, but the introduction of moveable type enabled revolutionary
ideas to be spread the length and breadth of Europe.
Mr. Menzies argues that the
extraordinary magnitude and generosity of Chinese gifts to the West
made sense from the Chinese Emperor’s viewpoint. If China was
to remain a colossus on the world stage, the “barbarians”
must be bribed and educated to render tribute. Zheng He’s 1431
voyage, however, proved to be the last. After that, China withdrew
into self-imposed isolation. Europe, left to exploit China’s
lavish gifts, soon became mistress of the world.
Gavin Menzies spent
his early years in China and joined the Royal Navy in 1953. As a
junior officer, he sailed the world along the routes of Columbus,
Dias, Cabral and Vasco da Gama. As commander of HMS Rorqual, he
sailed the routes pioneered by Magellan and Captain Cook. Since
leaving the Royal Navy, he has done 20 years of research on his
theories, visiting 120 countries, over 900 museums and libraries and
every major seaport of the Middle Ages. Many new editions of his
book, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, have been
published and numerous television companies have done series on his
discoveries.
Members
and their guests are most welcome to attend this lecture, which is
HK$100 for Members and HK$150 for guests and others.
Royal Geographical Society (IBG) - Hong Kong
GPO Box 6681, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2583 9700
Fax: (852) 2140 6000
Email: director@rgshk.org.hk
Website: www.rgshk.org.hk
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