But now bestselling historian Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that in the year 1434, China-then the world's most technologically advanced civilization-provided the spark that set the European Renaissance ablaze.
Textbooks tell us that it came about as a result of a rediscovery of the ideas and ideals of classical Greece and Rome. The brilliance of the Renaissance laid the foundation of the modern world. Though Menzies writes engagingly, his assumption that the Chinese fleet landed a delegation in Florence is highly speculative, and hardly substantiated by any facts (Alberti could just have easily learned perspective from classical sources the Greeks knew about the relationship between perception of length and distance in the 1st Century BCE).The New York Times bestselling author of 1421 offers another stunning reappraisal of history, presenting compelling new evidence that traces the roots of the European Renaissance to Chinese exploration in the fifteenth century Menzies sets the stage by recapitulating arguments from his first book, including the ingenious method for calculating longitude that Chinese navigators may have used. There, they provided the knowledge and technique-introducing the painter Alberti, for instance, to the methods of perspective drawing-that sparked the Renaissance.
His thesis in both works is based on the seven (historically undisputed) voyages undertaken by a large Chinese sailing fleet between 14 while it is known that they traveled as far as east Africa, Menzies believes that they landed in Italy and sent a delegation to the Council of Venice, held in Florence in 1439. In Menzies's 1421, the amateur historian advanced a highly controversial hypothesis, that the Chinese discovered America in this follow-up, he credits the Renaissance not to classical Greek and Roman ideals (a ""Eurocentric view of history"") but again to the Chinese.
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