1421 and All That

Australia's history wars may take on a whole new dimension. While the education minister was writing her speech about bringing Captain Cook back into our classrooms, Four Corners was busy exploring the claim that the Chinese got here first. Last Monday's program was nothing new to afficionados of 15th century history, but for most viewers it would have been a startling introduction to Gavin Menzies and his notorious book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World.

Not that it's first time this revisionist tsunami has hit the local news. Hu Jintao's announcement to federal parliament during his 2003 visit that Australia was discovered by his people didn't escape notice. More recently, Melbourne University's decision to fete Menzies in April drew a fair amount of comment. Overall though it's provoked surprisingly little discussion for a theory that, if accepted, explodes the traditional narrative of antipodean history (as usual it's fallen to New Zealand to take the lead). Especially given that Menzies' claims go beyond discovery to encompass Chinese colonies from Port Philip Bay to Darwin and miscegenation of the Aboriginal population.

It's these sort of assertions that have sent experts worldwide into apoplexy, in one case to the point of dragging Menzies' publisher before the UK's Consumer Complaints body for marketing the book as 'non-fiction'. Menzies' Melbourne lecture featured an extraordinary tirade from the head of the university's history department, reading from a prepared list of points to show that the man is a fraud (the MC cut him off after number one). Four Corners tactfully declined to broadcast that part, but they did interview the professor in question as the local rep in a string of academics striving to outdo each other in disdain for Menzies' theories and, in most cases, for the man himself.

Both lecture and program gave salutary insights into why academics often lose in the court of public opinion. At the lecture, Professor Wheatcroft's bluster fared badly against Menzies' poise and the array of presentation technology used to make his case. But that's why we have investigative journalism, which probes through the stage management with which Menzies has (by his own admission) cloaked this pseudo-academic enterprise.

Four Corners revealed the dapper ex-Royal Navy commander as a charlatan, who conveniently forgets blackmail threats against his critics, admits that he doesn't check evidence and defends himself by citing the number of books he's sold. The program was denounced by Menzies as a hachet-job, an accusation that may sting with the stench of Forest-Gate still in the air. But given the chance to defend himself, Menzies managed to appear not merely a crank but a fraud and a white-collar thug, traits born out by his tactics against critics and presence on the English vexatious litigant list. Any hope that he makes up for this with academic rigour is dispelled by a visit the official 1421 website. 'Sophomoric' is a generous description; it would certainly never have passed my VCE history class.

I knew that both Menzies' claims and his academic method were dubious, but to see the man himself articulate them on Four Corners was surreal. I think he lost me with the claim that the Chinese fleet sailed up the Thames and presented Henry V with a set of underwear, an event that has left no surviving records (at least, none discovered yet). Or maybe it was when he waxed lyrical about Marco Polo touring Hudson's Bay in the 1200's. Or maybe it was one of his converts enthusing about the remains of 45 junks washed up on the New Zealand coast by a tsunami, itself caused by a meteor. The same meteor that wiped out Chinese settlements around the New World, leaving it free for the Europeans to colonise a century later.

Four Corners pertinently observed that since 1421's publication the claims have steadily ratcheted up, from the 'discovery' of the Liu Gang map early this year through to the Henry V and Marco Polo revelations. Not surprising, since by Menzies' own admission this has been a marketing exercise from day one.

"[I] hoped that there would be lots of critics there, and they'd all lambast it, and it would make excellent publicity. And therefore, I'd be able to clinch a sale for my book. So, really, it was a public relations exercise on my part, to hopefully create a lot of controversy and sell literary rights."

Of course there's nothing wrong with hypingrevisionist history, so long as it's not bunkum. But the fact that Menzies' case is an academic sieve raises serious ethical questions about his PR spin, especially given the lengths that his publisher went to in bolstering his credentials to write on Chinese maritime achievements (like incorrectly claiming on the dust jacket that Menzies was born in China).

The irony is that this marketing blitz targets the very demographic that ought to be most sceptical, and with great success. I knew about the criticisms of Menzies and his book before I bought it, but priding myself as a world history buff I felt a need to have it on my shelf. In other words, my intellectual ego drove me to subsidise the quack history that I've been denouncing in this post. Lest I be further hoist by my own petard, I should stop wasting time on things like blogging and sit down to dissect Menzies' 'evidence' for myself. I've yet to get past the book's third chapter, despite the army of editors provided by Bantam Press to make his manuscript readable.

Further pontificating -
1421 Exposed
Debunking Gavin Menzies
China History Forum
Salon