Menzies Arguments Of 1421: The Chinese In West Africa

Rhiann Holman
1421, The Chinese in West Africa
Through the lack of strong evidence and using deductive reasoning to make some of his most important claims, Menzies does not make a compelling argument for the chinese reaching the western coast of Africa in 1421. Menzies bases his entire argument in chapter 4 on the fact that Niccolo da Conti was in India at the same time as Zheng He. To make a strong argument, Menzies must have good evidence to support this claim that the rest of the chapter is built on; however, he does not do this. On the bottom of page 85, Menzies comes to the conclusions that da Conti must have been referring to Zheng He’s fleet only because other Chinese boats that would have been there would have been trade ships that
In this quote, there is not even a mention of the person’s real name; all that is given is “a trustworthy person.” Not only does this not give the credit to the person that this information supposedly came from, trustworthy a subjective term. Although Menzie does recognize this flaw in the quote, it does not stop him from building a claim off of this source by making inferences. He eventually uses deduction to get to the conclusion that da Conti is the only person that could have given Fra Mauro this map. I does not completely make sense to use deduction here because there are so many people involved and so much information that is missing that to say there is no other person that could have possibly given Fra Mauro the map is a bit of a stretch. Furthermore, he ends this claim by stating that da Conti was on the Chinese fleet for multiple voyages without any evidence to support this. If it was the case that da Conti was on the Chinese fleet, mention of this earlier in the chapter would have made a stronger claim; however, since this was the only time this was mentioned, I assume that means Menzie could not find any sources to support this
The fact that many experts have looked at these carvings and could not identify what language it was makes me question the reliabilities of Menzies’ evidence. He tries to prove that he was able, with the help of an unnamed expert, to prove that this carvings came from the interpreters that were on the Chinese fleet. Additionally, menzies quote a phone conversation that he had personally with this unnamed expert and there is no way in fact checking this. There is many other points that Menzies makes that would greatly strengthen his claim if he were to add footnotes, especially to something like these stones that information is not easily accessible. The fact that he doesn’t have more resources is