In his latest book, “1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance,” Gavin Menzies follows in the footsteps of his first book, “1421: The Year China Discovered America,” making an alternative investigation into a pivotal event in Western history.

As with Menzies’ earlier book, this one is ambitious and controversial. Unlike “1421” however, “1434” concentrates primarily on the one geographic area largely omitted from the first book: Europe. Specifically, he proposes that quite a few of the inventions, innovations and mental leaps that occurred in Europe – particularly in Venice and Florence – during the Renaissance, can be traced back to the year 1434, when a Chinese fleet (commanded by Admiral Zheng He, the primary figure in “1421”) sailed to Venice in order to bring it into China’s tributary system. Menzies argues that maps, star charts, tables and astronomical calendars far more advanced than anything the Europeans had would have been presented by the Chinese ambassador as part of his official visit in order to better enable returning foreign delegations to find their way back to China when paying deference to the Chinese emperor. Additionally, groundbreaking agricultural, industrial and military information widely available in mass produced Chinese pocket encyclopedias and a huge, all-encompassing one would have also made its way into the Venetians’ hands during Zhang He’s visit. Based on this receipt of information, important ideas were planted, allowing Europe to surge forward intellectually, industrially and economically, filling the void left by China after its withdrawal from the world stage. A theory this big requires a lot of proof and Menzies spends most of “1434” trying to line it up and present it coherently. A good part of the first half of the book is given to bolstering the claim that the Chinese did, in fact, reach Venice at that time. He concentrates first on establishing a longstanding trading link between China and Egypt through the Cairo-Red Sea Canal and then goes further – into the Mediterranean and Adriatic – using some of his favorite “1421” methods: matching DNA, folklore, linguistic and cartographic similarities, subsequent European voyages and plant transfer. Using this evidence, he alleges that the fleet stopped along the Dalmatian coast in Croatia on its way to Venice.

From this point on, he uses the rest of the book to try to link major Renaissance players and ideas to this 1434 visit. In doing so, he continues on with one of 1421’s major themes: maps and how they’re connected. Understandably, this is where he’s most comfortable. What made “1421” so compelling was the experience that informed the work. A career spent in the British Navy as a navigator and sub commander gave Menzies a very special skill set particularly appropriate for dealing with the most important aspects of that book: cartography, ocean currents, weather patterns and navigation, especially related to longitude. His thoughts on these topics and how they relate to his main theory come across clearly and convincingly: he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about and has the credentials to prove it. But in “1434,” he can only stay in this familiar territory for so long before the subject matter demands that he move on to less comfortable footing. To Menzies’ credit, when he does eventually venture out into the world of Renaissance Europe, he really goes for it, dropping some very big names (Da Vinci and Gutenberg, to name a couple) and calling them – and their contributions – into question. His general idea is that any number of important innovations, from movable block printing, to weapon design, to waterway construction, to silk and steel production, can be traced back to 1434 and that Chinese visit. He submits that these breakthroughs were transmitted through a chain of Renaissance men, having originated in the widely available Chinese books dealing with topics as varied as mathematics, agriculture and warfare as well as to an enormous encyclopedia (the “Yong Le Dadian”) that would have been brought by the fleet. To his further credit, he makes enough of a case to justify some consideration, if not necessarily acceptance, of what he has to offer.

That sort of a reaction is close to the one experienced when reading “1421.” However, it’s not the same. That extra well-informed conviction and excitement that comes through in “1421” is somehow missing in “1434.” In “1421,” the sense was of somebody using his expertise to satisfy his curiosity and in the process, going further than he ever could have foreseen and making some massive, unexpected discoveries. Menzies, in the newer book, seems out of his depth. What’s more is that he seems to know it. By his own admission, substantial portions of various chapters have been paraphrased from the work of others more expert than he in the Renaissance and medieval Chinese history. While there’s nothing wrong with this (Menzies, in various places, makes it clear that the whole two-book project is a work-in-progress and a collaborative effort), it does further hurt his credibility with academics. Many have already criticized or dismissed his work in 1421 as pure fiction based on what they consider to be his circular arguments and questionable sources and evidence.

That being said, “1434” is worth reading for those interested in alternative history. This isn’t a Little Green Men from Mars Built the Pyramids kind of book, although the chapter near the end of “1434” dealing with the tsunami caused by a comet crashing into the Pacific and wrecking the Chinese fleet may initially bring similar thoughts to mind. “1434” and “1421” are serious. Correct or incorrect as their theories turn out to be, at the very least they deserve to be considered with an open mind.

Note: This book review first appeared in the March 2010 edition of Map Magazine.