European Expansion

European Expansion

Anne Gerritsen

What is the European world?

What is the European world?• Is it the whole world?• Does it have boundaries?• What makes it a world?

What is the early modern world?

What is the early modern world?o Is it the whole world?o Does it have shared characteristics?

Argument of this lecture:

One of the characteristics of the early modern world is overseas expansion

China and the Oceans in the early Ming (1405-1433)

Zheng He• 1274: Zheng He’s great-great-great grandfather Saiyid

Ajall Shams al-Din appointed governor of Yunnan by Khubilai Khan

• 1368 reign of Hongwu emperor begins• 1371 Zheng He born in Yunnan• 1381 Zheng He captured in Yunnan, castrated, sent to the

prince of Yan• 1402 prince of Yan becomes the next Ming emperor; Zheng

He appointed Director of Palace servants; shipbuilding begins

• 1405-07 First Voyage to Calicut and back• 1407-09 Second Voyage to Calicut and back• 1409-1411 Third Voyage, campaign in Ceylon• 1412-1415 Fourth Voyage to Hormuz• 1417-1419 Fifth Voyage to Arabia and Africa• 1421-22 Sixth Voyage • 1431-33 Seventh Voyage and Zheng He’s death

What is the point of Zheng He?

What is the point of Zheng He?

Experience of overseas expansion in many places (Ottoman empire; Chinese empire)

Why the emphasis on European expansion?

Why the emphasis on European expansion?

• Eurocentrism (we know and love ourselves; this is the story of the wonderful world of us)

• Teleological view based on nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism

Chronology of European expansion

Marco Polo

• Frances Xavier• 1506-1552

• Alessandro Valignano• 1539-1606

• Frances Xavier• 1506-1552

• Matteo Ricci• 1552-1610

“Another remarkable fact and quite worthy of note as marking a difference from the West, is that the entire kingdom is administered by the Order of the Learned, commonly known as The Philosophers. The responsibility for the orderly management of the entire realm is wholly and completely committed to their charge and care. The army, both officers and soldiers, hold them in high respect and show them the promptest obedience and deference, and not infrequently the military are disciplined by them as a schoolboy might be punished by his master. Policies of war are formulated and military; questions are decided by the Philosophers only, and their advice and counsel has more weight with the King than that of the military leaders.”

from The Diary of Matthew Ricci, in Matthew Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century, trans Louis Gallagher, (New York: Random House, 1942, 1970).