Admiral Zheng He and the Ming Admiral Zheng He and the Ming Treasure FleetTreasure Fleet

1371-1435

Each ship was 400’ long and 160’ wide!

• The economic motive for these huge ventures may have been important, and many of the ships had large private cabins for merchants.

• But the chief aim was probably political, to enroll further states as tributaries and mark the reemergence of the Chinese Empire following nearly a century of barbarian rule.

The political character of Zheng He's voyages indicates the primacy of the political elites. Despite their formidable and unprecedented strength, Zheng He's voyages were not intended to extend Chinese sovereignty overseas.

Motives — Ming / Zheng He

• More importantly, they served to transmit Chinese culture to South and Southeast Asia and the east coast of Africa.

• At the time, many of the countries of these regions were still relatively undeveloped, and therefore quite attracted to China's advanced civilization.

Motives — Ming / Zheng He

Zheng He's western voyages were not just an opportunity to carry out overseas trade.

Motives for European Motives for European ExplorationExploration1. Crusades by-pass intermediaries to

get to Asia2. Renaissance curiosity about other

lands and peoples3. Reformation refugees & missionaries4. Monarchs seeking new sources of

revenue5. Technological advances6. Fame and fortune

New Maritime New Maritime TechnologiesTechnologies

Hartman Astrolabe

(1532)

Better Maps [Portulan]

Sextant

Mariner’s Compass

New Weapons New Weapons TechnologyTechnology

European Voyages of European Voyages of ExplorationExploration

Atlantic ExplorationsAtlantic Explorations

Looking for “El Dorado”Looking for “El Dorado”

Chinese Columbus: Fact or Fiction? • The Year China Discovered America (2002), aspires

to rewrite world history on a grand scale. • Gavin Menzies maintains that four Chinese fleets,

comprising twenty-five to thirty ships and at least 7,000 persons each, visited every part of the world except Europe between 1421 and 1423.

• According to Menzies, proof of the passage of the Ming fleets to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Polynesia is overwhelming and indisputable.

• The following flash shows his viewpoint:

Voyages of the Treasure Fleet

Treasures from the Treasures from the Americas!Americas!

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trans-Atlantic Slave TradeTrade

Impact of European Impact of European ExpansionExpansion1. Native populations ravaged by

disease.2. Influx of gold, and especially

silver, into Europe created an inflationary economic climate.

[“Price Revolution”]3. New products introduced across

the continents [“Columbian Exchange”].

4. Deepened colonial rivalries.

Result #1:

Chinese Voyages Ended

Why?

• Anti-commercialism– Agrarian economy – focused on land tax rather than

trade taxes– Institutional

• elite class came into being through fostering agriculture• merchants kept subordinate at first; later in conflict, more

conservative elements– Ideological

• Culturalism / Ethnocentrism• ancient distaste for commerce• left to eunuchs who were a despised class which made it

more distasteful to Confucians– Strategic

• Needed to focus on northern barbarians• Japanese pirates and more centralized Tokugawa Shogun

system with bakufu interrupting tribute and new products from European markets and silver flow

Chinese Culturalism• Deep resentment for the alien Mongols and all things

foreign– Lack of interest for anything outside Chinese tradition– Narrow Ethnocentrism = “Culturalism” the Middle

Kingdom• Similar to nationalism, but no nation-state arose in the

Chinese culture. • Empire and culture began to be thought of together –

thus Chinese leadership uninterested in things foreign.• Change within tradition

– No ideology of progress like in the West – Falls behind Western economic and technology

Result #2:

European Voyages Kept Escalating

Why?

• no overarching political authority in Europe to end the voyages

• rivalry between states encouraged more exploration

• much of European elite interested in overseas expansion

• China had everything it needed; Europeans wanted the greater riches of the East

• China’s food production could expand internally; European system expanded by acquiring new lands