Zheng He

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Zheng He and His Voyages (1405-1433)
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• Two views
• Manzies exploration
• Dreyer power projection

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Why Zheng He?

• As a general observer
• Resurgent interest in Zheng He, his voyages, and
  maritime trade
• Chinas effort to rebuild its sphere of
  influence in SE Asia, Middle East, and Africa
• Chinas redefinition of its foreign policy in
  terms of peace

• As an Asian scholar
• The magnitude of the impact of Chinas tributary
  system

• Zheng He Exhibition

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• The myth of the great exploration symbolized by
  Zhengs voyages
• The real purpose of Zheng Hes voyages
  exploration or trade?
• Were they for power projection only?
• Why did these start and why did they end?
• Are the traditional educated elite to be blamed
  for the termination?

• How far did Zheng Hes fleets go? America?
• What did Zheng He accomplish?
• What was the larger meaning of his voyages?

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Chinas Greatest Explorer?
The 15th century admiral, Zheng He
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Menzies Views

• Zheng Hes voyages of exploration began in 1405
  and culminated in early 1421
• As Yongle emperors favorite eunuch, Zheng He was
  ordered to take Mings huge armadas to the
  unknown world beyond China
• On the sixth voyage (1421-22), Zheng Hes ships
  reached Antarctica, the Arctic, North and South
  America, Pacific, Australia

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Facts 1st-6th voyages took place during Yongle
emperors reign Dreyer 1st 1045-07 2nd
1047-09 3rd 1049-11 4th 1413-15 5th
1417-19 6th 1421-22
Yongle emperors death in 1424, the Ming put a
halt to the expedition and Zheng He was pensioned
off
Yongle emperor Zhu Di (r. 1042-1424)
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What Chinese Mariners Did

• Menzies claims that Chinese mariners
• explored the islands of Cape Verde, the Azores,
  the Bahamas, and the Falklands
• established colonies in Australia, New Zealand,
  British Columbia, California, Mexico, Puerto
  Rico, and Rhode Island
• introduced horses to the Americas, rice to
  California, chickens to South America, coffee to
  Puerto Rico, South American sloths to Australia,
  sea otters to New Zealand, and maize to the
  Philippines.

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• toured the temples and palaces of the Maya center
  of Palenque in Mexico
• hunted walruses and smelted copper in Greenland
• mined for lead and saltpeter in northern
  Australia
• established trading posts for diamonds along the
  Amazon and its tributaries

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Dreyers View

• According to official historical account
• The treasure boats going to foreign
  countrieswere to be temporarily suspended
• Reasons
• another Mongolian campaign
• war with Vietanam
• The reconstruction of Beijing

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• Duyvendaks argument
• The sixth voyage still took place, although Zheng
  He did not personally visit all places he
  indicated in his account
• The main body reached Hormuz, the rest of the
  fleet sailed by squadrons to locations further
  west, all of which had been visited on the
  previous voyage
• Zheng He returned home to Nanjing by September
  1422, leaving his subordinates to sail on to
  thirty-six ports in Ceylon, India (both Bengal
  and the Malabar coast), the Persian Gulf, and
  East Africa. The last of the squadrons returned
  to China on 8 October 1423,having completed their
  journey of some 11,000 miles in the expected
  time, about one year and three months after
  departing Sumatra

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• one squadron, probably Zhou Mans, went as far
  as to Aden
• When Zheng He returned to Beijing in 1424,
  Yongle emperor had died whild returning from his
  fifth Mongolian campaign.
• Duyvendaks notion that Zheng Hes trip to
  Palembang never took place in 1424 is not
  convincing

From Calicut to Hormuz
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• 7th 1431-33, voyage resumed during Xuande
  emperors reign
• With Xuandes death, Ming rulership turned into
  complete xenophobia
• All voyages of treasure fleets were halted
• Overseas trade and travel were banned
• Violators were tried as pirates and executed

Xuande emperor (r. 1425-1435)
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• In every single aspect of ship building and
  equipment, Ming ships were centuries ahead of
  Europe
• Size, construction, cargo capacity, damage
  control, armament, range, communications,
  navigation ability

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China's greatest adventurers
Facts 1st voyage 27, 800 men 2nd voyage 27,
000 men 4th voyage 27, 670 men 7th voyage 27,
550 men
The fleet of each voyage consisted of several
dozen treasure ships (bao chuan), each attended
by half of a dozen smaller ships
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Chinese maps showing the routes of Zheng Hes
voyages starting from Long Jiang guan
From Fuhzou to Chamba
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• Advanced ship-building technique in China
  enabled Chinese marine engineers to design strong
  ships that could survive the fiercest storms on
  the open ocean
• Knowledge and capacity of distilling and
  desalinating sea-water helped voyagers to avoid
  dehydration
• Under Zheng He, fleets were placed under the
  command of Grand Eunuch Hong Bao, Eunuch Zhou
  Man, and Admiral Zhou Wen
• Chinese fleets numbered nearly two hundred
  shipsthe largest armada the world had ever known

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The first voyage

• 1st(1405-1407)
• The fleet consists of 255 ships, including 62
  treasure ships
• Route NanjingLiujiagangcoast of Zhejiang and
  FujianMin River (Fuzhou)Taiping Anchorage
  (Changle)Wuhumen/Five Tiger PassageChampa (Qui
  Nhon)South China SeaJavaPalembang
  (Sumatra)Malayan PeninsulaStrait of Malacca
  (Aru, Semudera, Lambri)Ceylon and Southern
  IndiaIndian OceanQuilonCochin?--Calicut

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The Second Voyage

• 2nd
• 3rd

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The remaining four voyages

• 4th
• 5th
• 6th
• Suspended Construction of Beijing, war with
  Vietnam and the Mongols
• 7th

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Qinghua porcelain produced in the Xuande Period,
the best of Ming porcelain
Ming Qinghua porcelain found in a Muslim tomb
column in Kenya
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Qinghua porcelain, Xuande period
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tributes
gifts
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Giraffes presented to Yongle emperor of the Ming
in 1416 (or 1414) by the King of Malindi (in the
present day Kenya). The Chinese regarded it as
Qilin, a sacred and auspicious animal known as
Chinese unicorn.
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The Zheng He Study

• 1421 the Year China Discovered America is a
  rewriting of history in grand scale
• the author claims that four of Zheng Hes fleets
  traveled to all parts of the world but Europe
• His evidence includes a wide array of books,
  artifacts, mapsin Chinese, European, and
  Middle-eastern languages
• He claims that he wont be wrong in his findings
  because he is capable of reading and interpreting
  extraordinary maps and charts that professional
  historians cant
• His personal experience in tracking the places
  the fleets went can validate his theory and
  findings

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Historians Critiques

• Robert Finlay
• the 1421-1423 voyages Menzies describes could not
  have taken place
• Conti played no role in transmitting knowledge of
  Chinese exploration to European cartographers
• all Menzies's evidence for the presence of the
  Chinese fleets abroad is baseless
• There were no missing years for the Ming fleets
• It was odd that Zheng He's captains completed a
  voyage of some17,000 miles in mainly unknown seas
  in seven months, while Zheng He took the same
  amount of time to journey about 3,500 miles from
  Sumatra to Nanjing.

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• His undocumented estimate of 4.8 knots for the
  Indian Ocean voyages holds as well for the global
  cruises of the Ming fleets is simply impossible
• Niccolo da Contis transmission of Chinese
  geographical knowledge to European cartographers
  has little plausibility
• It is highly unlikely that the Chinese junks (or
  any ships at any time) carried specially carved
  stones for ballast.