Zheng He (1371-1433) was born Ma He
in Yunnan, a Muslim Hui Chinese boy.
His father and grandfather had both made the hajj to Mecca.
He was captured at age ten, castrated, an imperial ploy.
He became a eunuch in the household of Prince Zhu Di,
the future Yongle Emperor. He served with distinction
in Zhu Di's military campaigns, became trusted advisor,
was renamed Zheng He for his exceptional direction.
When Zhu Di became emperor in 1402, he commissioned
Zheng He to lead the treasure voyages — massive
fleets of exploration, diplomacy, and power projection
across the Indian Ocean, an unprecedented pelagic.
The first voyage (1405-1407) consisted of 317 ships
and 28,000 men. The flagship treasure ships were
400 feet long, 160 feet wide — larger than any
European ship for the next four centuries, superior.
(For comparison, Columbus's Santa Maria in 1492 was
about 85 feet long. The scale difference is staggering.
The Chinese were capable of mass ocean exploration
when the Europeans were still hugging coasts, laboring.)
Over seven voyages (1405-1433), Zheng He sailed to
Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and the
east coast of Africa as far south as Mogadishu
and possibly further to the Cape of Good Hope's vicinia.
He visited Calicut, Ceylon, Hormuz, Mecca (some of his
crew performed the hajj while he waited nearby), Aden,
Mogadishu, Malindi. Foreign ambassadors and exotic animals
were brought back to China — a giraffe from Africa, identified
in Beijing as a qilin, a mythical auspicious beast.
Its arrival was taken as heavenly approval of Yongle's
reign. The giraffe was painted and celebrated in the court.
The voyages asserted Ming China's maritime superior roles.
Zheng He fought one minor war — against a pirate
base in Sumatra — but mostly the voyages were
peaceful. He gave gifts, received tribute, established
diplomatic relationships. No conquest was attempted, fair.
This is striking compared to what European exploration
would do a century later — immediately conquer and
colonize what they found. Zheng He could have conquered
much of the Indian Ocean rim. He chose not to, unplanned.
After Yongle died in 1424, the treasure voyages were
controversial. Conservative Confucian scholars considered
them wasteful extravagance. After one more voyage under
Xuande (1431-1433), they were discontinued.
The Ming court turned inward. The fleets were dismantled.
Shipyards were closed. Records of the voyages were destroyed
by conservative bureaucrats. The ocean-going capacity of China
was allowed to atrophy in the decades that followed, deployed.
By the time Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498,
China's maritime power was long gone. Portuguese with
their much smaller caravels could establish dominance
in waters that Zheng He had sailed with giant ships.
Zheng He himself died on the seventh voyage, probably at
Calicut or on the return journey. His grave is not known.
Some traditions place his tomb in Nanjing, empty, honorific.
The Muslim Chinese eunuch admiral was not shown.
Zheng He has been revived in modern China as a symbol
of peaceful Chinese engagement with the world.
The Belt and Road Initiative invokes his voyages.
A sign of ambitions: to return to those maritime old worlds.
The deflationary polytheist sees in the discontinuation
of the voyages a civilizational choice: China chose
to turn inward, and thus Europe got the seas.
If Yongle's successors had continued, Columbus might be unused.
The treasure voyages are the great "what if" of
maritime history. Zheng He was doing in 1410
what Columbus would attempt in 1492, at vastly larger
scale — but China walked away from its opening, again.
Stand.