The Treasure-Ships

of Zheng He:

Chinese Maritime Imperialism in the

Age of Discovery*
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Robert Finlay

On May 20, 1498, four Portuguese ships dropped anchor near the port of Calicut on the Malabar coast of India. The event marked a turning-point in the history of the world, the beginning of what has been called the "Vasco da Gama epoch of Asian history."l For the first time, vessels from the European peninsula of Asia sailed to the East, thus making it possible for Western powers to establish themselves overseas. The ancient balance of cultures in Asia was shattered, and, within a remarkably short time, maritime routes under European control-Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English-bound the world together. The age of European dominion had begun.2 When Vasco da Gama arrived back in Lisbon in September 1499, the epoch-making significance of his accomplishment was recognized immediately. He was hailed as a hero, a second Alexander the Great, while his voyage seemed to promise unlimited political and economic advantages for the Portuguese kingdom.3 Anticipating a glorious future for his dynasty, King Manuel (1495-1521) bestowed upon himself the title of "King of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India."4 The Portuguese were very conscious of being in a race with other European powers for discovery of a sea route to the Indies. Only a few years before da Gama's triumph, Christopher Columbus, who once haunted the Portuguese court seeking support for a voyage to the west, had discovered land across the Atlantic that promised to lead Spain
*The author wishes to thank Ms. Jiang Jin for her assistance in dealing with Chinese-language materials. lKavalain Madhava Pannikar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History (London: G. Allen & Unwin 1953). 2William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 619. SA Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, 1497-1499, trans. and ed. E. G. Ravenstein (London: Hakluyt Society, 1899), pp. 225-37; Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 102; Bailey W. Diffie and George D. Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), pp. 175-84. "On Manuel's title, see K. S. Mathew, "Trade in the Indian Ocean and the Portuguese System of Cartazes," in The First Portuguese Colonial Empire, ed. Malyn Newitt (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986), pp. 75-77. Terrae Incognitae 23, 1991, pp. 1-12.

The Society for the History of Discoveries,

1991.

to the riches of Asia.6 Unbeknownst to the Portuguese, however, their greatest competitors in the Age of Discovery had already retreated from the seas by the time da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. In fact, the Portuguese had the merest hint of this, for a Florentine merchant in Lisbon, writing on the basis of information that immediately preceded the return of da Gama, records that the explorer was bringing troubling news back to Portugal: It is now 80 years since there arrived in this city of Chalicut certain vessels of white Christians, who wore their hair long like Germans, and had no beards except around the mouth, such as are worn at Constantinople by cavaliers and courtiers. They landed wearing a cuirass, helmet, and vizor, and carrying a certain weapon [or sword] attached to a spear. Their vessels are armed with bombards, shorter than those in use with us. Once every two years they return with 20 or 25 vessels. They are unable to tell us what people they are, nor what merchandise they bring to this city, save that it includes very fine linen-cloth and brass-ware. They load spices. Their vessels have four masts like those of Spain. If they were Germans it seems to me that we should have some notice about them; possibly they may be Russians if they have a port there. On the arrival of the captain [da Gama] we may learn who these people are .... 6 As the Portuguese eventually discovered, their achievement was secure: their mysterious forerunners were Chinese, not European. A sixteenth-century Portuguese writer recorded that less than a century before "more than eight hundred sail of large and small ships had come to India from the ports of Malacca and China and the Leq ueos [the Ryukyu Islands], with people of many nations, and all laden with merchandise of great value which they brought for sale ... they were so numerous that they filled the country and settled as dwellers in all the towns of the sea-coast."7 A Spaniard wrote at the same time that "it is plainly seene, that they did come with shipping into the Indies, having conquered al that is from China, unto the farthest part thereof. ... So that at this day there is great memory of them in the Hands Philippinas and on the coast of Coromande. . . . and the like notice and memory there is in the kingdom of Calicut, where be so many trees and fruits .... were brought thither by the Chinos, when that they were lords and governours of that countrie."8 Sixteenth-century Iberians were notoriously prone to make little distinction between commerce and conquest, exploration and exploitation; so it is natural that they viewed the tradition of a Chinese presence on the Indian coast as evidence of imperial domination. In fact, the rumors that da Gama heard on the Malabar coast were a faint, confused echo of events from some eighty years before, when Calicut was a port of call for
liOn Columbus's Portuguese background, see A. Rumeu de Armas, El 'portugues' Cristobal CoLOn en Castilla (Madrid: Ediciones cultura hispanica del instituto de cooperaci6n iberoamericana, 1982). 6 Journal of the First Voyage, p. 131. 7Quoted by K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 154. sJuan Gonzales de Mendoza, The Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdome of China and the Situation thereof, trans. Robert Parke (1588), ed. G. T. Staunton (London: Hakluyt Society, 1853-54), pp. 92-95.

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armadas from the Ming Empire (1368-1644).9 Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese emperors Yongle (1402-24) and Xuande (1425-1435) dispatched seven maritime expe-

ditions to western Asia, commanded

by Zheng He, sometimes called the "Vasco da

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Gama of China" and "the Chinese Columbus. "10 They were the largest long-distance enterprises before the modern age, dwarfing anything that the most powerful European state could produce. Da Gama's square-rigged ships (or naos) ranged from seventy to 300 tons, were no more than eighty-five feet long, had three masts, and carried seventy men at most; about 170 men sailed in the voyage of 1497-1498, of whom more than one-half died en route. The largest of Zheng He's vessels, called "Treasure-ships" (baochuan), were as much as 3,000 tons in capacity and carried at least 600 men; they were about 400 feet in length and boasted nine masts.ll The Ming expeditions numbered as many as 300 ships and 28,000 men, figures that can be appreciated only when placed within a contemporary European perspective. In 1415, Prince Henry of Portugal ("the Navigator") led some 12,000 men and 200 vessels in taking the city of Ceuta in Morocco, the event which is usually taken to mark the beginning of Portuguese expansion.12 At that time, however, European states did not have standing forces of more than a few thousand men. By the mid-fifteenth century, France and Venice maintained armies of about 20,000 soldiers, and oy the first decades of the sixteenth century, major field armies were generally between 25,000 and 30,000 men.13 The army that Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain used to conquer the kingdom of Granada in 1492 was about 20,000 men, while the force with which Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494 was 28,000 strong.14
9See Roderich Ptak, "China and Calicut in the Early Ming Period: Envoys and Tribute Embassies," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1989): 81-111. lOZheng He is first called the "Vasco da Gama of China" in Frank Debenham, Discovery and Exploration: An Atlas of Man's Journey into the Unknown (London: P. Hamlin, 1960), p. 121; he is called "the Chinese Columbus" in Philip Snow, The Star Raft: China's Encounters with Africa (London: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 21; see also Qiu Kehui, "Zhouji hanghai de jiechu xianxingzhe Zheng He [Zheng He, the great forerunner of intercontinental navigation]," in Zhenghe xia xiyang lunwenji [Essays on Zheng He's voyages] (Beijing: Peoples' Communication Publishing House, 1985), p. 342. The most thorough discussion in English of Zheng He's voyages, with emphasis on nautical technology, is in joseph Needham, Science and Civiliz.ation in China, vol. 4, pt. 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) pp. 389-699; see also, J. V. G. Mills's introduction to Ma Huan, Ying- Yai ShengLan: 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores' [l433 J, trans. and ed. Feng Ch'eng-Chun, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1970), pp. 1-66; Pao Tsen-peng, "On the ships of Cheng Ho," Proceedings of the International Association of Historians of Asia, Second Biennial Conference (Tapei, Taiwan, 1962), pp. 409-28; P. Pelliot, "Les grands voyages maritimes chinois au debut du XVe siecle," T'oung Pao 30 (1933): 237-452, and "Notes additionnelles sur Tcheng Houo et sur ses voyages," T'oung Pao 31 (1935): 274-314. The sources on the life and voyages of Zheng He are gathered in Zheng Hesheng and Zheng Yijun, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian [Collected sources on Zheng He's voyages], 2 vols. (jinan: Qilu Book Company, 1980). llThere has been considerable controversy over the size of Zheng He's ships: see Needham, Science and Civilization, 4: 481-82; Zhung Weiji and Zhuang jinhui, "Zheng He baochuan chidu de tan suo [A brief account of Zheng He's fleet]" and Qui Ke, "Zheng He baochuan chicun jizai de kekaoxin [On the reliability of the records on Zheng He's Treasure-ship]," in Zhenghe xia xiyang lunwenji, pp. 3-9, 119-32. 12Fernand Salentiny, Aufsteig und Fall des portugiesischen Imperiums (Vienna: H. Bohlaus, 1977), p. 39; H. V. Livermore, "On the Conquest of Ceuta," Luso-Braz.ilian Review 2 (1965): 3-14. 13john Rigby Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620 (New York, 1985), pp. 62-63; Michael Edward Mallett and john Rigby Hale, The Military Organiz.ation of a Renaissance State: Venice, c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 41. 14Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 9, 24.

King Manuel of Portugal besieged a stronghold in Morocco in 1513 with 18,000 men, and in 1578, his grandson, King Sebastian, consumed more than one-half of his kingdom's annual budget in leading 17,000 men to disaster in Morocco at the battle of

EI-Ksar el-Kebir. (By contrast, China in the 1570s had an army of 845,000 men.)15 In
the great battle of Lepanto in 1571 between the Christian Holy League and the Ottoman Turks, each side amassed a fleet of slightly more than 200 ships.16 The English royal navy in 1588 comprised thirty-four ships and 6,225 men, although Queen Elizabeth scraped together 197 vessels and 15,925 men to counter Philip II's Spanish Armada of 130 ships and 29,453 men.l7 European maritime forces deployed in Asia were far smaller. The most powerful fleet sent to the Indian Ocean since Zheng He's expeditions was the force of twenty vessels commanded by Vasco da Gama in his second voyage to India in 1502. The largest fleet ever assembled in Portuguese Asia was the force of forty-three ships sent to raise a siege of Melaka in 1606, about the same number as the junks in the Ming expeditions that supplied Zheng He's 28,000 men with rice and water.I8 Indeed, the number of men in one of Zheng He's Treasure-fleets was about two-thirds more than the total European and Eurasian population of Asia Portuguesa a~ any time in the sixteenth century. 19 Clearly, the Ming expeditions were backed by logistical resources and wealth that were far beyond the capacity of European states. Moreover, the Treasure-fleet of 300 ships was only the most far-ranging constituent of Chinese maritime power, for the Ming Empire also maintained 400 ships near N anjing, coastal defense squadrons of 2,800 ships, and a transport fleet (mainly for grain) of 3,000 vessels-a total of 6,500 ships.20 Still, the great Treasure-ships of Zheng He were gone from the seas of Asia when the Portuguese arrived two generations later. A precondition for da Gama's voyage marking an epochal turning-point was the prior retreat of the Chinese navy from the Indian Ocean, an unwitting withdrawal from a contest for world dominion.21 Much of subsequent world history may be said to revolve around this Chinese retreat and Western advance; hence, there have been numerous attempts to explain the dispatch and recall of the Ming expeditions.22
l&Diffie and Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, pp. 279, 478; Ray Huang, "Military Expenditures in Sixteenth-Century Ming China," Oriens Extremus 17 (1970): 53. l6Frederic C. Lane, Venice, A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 369-70. l'1parker, Military Revolution, p. 93; Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada (New York, 1988), pp. 61-65. The largest Spanish vessel in the Armada campaign was 1,294 tons, while the largest English ship was 1,100 tons. l8Diffie and Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, p. 223; Charles Ralph Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825 (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 52-53. On Zheng He's supply junks, see Zhung Weiji and Zhuang Jinhui, "Zheng He baochuan chidu de tansuo," pp. 67-69. leThe European and Eurasian population of the Portuguese Asian empire has been estimated at about 10,000 in the sixteenth century in Charles Ralph Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 14151825 (Johannesburg: Witwaterstrand University Press, 1961), pp. 19-20. 20Jung-pang Lo, "The Emergence of China as a Sea Power during the Late Sung and Early Yuan Periods," The Far Eastern Quarterly 11 (1952): 95. 2lFernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, vol. 3: The Perspective of the World, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 32. 22For summaries of various explanations, see Roderich Ptak, Cheng Hos Abenteuer im Drama und Roman der Ming-Zeit (Stuttgart: Franz, 1986), pp. 13-16, and Mills's introduction to Ma Huan, Ying-Yai ShengLan, pp. 1-2.

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It has been suggested that the Treasure-ships were sent to search for the emperor deposed by Yongle in 1402, although almost certainly that unfortunate monarch perished in a fire in Nanjing.23 The voyages have also been seen as an attempt to outflank the army of Timur (Tamerlane), poised for invasion of China in 1404, and as a means of suppressing piracy in the Straits of Melaka.24 They have been viewed as immense propaganda displays, demonstrations of Chinese majesty aimed at cultivating goodwill and respect, a way of gently folding barbaric (that is, non-Chinese) peoples into the cultural embrace of the Middle Kingdom.25 A contrasting interpretation holds that the voyages were essentially political and that Zheng He imposed Chinese power from Vietnam to Madagascar, requiring acceptance of vassalage from over thirty states.26 Finally, the expeditions have been seen as motivated by commercial policy, by the ambition of civil bureaucrats and merchants to profit from the export of Chinese handicrafts and the import of foreign goods.27 A variant on this interpretation maintains that the mission of the voyages was to procure "treasures" for the Ming court, such as
2SThere were rumors at the time that the emperor jianwen had not died in his burning palace but had fled overseas; by the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the notion was generally accepted that the maritime expeditions went in search of the emperor; see Zheng and Zheng, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, 2: 889-99. This view still has wide currency: see Wang Zhaosheng, "Shixi Zheng He xia xiyang zhong de jige wenti [An analysis of Zheng He's voyages]," in Zhenghe xia xiyang lunwenji, pp. 145-54; see also, Edward Dreyer, Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355-1435 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), pp. 19899. 240n the voyages as a reaction to Timur, see Zhou juseng, Zheng He hanglu hao [The routes of Zheng He's voyages). (Tapei, Taiwan, 1959), pp. 57-66 and Bruce Swanson, Eighth Voyage of the Dragon: A History of China's Ouest for Seapower (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982), pp. 31-33. For criticism of a connection between Timur's plans and the Ming fleet, see Morris Rossabi, "Cheng Ho and Timur: Any Relation?" Oriens Extremus 20 (1973): 129-136. On the voyages and piracy, see Han Zhenhua, "Lun Zheng He xia xiyang de xinzhi [On the nature of Zheng He's voyages to the Western Ocean]," in Zhenghe yanjiu ziliao xuanbian [Selected essays on Zheng He} (Beijing: Peoples' Communication Publishing House, 1985), pp. 308-18. 25Most Ming and Qing historians assert that the voyages were intended to civilize barbarian peoples; see Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, 2: 860-90. 260n the political interpretation of the voyages, see Wang Gungwu, "China and South-East Asia, 14021424," in Studies in the Social History of China and South-East Asia: Essays in Memory of Victor Purcell, ed. jerome Ch'en and Nicholas Tarling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 375-401, and " 'Public' and 'Private' Overseas Trade in Chinese History," in Societies et compagnies de commerce en orient et dans l'Ocean Indien (Paris, 1970), pp. 167-76; jung-pang Lo, "Intervention in Vietnam: A Case Study of the Foreign Policy of the Early Ming Government," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 8 (1970): 154-82. These works, however, take too narrow a view of the political purposes of the expeditions. 2'70n the commercial or economic interpretation of the voyages, see jung-pang Lo, "Chinese Shipping and East-West Trade from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century," in Societes et compagnies de commerce en orient et dans l'Ocean Indien, pp. 167-76; idem, "The Decline of the Early Ming Navy," Oriens Extremus 5 (1958): 149-57; Bodo Wiethoff, Die chinesische seeverbotspolitih und der private uberseehandel von 1368 bis 1567 (Hamburg: Gesellschaft fUr Natur- und VOlkerkunde Ostasiens; Wiesbaden: o. Harrassowitz, 1963), pp. 52-57; john King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 34-37; Lin Shimin, "Zheng He xia xiyang yu ciqi waixiao [Zheng He's expeditions to the Western Ocean and the export of chinaware]," in Zhenghe xia xiyang lunwenji, pp. 42-49; T'ien ju-kang, "Cheng Ho's Voyages and the Distribution of Pepper in China," The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, pt. 2 (1981): 186-97; Tong Shuye, "Chonglun 'Zheng He xia xiyang' shijian zhi maoyi xinzhe [A response regarding the trading nature of Zheng He's voyages]," in Mingdai guoji maoyi [International trade in the Ming dynasty} (Tapei, Taiwan, 1968), pp. 97-108; Zhang Weihua, Mingdai haiwai maoyi jianlun [An essay on overseas trade in the Ming dynasty} (Shanghai, 1956); Chen Dezhi, "Shilun Zheng He xia xiyang de liangchong renwu [On the dual purpose of Zheng He's voyages to the Western Ocean]," in Mingdai shehui jinjishi lunji [Collection on social-economic history of the Ming dynasty} vol. 3 (Hong Kong, 1975), 355-57.

precious stones, pearls, ivory, and giraffes-or, in the lapidary phrase of one historian, that Zheng He "went a-shopping for the ladies of the Imperial harem."28 When viewed from a fifteenth-century Chinese perspective, however, some of these

approaches to explaining the Ming expeditions are complementary rather than contradictory. Seeing the expeditions as the instrument of a narrowly defined purpose obscures the complexity of Chinese maritime imperialism. Thus, selling desired products, such as silk, porcelain, and lacquerware, to barbaric peoples was viewed by the Chinese as a manifest demonstration of cultural superiority, however much individual merchants and bureaucrats also profited from the trade. Chinese culture itself was China's greatest commodity, while valued wares were testimony to that culture's excellence.29 Importing goods from abroad, such as precious stones, gums, resins, and spices, was regarded not as an act of unadulterated commerce but was understood within the framework of the tribute system, in which foreign rulers gave gifts to the Chinese emperor, tokens of submission in the form of native products, and in return were allowed certain trading privileges.3o In addition, the cultural and commercial aspects of the Ming expeditions cannot neatly be distinguished from political and military aims when Chinese perception of foreign relations and world order is taken into account. The expansion of Chinese trade, under government control, was effectively the same thing as the expansion of Chinese power.31 At the same time, the military objective of suppressing piracy in Southeast Asia was integral to notions of diplomatic and cultural prestige, for disruption of tribute and embassies to the Middle Kingdom impugned China's sense of right order in the world. That sense was spelled out by the tribute system, which developed as the institutional expression in foreign relations of the centrality of the Middle Kingdom. The tribute system was a mechanism whereby intercourse with alien peoples could be translated into traditional Confucian terms of respect and deference from inferior to superior. From the Chinese perspective, no sharp line divided the conditions for maintaining international harmony from those for insuring social and political order within the Middle Kingdom. The tribute system mediated between international and domestic harmony; hence, it was perceived as extending the emperor's power as well as Chinese civilization to distant realms, while external threats to the empire, such as barbarian attack or mistreatment of an imperial embassy, were taken as evidence of domestic weakness.32 The tribute system was a uniquely Chinese instrument of government, combining aspects of cultural propaganda, commercial exchange, state security, and diplomatic policy that generally were treated as separate and distinct in the West.
28Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak, China's Discovery of Africa (London: A. Probsthain, 1949), p. 27. 29Mark Mancall, China at the Center: 300 Years of Foreign Policy (New York: The Free Press, 1984), p. 10. 300n the tribute system, see the essays in Morris Rossabi, ed., China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th-14th Centuries, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); and John King Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). 31Zhang Weihua, Mingdai haiwai maoyi jianlun, p. 30. 32Mark Mancall, "The Ching Tribute System: An Interpretive Essay," in Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order, p. 65; Tao Jingshen, "Barbarians or Northerners: Northern Sung Images of the Khitans," in Rossabi, ed. China Among Equals, pp. 75-76; see also Zheng and Zheng, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian 2: 854.

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The Portuguese (like other Westerners) conceived of an extension of their power abroad in terms of control of territory, planting of colonies, and domination of commerce; they thought in terms of sovereignty, conquest, and mastery as experienced for generations within the context of a system of competing states. In areas immediately bordering the empire, such as the northern steppe frontier, Korea, and Vietnam, the Chinese were also concerned periodically with conquest and direct control, albeit not with tribes or kingdoms that offered much competition with the empire. The Chinese otherwise saw the extension of power as a matter of incorporating peoples and rulers within a system of hierarchical relationships centering on the emperor; they thought in terms of ritual submission, ceremonial barter and formal recognition as developed for centuries within the context of a superior, powerful civilization condescending to a host of distant, petty, and relatively undeveloped principalities.33 The Portuguese experience in Asia was shaped by notions of power politics, religious exclusivity, and state rivalry, while the Chinese experience in the same area was molded by ideas of cultural assimilation, religious indifference, and imperial self-satisfaction. Given their background and ambitions, it is natural that the Portuguese at first regarded the reports of a Chinese presence on the Malabar coast as evidence of imperial domination. In fact, the Ming expeditions entered the Indian Ocean with vastly more military force than the Portuguese were ever capable of assembling. Since that force was in the service of a maritime imperialism that was very different from the Western variety, the intentions behind the voyages of Zheng He have appeared mysterious. One historian has even asserted "the stark impossibility of knowing the reasons for the Chinese expansion or for the collective abandoning of the enterprise at the peak of success."34 The problem, however, is not that the voyages of Zheng He present a conundrum but that explanations for the voyages have seemed incommensurate with their grandeur and duration. The notion that the Treasure-ships were sent as far as the East African coast and the Red Sea just to peddle porcelain and iron pots or to fetch ostriches and tortoise shell is somehow deflating. And it is obvious that chasing down a deposed emperor, collecting coral and beeswax, and eliminating a few pirate strongholds did not require the dispatch of mammoth fleets for a generation. Moreover, if the 1405 expedition had been sent out to prevent Timur's invasion of China, it is unclear why six more voyages were necessary inasmuch as the threat of invasion ended with the death of Timur in the same year.35 The 27,800 men in the first Ming expedition of 1405 included seven eunuch ambassadors, ten deputy eunuch ambassadors, fifty-three supervisory eunuchs, several divination experts, 180 medical personnel, 300 military officers, and 26,000 common soldiers, as well as about 800 sailors, cooks, oarsmen, secretaries, artisans, and miscellaneous
33See the characterization (in the context of Zheng He's voyages) of the differences between the European system of state rivalry and China's imperial domination in Eric Lionel Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 203, 205; see also, Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), pp. 177, 225. 34Pierre Chaunu, European Expansion in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Katharine Bertram (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1979), p. 228, n. 105; see also, Janet L.Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 321. 3l1Rossabi, "Cheng Ho and Timur," p. 135.

functionaries.36 The Treasure-fleet of Zheng He, then, was overwhelmingly military in composition. Unlike the Portuguese fleets, the Ming expeditions were not seeking territory to conquer or sea lanes to monopolize. Nevertheless, the Chinese armadas had a

clear political mission that called for an overpowering military force-to

incorporate

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the countries of maritime Asia within the tribute system of the empire, with the Son of Heaven as the guarantor of political legitimacy and commercial mobility in the great area formally subject to him. For local rulers, the prospect of access to Chinese goods within the tribute system was the emperor's carrot, while the army aboard the Treasure-ships was his stick. Chinese wares usually were sufficiently attractive to local potentates to convince them to put their names on the tribute roster; but it was essential for Zheng He to possess a large enough stick, if only to be certain of using it sparingly. The Treasure-ships were intended not only to dazzle foreign peoples with their wealth and majesty but to overawe potential opposition with their might and firepower. This view of the Ming expeditions runs counter to a long tradition of emphasizing the pacific behavior of the Chinese. The cultivation of the goodwill of foreign rulers by Zheng He has often been contrasted with Portuguese atrocities, such as Pedro Alvares Cabral's bombardment of Calicut in 1501 and da Gama's butchery of several hundred fishermen and Muslim pilgrims off Calicut in 1502. Seen in this light, it seems clear that "Zheng He was not sent to conquer or colonize but to make friends and allies."37 The Chinese were "peaceful by nature" and therefore refused to make a bid for imperial power as did the Portuguese and the Spanish.38 The Chinese had no sense of mission, and they were not empire-builders; they had "no conception of the horrors of realpolitik inseparable from a colonial regime."39 They were, it is said, "calm and pacific, unencumbered by a heritage of enmities ... in panoply of arms, yet conquering no colonies and setting up no strongholds .... "40 Reading such encomiums, one would do well to remember that the Treasure-ships contained an experienced and well-trained force that was armed to the teeth, one that
SeZheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, 1:143. A 1406 source states that there were 37,000 men in the first voyage; see also, Xu Yuhu, Ming Zheng He zhi yanjiu [Research on the Zheng He of the Ming dynasty} (Gao Xiong, Taiwan: De Qinshi, 1980), pp. 18-41, espec. p. 20. Ming maritime and land forces were not sharply distinguished (see Dreyer, Early Ming China, p. 202), and it is likely that some of the troops manned the ships as well. S7SU Chung-jen, "Places in South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa visited by Cheng Ho and His Companions (A.D. 1405-1433)," in Symposium on Historical, Archaeological and Linguistic Studies on Southern China, South-East Asia and the Hong Kong Region, Frederick Seguier Drake, ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967), p. 207. s8Chiu Ling-yeong, "Chinese Maritime Expansion, 1368-1644," The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 3 (1965): 44. s9William Willetts, "The Maritime Adventures of Grand Eunuch Ho," Journal of Southeast Asian-History 5 (1964): 20-21. 4Needham, Science and Civilization, 4:535. The view of the Chinese as a uniquely peaceful people goes back to the idealization of China found in Jesuit relations of the seventeenth century: see Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, trans. J. R. Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 521-23. In turn, this positive image is related to an earlier negative one of the Chinese as cowardly and lacking in martial vigor, a view that stemmed from China's inability to protect its southeastern coast from pirate attacks in the sixteenth century at the very time that the first Portuguese ships reached China. See Lea E. Williams, "Inauspicious Ambience: The Historical Setting of Early Luso-Chinese Contacts," in Indo-Portuguese History: Old Issues, New Questions, ed. Teotonio de Souza (New Delhi: Concept, 1985), pp. 32-39; and Luis Gonzaga Gomes, "Os primeiros contactos entre Portugeses e Chineses," Boletim do Instituto Luis de Camoes 2 (1966): 159-74.

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was larger than the population of most port-cities between Canton and Mombasa. Certainly the impression made by Zheng He's troops was forceful and lasting, as was conveyed by the people of Calicut telling da Gama's men about the helmets, spears, and bombards of their mysterious predecessors. When Zheng He's 26,000 troops marched off his ships and built their fortified warehouses, it surely inclined their hosts to consider that a client relationship with the Ming emperor was an offer that they could not refuse. Given the overwhelming force in the hands of Zheng He, it is less remarkable that the Ming expeditions were generally peaceful than that they met opposition at all. During the second voyage, in 1407, some 170 men of the fleet were killed in a Javanese market-town, the victims of a struggle for power in the Majapahit kingdom of Java. Zheng He collected an indemnity in gold from the king.41 Later during the same voyage, Zheng He's soldiers destroyed ten pirate ships and killed several thousand followers of Chen Zuyi, the Fujianese pirate-chieftain of Palembang in Sumatra, who was taken to China and beheaded.42 In 1411, on the third expedition, Vira Alakasvara, the de facto monarch of Ceylon, attacked a contingent of Zheng He's forces with (it is alleged) 50,000 troops and attempted to burn the Treasure-fleet. Zheng He broke out of the ambush, invaded the capital city with 2,000 men, captured the king and his court, and then spent six days fighting his way back to his ships. Vira Alakasvara was taken back to China as a prisoner, but the emperor Yongle declined to order his execution, saying, "Barbarians are like animals and don't deserve to be put to death."43 Heroics such as the so-called Battle of Ceylon Mountain were rarely necessary, however. A panoply of arms was usually sufficient to cow opposition, although it is intrinsic to the sources that such events go unrecorded. A 1597 Ming novel on the voyages, which extensively used original sources, relates that the king of Mogadisho on the East African coast was persuaded to welcome the Treasure-fleet after bombards simultaneously blasted the four gates of his city.44 The event is played for comic relief in the novel and smacks of the condescension that the Chinese habitually displayed toward the "outside barbarians." Condescension, however, seems a mild vice when compared to the cruel behavior of the Portuguese. Certainly none of the military actions of the Ming fleets can compare with the atrocities of the Portuguese. Of course, the latter suffered the liabilities of being small in number and poor in resources. As they saw it, a policy
41Zheng and Zheng, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, 2:932; Chiu Ling-yeong, "Sino-Javanese Relations in the Early Ming Period," Symposium on Historical, Archaeological and Linguistic Studies on Southern China, South-East Asia and the Hong Kong Region, ed. F. S. Drake (Hong Kong, 1967), p. 218; J. Noorduyn, "The Eastern Kings in Majapahit," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 131 (1975): 479-89. 42Zheng and Zheng, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, 2:936-38, Chiu Ling-yeong, "Sino Javanese Relations in the Early Ming Period," p. 217. 4SZheng and Zheng, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, 2:949-52. On the confusion surrounding the Ceylon events, see Gintota Parana Vidanage Somaratne, "The Political History of the Kingdom of Kotte, 1400-1521," (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1975), pp. 65-73; and Willetts, "The Maritime Adventures of Grand Eunuch Ho," pp. 31-36. 44Luo Maodeng, San Bao taijian xia xiyang [The voyage of the San Bao Eunuch to the Western Ocean}, ed. Shen Yunjia (Shanghai, n.d.), chapter 72; see J. J. L. Duyvendak, "Desultory Notes on the Hsi-Yang Chi," T'oung Pao 42 (1954): 18-19. On Zheng He's bombards, see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, pt. 7, Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 296.

of rapacious aggression, seasoned with terror, was the only means of gaining a foothold in Asia. This was recognized by an Indian merchant in Calicut, who told the city's ruler when Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498 that the Portuguese "had nothing to give,

but would rather take away, and that thus his country would be ruined."45
Wealthy and heavily armed, the Chinese overawed potential opposition and crushed those unwise enough not to be willing to submit to a dependent status. Comparing Ming and Portuguese behavior in Asia, and recognizing that the former neither acquired colonies nor spread terror on the seas, should not obscure the reality of the Chinese use of massive military power to impose their will throughout Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. In the course of the seven Ming expeditions, forty-eight states became tributary clients of the Chinese emperor, many of them for the first time.46 China became the arbiter of the rise and fall of distant kingdoms. Majapahit Java declined as it was supplanted by China as the major power in maritime Southeast Asia.47 The city-state of Melaka, like Palembang and Brunei, renounced allegiance to Java under the protection of Zheng He's fleet. Indeed, Melaka's rise to eminence in the early fifteenth century was solely a consequence of Chinese maritime imperialism, for the Ming armadas relied on Melaka for its port facilities and provided an umbrella of protection for the fledging state against both Java and Siam.48 Ports along the north coast of Java, such as Demak, Tuban, Gresik, Giri, and J apara, also began to establish their political autonomy from the inland Javanese kingdom after Zheng He's fleet appeared on the scene.49 Regarding the Treasure-fleet as a military force-albeit infrequently involved in combat-helps clarify the much-debated questions of the motive for the expeditions and the reason for their disappearance. As a military instrument, the Ming armadas were a direct expression of the values and ambitions of Yongle, the emperor behind the first six voyages. 50 Before becoming emperor, Yongle spent twenty years fighting Mongol tribes on the northern frontier. After three years of civil war, he wrested the throne from his nephew, the emperor Jianwen (1398-1402).1>1 Throughout his reign, Yongle continued to lead numerous campaigns deep into the northern plains. An "out-and-out
,usJournal of the First Voyage, p. 72. 48Zheng and Zheng, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 1297-1353; see also, Hiroshi Watanabe, "An Index of Embassies and Tribute Missions from Islamic Countries to Ming China (1368 1466) as recorded in the Ming Shih-lu classified according to Geographic Area," Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 33 (1975): 285-349. 47G. Ceodes, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, trans. Susan Brown Cowing, ed. Walter F. Vella (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1968), pp. 241-42; J. Noorduyn, "Majapahit in the Fifteenth Century," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 134 (1978): 208, 255-56. 48See Wang Gungwu, "The Opening of Relations between China and Malacca, 1403-5," in Malayan and Indonesian Studies: Essays Presented to Sir Richard Winstedt, ed. John Bastin and R. Roolvink (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 87-104; D. G. E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia, 4th ed. (New York, 1981), pp. 225-26; Christopher Wake, "Malacca's Early Kings and the Reception of Islam," Journal of Southeast Asian History 5 (1964): 117; Shu Shizeng, "Zheng He xia xiyang zhi jiazhi [Contributions of Zheng He's voyages to the Western Ocean]," in Zhenghe yanjiu ziliao xuanbian, p. 182. 49Kenneth R. Hall, Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), p. 254; see also Theodore G. Th. Pigeaud and H. J. de Graaf, Islamic States in Java, 1500-1700 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), p. 5. aOOn Yongle's personal involvement in decision-making, especially regarding the voyages and Vietnam, see Wang "China and South-East Asia, 1402-1424," p. 376; and Dreyer, Early Ming China, p. 220. alOn the civil war, see David B. Chan, The Usurpation of the Prince of Yen, 1398-1402 (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1976).

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militarist," he ordered the assembly of the first Treasure-fleet within three years of coming to power.52 About a year later, in 1406, he ordered armies totalling 215,000 men into Vietnam (Annan), the beginning of a twenty-year debacle that drained Chinese resources and determination. 53 To some extent, Yongle's commands were in the tradition of the Mongol emperor Kubilai Khan (d.1294), who also invaded Vietnam and in 1292 sent a huge fleet to punish the kingdom of Java for insubordination. 54 Both emperors aspired to dominate the world outside China, although in regard to maritime Asia, the means they employed toward that end were very different. Playing the role of a Mongol conqueror, Kubilai Khan used his fleets to punish and defeat his enemies, while YongIe, within the context of the traditional tribute system, made an unorthodox use of maritime power to enforce and extend his authority. Both men thought in military terms and relied on force. When some of Zheng He's men were killed in Java and some Chinese diplomats were robbed in Thailand, Yongle warned the respective states that he might deal with them as he had with Vietnam. Similarly, those who opposed Yongle's aggressive policies also linked the voyages with Vietnam, as when a Confucian official addressed a successor to Yongle in 1426: "Your minister hopes that your majesty ... would not indulge in military pursuits nor glorify the sending of expeditions to distant countries. "55 The Ming armadas were a personal project of the militaristic emperor, and they all but died with him in 1424. The new emperor, Hongxi (1424), cancelled Zheng He's scheduled seventh voyage on the very day he assumed the throne, and he began cutting back in Vietnam. Yongle had imprisoned his long-time Minister of Finance, Xia Yuanji, after he had protested the cost of the expeditions. Hongxi personally released the disgraced minister from jail and restored him to office.66 Unlike Yongle, Hongxi had received an impeccably Confucian education, and he fully supported the civil bureaucrats who opposed both the Ming voyages and the eunuchs who organized them. Hongxi died within the year, although Confucian officials, especially the powerful Xia Yuanji, generally retained their hold over policy under Xuande (1424-1435). But when Xia Yuanji, the foremost opponent of the voyages, died in 1430, Xuande ordered the dispatch of the seventh voyage, which sailed in 1433.57 It was the final maritime expedition of the Ming Empire, as well as for Zheng He, who probably died in Calicut and was taken back to China on the last Treasure-fleet. 58
1I2The phrase is from Dreyer, Early Ming China, p. 8. IIs0n the invasion of Vietnam, see Lo, "Intervention in Vietnam." 1I4SeeJ. V. G. Mills, "Notes on early Chinese voyages," The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 3 (1951): 13; Morris Rossabi, Kubilai Khan: His Life and Times (Berkeley: University California Press, 1988), pp. 218-19; Hall, A History of South-East Asia, pp. 88-90. III1Lo,"Intervention in Vietnam," p. 174; Wang, "China and South-East Asia, 1402-1424," pp. 391-92. The quotation is from Wang Gungwu, "The Decline of the Early Ming Navy," Oriens Extremus 5 (1958): 167. 1I6Dreyer, Early Ming China, pp. 221-25,230-33; Lo, "The Termination of the Early Ming Naval Expeditions," pp. 134-35. 1I7Lo, "The Termination of the Early Ming Naval Expeditions," p. 139; Dreyer, Early Ming China, pp. 225, 233. 1I80n the death of Zheng He, see Zheng and Zheng, Zheng He xia xiyang ziliao huibian, 1: 137-38; Xu Aoren, "Zheng He mu yu Huli wa [Zheng He's tomb and glazed tile]''' in Zhenghe yanjui ziliao xuanbian, pp. 351-54.

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Xuande was succeeded by his eight-year-old son in 1435, and the Confucian bureaucrats came to dominate policy even more. The Treasure-ships were allowed to deteriorate, and the shipyards were starved of labor. Timber set aside for the Treasure-ships

was sold cheaply as fuel to the people of Nanjing. The men of the fleet were reassigned
to repair the royal palace in N anjing, to build Yongle's mausoleum, to load grain on the Grand Canal, and to fight in Vietnam. Within a generation, the Chinese lost the knowledge of how to build Treasure-ships, and private Chinese vessels ceased venturing beyond the Straits of Melaka.~9 About 1477, the eunuch Wang Zhi, the Inspector of the Frontiers, requested the records of Zheng He's voyages, apparently with the intention of reasserting Chinese authority in the seas of Asia. In response, Liu Daxia, a high official in the Ministry of War, destroyed the archives of the expeditions because of his conviction that Chinese preoccupation with the world outside China was damaging to the empire. As he told his superior, "The expeditions [of Zheng He] to the Western Ocean wasted tens of myriads of money and grain, and moreover the people who met their deaths [because of them] may be counted in the myriads. Although he returned with wonderful things, what benefit was it to the state? This was merely an action of bad government of which ministers should severely disapprove." Destroying Zheng He's documents, he declared, was the only way to be certain that future maritime expeditions would be impossible.GO The Confucian officials who administered the Ming Empire disdained commerce, militarism and naval adventure in favor of self-sufficiency, agrarian virtue, and imperial isolation. In their eyes, the Middle Kingdom did not need the wider world, and the maritime imperialism of Zheng He's voyages was an embarrassment as well as a danger. But twenty years after the records of the Ming expeditions were destroyed, Vasco da Gama's four ships reached Calicut. Perhaps inspired by the rumors that they heard there about Zheng He's Treasure-ships and the riches in them, the Portuguese at once began casting their eyes toward the eastern seaways. The world was going to come to China, whether China liked it or not.

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G9Wang, "The Decline of the Early Ming Navy," pp. 160-161; Yang Xi, "Zheng He xia xi yang de mudi jiqi bei tinghang de yuanyin [The purpose of Zheng He's expeditions to the Western Ocean and the reasons for their termination]," in Zhenghe xia xiyang lunwenji, p. 34; Needham, Science and Civilization, 4: 524-25. The decline in shipbuilding techniques and knowledge, especially regarding the Treasure-ships, is evident in the 1553 report by the manager of the Nanjing shipyards, where most of the Treasure-ships had been built: Li Zhaoxiang, Longquan chuan chang zhi [Record of the shipbuilding yards on the Dragon River}, 4: 9; 6:11, 8:37-38 (consulted in a sixteenth-century printed edition at Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University). BOJan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak, "The True Dates of the Chinese Maritime Expeditions in the Early Fifteenth Century," T'oung Pao 34 (1938): 396.

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