Interpreting Our World: 100 Discoveries That Revolutionized Geography

More than 60 years before the voyages of Columbus, Zheng He (1371–1433 or 1435) sailed distances greater than any recorded before his time. Not only did he sail from China to the east coast of Africa, India, and the Middle East, but he also did so over 7 different voyages spanning 28 years. He did so with larger ships and fleets than the world had ever known. Yet his voyages were barely known to the world until recent years.

Zheng He was an explorer, diplomat, and fleet admiral during the period of the early Ming dynasty in China, a period of growing interest in the outside world. As a boy with the name Ma He, he was taken prisoner at the age of 10 when Ming forces invaded his hometown of Yunnan in southwestern China. Yet he won favor with the emperor, and for his loyalty, he was given tasks of increasing responsibility. By the time he was 34, in 1405, Emperor Zhu Di, known as the Yongle Emperor, assigned him the task of leading a fleet of ships down the coast of China and then across to India. The emperor had a keen desire to show the world the power of China, explore new lands, and establish trade relationships. For the first voyage, the emperor could have also been on a quest to capture his escaped predecessor to the throne. Appearing in foreign lands with hundreds of large ships and thousands of soldiers forced the native people in those lands to make a decision: engage in military conflict or offer gifts in tribute and send emissaries to pay their respects to the emperor. Typically, facing the serious force that Zheng’s ships and soldiers represented, the native people chose the latter; only three times did Zheng’s forces encounter serious armed resistance. At times on the voyages, Zheng He and his men deposed the current ruler and installed one of their own choice, such as in Sri Lanka in 1409–1411. In Sumatra in 1414, the Chinese captured a pretender to one of the local positions of power and sent him back to Nanjing, where he was executed. These types of actions, and the fear and respect that tales of these actions caused, ensured a steady stream of tribute brought to the Ming court from newly installed Chinese rulers. But by and large, Zheng He’s missions were peaceful and his voyages marked the beginning of diplomatic missions—90 in all during the period of Emperor Zhu Di alone.

The starting point for all of the voyages was the shipyards of Nanjing. From there, ships sailed down the Yangtze River to the East China Sea, south along China’s east coast, and from there to Vietnam and Java. They explored Thailand and Brunei. Even the first voyage was impressive: 317 ships, 28,000 men, plus their arms and supplies. Several massive “treasure ships” accompanied the voyages, approximately 122 meters long by 49 meters wide—that is, longer than a standard American football field or a standard soccer field. Nine masts flew over them, and they were five times larger than the Portuguese caravels of the time (see Henry the Navigator). Horses were stowed below decks for the cavalry, and soil was kept on deck for growing vegetables. Citrus and soybean sprouts helped protect the sailors from scurvy. Semi-submersible sea anchors could be thrown over in a storm to reduce rolling. As the square bow pitched in heavy seas, water was funneled into the ship, later to be drained out, subduing the pitching motion.

Zheng He’s first voyage (1405–1406) and second voyage (1407–1409) stopped at Vietnam, Java, and the northern coast of Sumatra. From there, just south of present-day Singapore, he traveled through the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Sumatra. From the Song dynasty, there was already a substantial Chinese population in Malacca. Once through the Strait, the ships sailed west to Sri Lanka and India, or, as it was known then, Calicut, the great country of the Western Ocean.

Zheng’s third voyage (1409–1411) focused on Malacca and Sri Lanka. The fourth voyage reached Hormuz, between present-day Iran and the United Arab Emirates and Oman, an important junction where caravan trade from the Middle East met the sea trade from the Indian Ocean. A surviving log of the seventh voyage indicates that 100 days of sailing was required to reach India from China. Zheng He’s seventh voyage reached Mombasa, in present-day Kenya, on the east coast of Africa. This was another significant accomplishment, as the distance by sea totaled over 11,000 kilometers, one way. A side trip by the historian of the fleet, Ma Huan, journeyed all the way up the Red Sea from Aden and across the mountains to Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula. Zheng He himself had probably stayed behind in India, but he died on the return voyage and was buried at sea.

Zheng He’s accomplishments did not happen overnight; they were based on developments perfected during the Song dynasty a few hundred years earlier, not the least of which were gunpowder and shipbuilding. Furthermore, Chinese maps by the time of Zheng He had become quite detailed, indicating that the voyagers had a good idea of where they were going even before they set out. Still, they were greatly aided by the magnetic compass (see Compass), which was in wide use in China by then.

Given all that Zheng He accomplished, it is curious that his voyages were not followed up by a successor with similar ambitions, or by expanded trade routes and perhaps even the establishment of Chinese colonies. But much of the rest of the Ming period was marked by isolationism, evidenced in part by a Portuguese presence in Macao beginning in 1557 that the Chinese were not able to repel. And why didn’t Zheng’s voyages receive attention until recently? The answer may be this simple: Chinese officials dismantled the fleet after the deaths of Zheng and the Yongle Emperor, and in 1529 they destroyed the records of the voyages. This could have been due to the isolationist feelings that had begun to take hold. Perhaps maintaining the fleet while fighting expensive wars against the Vietnamese and the Mongols and moving the capital from Nanjing to Beijing had compromised the treasury of the Ming dynasty. Whatever the reasons, the voyages of the “treasure ships” came to an end.

The results of the voyages of Zheng He and those of Christopher Columbus could not have been more different. Zheng had thousands of ships, and Columbus had just three. Yet Columbus’s voyages sparked additional voyages (such as Magellan’s), colonialism, and trade, while after Zheng, China entered a long period of isolationism. Still, the impact of Zheng’s voyages on geographic thinking and cultural geography was significant: They spread information about the lands, plants, animals, and people of Asia to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, and vice versa. During the fourth voyage, for example, thousands of plants and hundreds of animals and artifacts were shipped back to China. Ambassadors from lands visited by the fleet traveled back to China as well. No doubt these were not isolated incidents, and they spread knowledge about cultural and physical geography. Never before in the world had there been voyages that had lasted so long, involved as many people, sailed as far, involved such advanced ships, or carried such advanced navigation technologies.

The accomplishments represented by Zheng’s voyages sank more and more into obscurity until the publication in 1904 of Biography of Our Homeland’s Great Navigator Zheng He by the Chinese scholar Liang Qichao. Shortly thereafter, in 1911, a stone tablet inscription in three languages (Chinese, Tamil, and Persian) was discovered; erected in 1409, it had been signed by Zheng He himself as the “admiral of the western seas.” The offerings to Buddha depicted on the tablet indicates the wealth that Zheng’s voyages carried, which included 1,000 pieces of gold, 5,000 pieces of silver, 50 rolls of embroidered silk, 50 rolls of silk taffeta in many colors, incense burners, gold stands, candles, vases, and much more. In 2004, some ports such as Singapore and Semerang recognized the 600th anniversary of the voyages. During the same year, the British writer Gavin Menzies wrote the book 1421: The Year China Discovered America, claiming that a smaller fleet from Zheng’s sixth voyage had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Atlantic, to the Americas, and back to China, but little evidence exists to back up these claims.

Zheng He’s voyages vastly increased the geographic knowledge of a select group of political nobility, but also of those that he had contact with, throughout Asia and the Middle East. His advances in shipbuilding and navigation technology would influence the future of settlement and exploration.

See also: Columbus, Christopher; Compass; Henry the Navigator; Magellan, Ferdinand

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ZHENG HE

Voyaging from East to West

Further Reading