Zheng He: Admiral of the East
This is just a thread I thought I'd start up to talk about Admiral Zheng He, the admiral of the Ming Dynasty recently featured in the National Geographic magazine. As a Chinese myself I'm quite fascinated by this man, but we must be historical, so I shall restrain from the fanboy squealing. It is interesting to note though that July 11 was the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's first voyage, which opened China up to the rest of the world and brought the world to China's doorstep for a preciously short time.
He led the Imperial Navy on 7 voyages through the Indian Ocean region, reaching as far as Mombasa in person, with a subsidiary expedition going as far as Mecca. Born a Muslim, Zheng He was originally a Central Asian Muslim with the surname Ma. His father was a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Captured in a Ming war of expansion, he was castrated and made an eunuch, upon which the emperor's whim gave him the name by which we know him today. He was a huge man and had a commanding presence which, coupled with the emperor's favour and his own talents, led to the Ming Yongle Emperor giving him grand admiralship over the great Imperial navy which was undoubtedly the greatest the world had yet seen. This fleet was a diplomatic/military/economic state-in-motion that was intended to project the power of the Ming empire far to the west and awe nations into recognising the Ming as their suzerain, as well as opening their trade to them.
The voyages were carried out by a fleet of over 200 ships. The core of the fleet was made of 'treasure ships', gigantic monsters 50 metres wide and almost 200 metres long. In addition to that were other smaller transport ships, cargo ships, and numerous light agile combat junks to provide security. 28000 sailor-soldiers were recruited--a large army by the standards of the places Zheng would be visiting. It was only in recent times that people were forced to believe the treasure ships were really that huge when the hull of one of those ships were found in an archaeological dig. To put things in perspective, da Gama's, Columbus' and Magellan's combined fleets would have comfortably fit onto the deck of one of those treasure ships with enough space left over for two more such fleets.
The voyages were wildly successful. Over the course of the voyages Zheng earned the gratitude of several states by using his army to remove scourges, like when he cleared the Malacca Straits of a major pirate fleet in a great naval battle, and when he intervened in a Sinhalese-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka with his army. On the return of each of his voyages, Zheng brought with him diplomats and envoys from the countries he had visited, and trade goods from them as well.
Recently, to commemorate his 600th anniversary, a treasure ship replica built in China set sail to visit all the ports Zheng had visited on his voyages. It is still under way now, having passed through the Malacca Straits some time before.
It is a pity though that the Ming emperor who succeeded Yong Le refused to continue with the treasure fleet expeditions, shunning subtle diplomacy and peace for expansionist wars that eventually so badly weakened the Ming that the Manchu invaders from the north were able to break into the Central Plains and set up the Qing dynasty.
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Originally Posted by pezhetairoi
pezhetairoi, how do they know the size of these treasure ships? Have they found remains of them? The size of those ships is unimaginable.
[and our gold]), and I'm going to go back to check on the 'ol property, even though its just several blocks of factories now....
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