For most of its history, China has been the dominant land power of East Asia; its maritime influence, by contrast, has often been overshadowed. Chinese imperial dynasties traditionally neglected naval spending due to a range of cultural and economic factors, preventing China from ever establishing a global colonial empire rooted in trade. However, one major exception stands out from this historical trend; from the 12th century onwards China entered a period of rapid naval innovation, culminating in the epic voyages of admiral Zheng He and the Ming dynasty’s ‘treasure fleet’. Though, China’s ultimate descent into isolationism and departure from naval expansion remains one of the great missed opportunities in its history.
China’s historic culture of Sinocentrism long discouraged naval investment and maritime trade. Chinese Emperors, claiming divine authority as the ‘Son of Heaven’, saw it as undignified for the imperial government to trade on an equal footing with barbarians. Instead, under the tributary system the emperor would send ‘gifts’ to foreign dignitaries, and receive tribute in return. Furthermore, the emperors traditionally believed that they possessed ‘all under heaven’ in their vast realm, and hence saw no need to barter for foreign goods in the first place. Thus, when a British embassy petitioned the Qianlong Emperor to lift restrictions on foreign trade in 1792, he replied by stating that there was “no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce.”
Economic concerns regularly led to naval spending being neglected given the need to defend China’s immense landmass from rebellion or foreign incursion, typically leading the army to be prioritised, with exorbitant defence projects such as the Great Wall. This often left little funding for maritime defence, allowing for rampant piracy in Chinese coastal waters.
This trend began to change around the 12th century. The proto-industrialised economy of the Song dynasty supported the creation of a standing navy for the first time. This was further developed by the highly militaristic Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, which used the navy to launch overseas military campaigns in Japan and Java. By the time of the fall of the Yuan and the rise of the Ming in the 14th century, China possessed the most advanced naval force on earth.
The Ming dynasty was founded in 1368 by a former peasant, the Hongwu Emperor. Much of his reign was dominated by war, given that the new Ming government sought to expel the final remnants of Mongol influence from China’s borderlands. In 1381, Ming armies attacked and subjugated the Yuan-loyalist province of Yunnan in the south. Living in Yunnan at the time was a young man named Ma He, who hailed from a muslim family of local Yuan officials with Central Asian ancestry. During the fighting Ma He was captured by Ming forces and his father killed and, after being castrated, Ma He was sent to serve as a eunuch in the imperial court.
Despite this traumatic experience, Ma He became a loyal servant in the household of Zhu Di, fourth son of the Hongwu Emperor, who had been appointed governor of the northern city of Beiping. Ma He soon earned the trust of his master, accompanying him on campaigns against the Mongols in the north. After the death of the Hongwu Emperor in 1398, Ma He became a key advisor to Zhu Di in the ensuing war of succession, which concluded with Zhu Di successfully usurping the throne and assuming the title of ‘Yongle Emperor’. Upon his accession he granted Ma He the honorific name ‘Zheng He’, and appointed him to the powerful position of Grand Director of the court.
The reign of the Yongle Emperor is remembered as one of the most ambitious in Chinese history. Under his rule the Great Wall was formidably reinforced and extended, the Grand Canal renovated and reopened, and the famous porcelain tower of Nanjing erected. At the same time, the Yongle Emperor moved the capital from Nanjing to his old power base in Beiping, which he renamed Beijing (literally ‘Northern Capital’). In conjunction with this he ordered the construction of a new palace complex, the Forbidden City.
In 1403, the Yongle Emperor also ordered the creation of a “foreign expeditionary armada”. He believed that a powerful new fleet would allow the Ming empire to explore new lands and project power overseas. It would also serve as an ostentatious display of wealth and grandeur, intended to overwhelm foreign leaders into pledging tribute to the emperor. The fleet would then enable diplomats and exotic foreign goods from vassal states to be transported back to the imperial court at Beijing.
The Ming ‘treasure fleet’ was constructed in large dry docks on the banks of the Qinhuai River near Nanjing. The armada was eventually composed of around 200 traditional Chinese warships, or ‘junks’, and 50 unconventional, far larger ‘treasure ships’. Each of these treasure ships had nine masts, and were around 50-100 metres in length. The fleet was armed with heavy cannon, and laden with gifts for foreign dignitaries: gold, silver, silk, porcelain and other treasures.
In the Summer of 1405 the armada set sail from Nanjing on its first voyage, under the command of the emperor’s favourite, Zheng He. The fleet had a complement of nearly 30,000 men, including a sizeable contingent of infantry and cavalry. After sailing across the South China Sea the armada visited Champa (modern-day Vietnam), Ayutthaya (Thailand), Majapahit (Java) and Sumatra, before navigating the Bay of Bengal to the port of Calicut on the Malabar Coast (modern-day India). In India the fleet exchanged Chinese goods for precious corals, stones and spices, taking aboard diplomats keen to establish relations with the Ming empire.
On its return leg the armada received its first baptism of fire, as it came across the infamous pirate leader Chen Zuyi and his fleet in the Strait of Malacca. In the ensuing Battle of Palembang, the Ming navy inflicted a decisive defeat on the pirates, capturing Chen, who was taken to Nanjing to be publicly executed. Finally in 1407, Zheng He triumphantly presented the foreign treasures acquired by the fleet to the Yongle Emperor in Nanjing.
The growing influence of the treasure fleet was demonstrated ever more clearly by the time of its third voyage, which began in 1409. After trading for spices and fabrics in the Indonesian Archipelago, the armada came across King Parameswara, the founder of the Sultanate of Malacca, who ruled over the prosperous trading city of Singapura (modern-day Singapore). Parameswara offered up his fledging realm as a tributary state to the Yongle Emperor, and Zheng He agreed to bring him under Ming suzerainty. Chinese protection allowed the Sultanate to grow into one of the most powerful states in the region, as its neighbours feared incurring the wrath of the Ming emperor.
Sailing across the Bay of Bengal once again, the fleet arrived at the Sinhalese Kotte Kingdom, in modern-day Sri Lanka. There, Zheng He was outraged by the hostile reception of the Sinhalese King Alakeshvara. Keen to put an end to Kotte piracy in the region, Zheng landed an expeditionary force of 2,000 men, who captured the Kotte capital and deposed Alakeshvara. The Ming then installed a more amenable monarch, Parakramabahu, to the Kotte throne.
The exploits of Zheng He’s fourth voyage, which set out in 1413, are also particularly notable, as for the first time, the fleet sailed beyond India to the port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. There it was able to trade for all the exotic treasures of the Middle East: precious stones, pearls, Persian carpets and Arabic horses. Malindi traders from modern day Kenya presented the fleet with lions, leopards and even a giraffe. The latter became the source of great admiration in the imperial court, where it was widely interpreted to be a qilin – a mythical Chinese creature believed to herald the imminent arrival or passing of an illustrious ruler, magnifying the repute of the Yongle Emperor.
Contemporary depiction of the giraffe presented by Zheng He to the court.
On the return leg of his fourth voyage, Zheng He once again made a military intervention, deploying troops on the island of Sumatra to depose the usurper King Sekander and return Zain al-Abidin to the throne of the Kingdom of Semadura. By now, the military hegemony of the Ming in Southeast Asia was firmly cemented.
Despite the undeniable achievements of the treasure fleet, the death of the Yongle Emperor after Zheng He’s fifth and sixth voyages in 1424 marked the end of the expeditions. Under the brief reign of the new Hongxi Emperor such overseas ventures were discontinued. When the Xuande Emperor ascended to the throne in 1425, one last voyage was reluctantly authorised. The fleet sailed further than ever before – perhaps as far as modern-day Madagascar – but on its return leg Zheng, now in his sixties, died and was buried at sea.
The route of Zheng He’s seventh and final voyage.
After 1433 the Ming treasure voyages came to an end. The primary reason for their termination was likely economic; the ongoing fiscal strain of the wars against the Mongols, coupled with the reconstruction of the Great Wall, meant that funds for the grand armada were reallocated elsewhere. However, the end of the treasure fleet can also be attributed to China’s age-old power struggle between the Confucian scholar class of civil servants, who expounded Confucius’s ideal of an agrarian, land-based economy, and the eunuch class of whom Zheng He was the greatest representative. After Zheng He’s death, the power of the eunuchs steadily eroded, and their priorities substituted for those of the Confucian scholars.
Indeed, subsequent Ming emperors drifted steadily towards isolationism, as records relating to Zheng He’s exploits were systematically destroyed. The implementation of a ‘sea ban’ placed restrictions on foreign trade and coastal settlement, a policy continued and amplified under the Qing dynasty from the 17th century onwards, until the conclusion of the Opium Wars.
The legacy of the treasure fleet therefore remains contested. On the one hand, it has been judged by some as a short-lived vanity project, more concerned with bringing tributaries and exotic gifts to the emperor than with establishing a real system of global trade. But this seems to be an unfair assessment, as the voyages precipitated an era of Chinese trade and migration in Southeast Asia. Moreover, Zheng He’s armed interventions in Sri Lanka and Sumatra both demonstrated an advanced military capability to support overseas campaigns. Though with the cancellation of the treasure fleet, the opportunity to establish a colonial empire was squandered, a century before the discovery of the Americas.
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