Zheng He

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File:Zhenghepainting.jpg

Zheng He wearing formal official dress

Zheng He (simplified Chinese: 郑和; traditional Chinese: 鄭和; pinyin: Zhèng Hé; Wade–Giles: Cheng Ho; Birth name: 馬三寶 / 马三宝; pinyin: Mǎ Sānbǎo; Arabic name: حجّي محمود Hajji Mahmud) (1371–1433), is a famous Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who made the voyages collectively referred to as the travels of "Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean" ("三保太監下西洋") or "Zheng He to the Western Ocean", from 1405 to 1433.

Life

Zheng was born in 1371 of the Hui ethnic group and the Muslim faith in modern-day Yunnan Province, one of the last possessions of the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty before being conquered by the Ming Dynasty. He served as a close confidant of the Yongle Emperor of China (reigned 1403–1424), the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty. According to his biography in the History of Ming, he was originally named Ma Sanbao (馬三保), and came from Kunyang (昆阳, present day Jinning (晋宁), Yunnan Province. Zheng belonged to the Semur or Semu caste who practiced Islam. He was the sixth generation descendant of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a famous Yuan governor of the Yunnan Province from Bukhara in modern day Uzbekistan. His family name "Ma" came from Shams al-Din's fifth son Masuh. Both his father Mir Tekin and grandfather Charameddin had travelled on pilgrimage to Mecca, and no doubt he heard them recounting tales of travels to far away lands. After the Ming army conquered Yunnan, he was taken captive as a young boy, and castrated, thus becoming a eunuch, to become a servant at the Imperial court. The name Zheng He was given by the Yongle emperor for the war merit in the Yongle rebellion aganst the Jianwen Emperor. He studied at Nanjing Taixue (The Imperial Central College).

His missions showed impressive demonstrations of organizational capability and technological might, but did not lead to significant trade, since Zheng He was an admiral and an official, not a merchant. There were also rumors that he was at least two meters (six feet seven inches) tall.

Zheng sailed to Malacca in the 15th century. By the mid-15th century, a princess of China, Princess Hang Li Po (or Hang Liu), was sent by the Emperor of China to marry the Sultan of Malacca, Sultan Mansur Shah. The princess came with her entourage -— 500 sons of ministers and a few hundred handmaidens. They eventually settled in Bukit Cina in Malacca. The descendants of these people, from mixed marriages with the local natives, are known today as Peranakan: Baba (the male title) and Nyonya (the female title). (MP)

In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (reigned 1424–1425), decided to curb the influence at court. Zheng He made one more voyage under the Xuande Emperor (reigned 1426–1435), but after that Chinese treasure ship fleets ended. Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals, buried at sea.

Treasure Ships

File:Treasure Ship and Santa Maria.gif

A treasure ship was several times larger than Christopher Columbus's Santa María.

Treasure ship is the name of a type of vessel that the Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed in. His fleet included 62 treasure ships, with some reaching 600 feet (146 meters) long. On the ships, there were over 28,000 people, including navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers.

Voyages

"The Western Ocean" refers to the Asian and African places Zheng He explored, including:

Southeast Asia,
Sumatra,
Malacca,
Java,
Ceylon,
India,
Persia,
The Persian Gulf,
Arabia,
The Red Sea as far north as Egypt, and
Africa as far south as the Mozambique Channel.
Taiwan seven times.

The number of his voyages varies depending on the method of division, but he travelled at least seven times to "The Western Ocean" with his fleet. He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms -— including King Alagonakkara of Ceylon, who came to China to apologize to the Emperor.

There are speculations that some of Zheng's ships may have travelled beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro describes in his 1457 Fra Mauro map the travels of a huge "junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420.

Zheng himself wrote of his travels:

"We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense waterspaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course (as rapidly) as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…" (Tablet erected by Zhen He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes)

His voyages, records, maps are one of the explanations and supposed sources of some of the other Ancient world maps, which are claimed to have depicted the Americas, Antarctica, the tip of Africa etc.. before the (European) official discovery, such as the Fra Mauro map or the De Virga world map.

Former submarine commander Gavin Menzies in his book "1421: The Year China discovered the World" claims that several parts of Zheng's fleet explored virtually the entire globe, discovering West Africa, North and South America, Greenland, Antarctica and Australia. His evidence is highly suggestive, sometimes quite speculative, based on old maps, archaeological discoveries, the author's familiarity with problems of navigation such as currents, and so on. Professional historians have generally been dismissive. A related book, "The island of seven cities : where the Chinese settled when they discovered America" by Paul Chiasson maintains that a nation of native peoples known as the Micmaq on the east coast of Canada are descendants of Chinese explorers, offering evidence in the form of archaeological remains, customs, costume, artwork, etc.

The fleets

Early 17th century Chinese woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships.

According to Chinese sources, Zheng He commanded 7 fleets comprised of 30,000 men and over 300 ships at its height.

The 1405 expedition which consisted of 27,800 men and 317 ships, was composed of:

"Treasure ships", used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 120 meter (400 ft) long and 50 m (160 ft) wide). (Some reached up to 600 feet long)
"Horse ships", carrying tribute goods and repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 103 m (339 ft) long and 42 m (138 ft) wide)
"Supply ships", containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 78 m (257 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) wide).
"Troop transports", six-masted, about 67 m (220 ft) long and 25 m (83 ft) wide).
"Fuchuan warships", five-masted, about 50 m (165 ft) long).
"Patrol boats", eight-oared, about 37 m (120 feet) long).
"Water tankers", with 1 month supply of fresh water.

File:Treasure Ship and Santa Maria.gif

A treasure ship was several times larger than Christopher Columbus's Santa María.

Two other expeditions took place, in 1412 and 1421, with fleets of comparable size.

The enormous characteristics of the Chinese ships of the period are confirmed by Western travelers to the East, such as Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. According to Ibn Battuta, who visited China in 1347:

…We stopped in the port of Calicut, in which there were at the time thirteen Chinese vessels, and disembarked. China Sea travelling is done in Chinese ships only, so we shall describe their arrangements. The Chinese vessels are of three kinds; large ships called chunks (junks), middle sized ones called zaws (dhows) and the small ones kakams. The large ships have anything from twelve down to three sails, which are made of bamboo rods plaited into mats. They are never lowered, but turned according to the direction of the wind; at anchor they are left floating in the wind.

Three smaller ones, the "half", the "third" and the "quarter", accompany each large vessel. These vessels are built in the towns of Zaytun and Sin-Kalan. The vessel has four decks and contains rooms, cabins, and saloons for merchants; a cabin has chambers and a lavatory, and can be locked by its occupants.

This is the manner after which they are made; two (parallel) walls of very thick wooden (planking) are raised and across the space between them are placed very thick planks (the bulkheads) secured longitudinally and transversely by means of large nails, each three ells in length. When these walls have thus been built the lower deck is fitted in and the ship is launched before the upper works are finished." (Ibn Battuta).

Connection to the history of Late Imperial China

File:Zheng he giraffe.jpg

A giraffe brought from Africa in the twelfth year of Yongle (AD 1414).

Although historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized this view in the 1950s, most current historians of China question its accuracy. They point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not stop after Zheng He, that Chinese ships continued to dominate Southeast Asian commerce until the 19th century and that active Chinese trading with India and East Africa continued long after the time of Zheng. The travels of the Chinese junk Keying to the United States and England between 1846 to 1848 testify to the power of Chinese shipping until the 19th century.

Although the Ming Dynasty did ban shipping for a few decades with the Hai jin edict, they eventually lifted this ban. The alternative view cites the fact that by banning ocean going shipping the Ming (and later Qing) dynasties forced countless numbers of people into blackmarket smuggling. This reduced government tax revenue and increased piracy. The lack of an ocean going navy then left China highly vulnerable to the Waku (wakou) pirates that ravaged China in the 16th century.

One thing is certain. State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century China experienced increasing pressure from resurgent Mongolian tribes from the north. In recognition of this threat and possibly to move closer to his family's historical geographic power base, in 1421 the emperor Yongle moved the capital north from Nanjing to present-day Beijing. From the new capital he could apply greater imperial supervision to the effort to defend the northern borders. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for these land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions.

In 1449 Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the emperor Zhengtong less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. In the Battle of Tumu Fortress the Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor. This battle had two salient effects. First, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads. Second, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released Zhengtong after his half-brother had proclaimed himself the new Jingtai emperor. Not until 1457 did political stability return when Zhengtong recovered the throne. Upon his return to power China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In this environment, funding for naval expeditions simply did not happen.

More fundamentally, unlike the later naval expeditions conducted by European nations, the Chinese treasure ships appear to have been doomed in the long run because the voyages lacked any economic motive. They were primarily conducted to increase the prestige of the emperor and the costs of the expeditions and of the return gifts provided to foreign royalty and ambassadors more than offset the benefit of any tribute collected. Thus when China's governmental finances came under pressure (which like all medieval governments' finances they eventually did), funding for the naval expeditions melted away. In contrast, by the 16th century, most European missions of exploration made enough profit from the resulting trade to become self-financing, allowing them to continue regardless of the condition of the state's finances.

Cultural echoes

A recent controversial theory (the 1421 hypothesis) put forward by Gavin Menzies in his book asserts that Zheng He circumnavigated the globe and arrived in America in the 15th century before Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus. Menzies' claims have been rejected by professional historians.

The Qeng Ho space-faring society alluded to in Vernor Vinge's science fiction novel A Fire Upon the Deep (and later prominently featured in A Deepness in the Sky) reflects the name of Zheng. His voyages and the subsequent possible abandonment (as some have argued) of maritime exploration by the Chinese emperors have become symbolic in the space advocacy community of the success and cancellation of the Apollo Program.

Zheng features as a character in Kim Stanley Robinson's alternative history The Years of Rice and Salt.

It has been suggested by some historians and mentioned in a recent National Geographic article on Zheng that Sindbad the Sailor (also spelled "Sinbad", from Arabic السندباد—As-Sindibad) and the collection of travel-romances that make up the Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor found in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) were influenced heavily by the cumulative tales of many seafarers that had followed, traded and worked in various support ships as part of the armada of Chinese Ming Imperial Treasure Fleets. This belief is supported in part by the similarities in Sindbad's name and the various iterations of Zheng in Arabic and Mandarin (Traditional: 鄭和; Simplified: 郑和; pinyin: Zhèng Hé; Wade-Giles: Cheng Ho; Birth name: 马三宝; pinyin: Mǎ Sānbǎo; Arabic name: Hajji Mahmud Shams) along with the similarities in the number (seven) and general locations of voyages between Sindbad and Zheng.

The "Zheng He map"

In January 2006, BBC News and The Economist both published news regarding the exhibition of a Chinese sailing map claimed to be dated 1763, which was stated to be a copy of another map purportedly made in 1418. The map has detailed descriptions of both Native Americans and Native Australians. According to the map's owner, Liu Gang, a Chinese lawyer and collector, he purchased the map in 2001 for $500 USD from a Shanghai dealer.

1763 Chinese map of the world, claiming to incorporate information from a 1418 map. Discovered by Lui Gang in 2005.

After Liu read the book "1421: The Year China discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies, he realized the significant potential value of the map. The map has been tested to verify the ages of its paper, but not the ink. Even though the map has been shown to date from a period that could cover 1763, the question remains as to whether it is an accurate copy of an earlier 1418 map, or simply a copy of a contemporary 18th-century European map.

A number of authorities on Chinese history have questioned the authenticity of the map. Some point to the use of the Mercator-style projection, its accurate reckoning of longitude and its North-based orientation. None of these features was used in the best maps made in either Asia or Europe during this period (for example see the Kangnido map (1410) and the Fra Mauro (1459). Also mentioned is the depiction of the erroneous Island of California, a mistake commonly repeated in European maps from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Geoff Wade of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore has strongly disputed the authenticity of the map and has suggested that it is either an 18th or 21st-century fake. He has pointed out a number of anachronisms that appear in the map and its text annotations. For example, in the text next to Eastern Europe, which has been translated as "People here mostly believe in God and their religion is called 'Jing'", Wade notes that the Chinese word for the Christian God is given as "Shang-di", which is a usage that was first coined by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century.

In May 2006, it was reported by the Dominion Post that Fiona Petchey, head of the testing unit at Waikato University, which had carbon dated the map, had asked Gavin Menzies to remove claims from his website that the dating proved the map was genuine. The carbon dating indicated with an 80% probability a date for the paper of the map between either 1640-1690 or 1730-1810. However as the ink was not tested, it was impossible to know when it was drawn. Ms Petchey said, "we asked him to remove those, not because we were not happy with the dates, but because we were not overly happy with being associated with his interpretations of those dates."

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