What if zheng he

They are looked to, invoked, and hoped for. Learn more about the trauma and the loss created for Europeans. In traditional societies, where time-hallowed ways were authoritative, newness was not a recommendation, or a merit. Something that was new was, immediately suspected. Traditional societies in the past, were never unchanging or frozen, but were marked by the reverence for tradition. By contrast, in modern societies, progress is sought in the new, that which is cutting edge, the next big thing.

The Chinese Admiral Zheng He is best known for commanding the vast Chinese naval expedition, to lay claim to a new world, bringing the Americas into the cultural orbit of the Ming dynasty. If Zheng He had discovered America , the ancient civilization which China represented, would have spread over the North and South American continents, in a dynamic process to shape world history and there would be no need for the smaller European kingdoms or for a Christopher Columbus.

A turning point is a decisive moment which shapes later developments. By Vejas Liulevicius, Ph. Soon, Kublai commanded a force numbering thousands of ships, which he deployed to attack Japan, Vietnam, and Java. And while these naval offensives failed to gain territory, China did win control over the sea-lanes from Japan to Southeast Asia.

The Mongols gave a new preeminence to merchants, and maritime trade flourished as never before. On land, however, they failed to establish a settled form of government and win the allegiance of the peoples they had conquered.

Its first emperor, Hongwu, was as determined as the Mongol and Song emperors before him to maintain China as a naval power. Hongwu also decreed that no oceangoing vessels could have more than three masts, a dictate punishable by death. The Ming Dynasty built the Great Wall. Find out if it worked. Yongle was the third Ming emperor, and he took this restrictive maritime policy even further, banning private trade while pushing hard for Chinese control of the southern seas and the Indian Ocean.

The beginning of his reign saw the conquest of Vietnam and the foundation of Malacca as a new sultanate controlling the entry point to the Indian Ocean, a supremely strategic location for China to control.

In order to dominate the trade routes that united China with Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, the emperor decided to assemble an impressive fleet, whose huge treasure ships could have as many masts as necessary. The man he chose as its commander was Zheng He. Although he is often described as an explorer, Zheng He did not set out primarily on voyages of discovery.

Rather, his voyages were designed as a display of Chinese might, as well as a way of rekindling trade with vassal states and guaranteeing the flow of vital provisions, including medicines, pepper, sulfur, tin, and horses. The fleets that Zheng He commanded on his seven great expeditions between and were suitably ostentatious.

On the first voyage, the fleet numbered ships, 62 of which were vast treasure ships, or baochuan. There were also mid-size ships such as the machuan, used for transporting horses, and a multitude of other vessels carrying soldiers, sailors, and assorted personnel.

Some officials made the voyage, among them doctors, astrologers, and cartographers. The ships left Nanjing Nanking , Hangzhou, and other major ports, from there veering south to Fujian, where they swelled their crews with expert sailors.

They then made a show of force by anchoring in Quy Nhon, Vietnam , which China had recently conquered. None of the seven expeditions headed north; most made their way to Java and Sumatra, resting for a spell in Malacca, where they waited for the winter monsoon winds that blow toward the west. They then proceeded to Ceylon present-day Sri Lanka and Calicut in southern India, where the first three expeditions terminated. The fourth expedition reached Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and the final voyages expanded westward, entering the waters of the Red Sea, then turning and sailing as far as Kenya, and perhaps farther still.

Chinese ships had always been noted for their size. Many of those new communities sprang up at nodes where Zheng had stopped to develop trade relationships. Those trade networks, Shutz says, were also essential to the spread of two Chinese technologies that helped build our modern world: gunpowder and compasses. Both items were conceived and commonly used for different purposes in China: compasses for divination practices and gunpowder for firecrackers.

Thanks to the trade relationships Zheng helped establish, they were much more widely taken up for navigation and warfare across Asia and Africa—and eventually used by Western colonial powers to reshape the world for the next several centuries.

In particular, he cites a set of stone tablets Zheng left behind in a temple in Sri Lanka as evidence of this mindset. Image Credit: Chongkian, Wikimedia Commons. Would the two powers have traded or gone to war?

How would that have affected the violence European powers inflicted as they divided up the world for colonization? In this small change, Shutz sees the beginning of a bigger trend in the American approach to world history. Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens.

Support Provided By Learn More. Email Address. Zip Code. Trade winds across the Indian Ocean brought ships carrying cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and especially pepper from Calicut on the southwestern coast of India, gemstones from Ceylon Sri Lanka , as well as woolens, carpets, and more precious stones from ports as far away as Hormuz on the Persian Gulf and Aden on the Red Sea.

Agricultural products from north and east Africa also made their way to China, although little was known about those regions. By the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, China had reached a peak of naval technology unsurpassed in the world. While using many technologies of Chinese invention, Chinese shipbuilders also combined technologies they borrowed and adapted from seafarers of the South China seas and the Indian Ocean.

For centuries, China was the preeminent maritime power in the region, with advances in navigation, naval architecture, and propulsion. From the ninth century on, the Chinese had taken their magnetic compasses aboard ships to use for navigating two centuries before Europe. In addition to compasses, Chinese could navigate by the stars when skies were clear, using printed manuals with star charts and compass bearings that had been available since the thirteenth century.

Star charts had been produced from at least the eleventh century, reflecting China's concern with heavenly events unmatched until the Renaissance in Europe. An important advance in shipbuilding used since the second century in China was the construction of double hulls divided into separate watertight compartments. This saved ships from sinking if rammed, but it also offered a method of carrying water for passengers and animals, as well as tanks for keeping fish catches fresh.

Crucial to navigation was another Chinese invention of the first century, the sternpost rudder, fastened to the outside rear of a ship which could be raised and lowered according to the depth of the water, and used to navigate close to shore, in crowded harbors and narrow channels. Both these inventions were commonplace in China 1, years before their introduction to Europe.

Chinese ships were also noted for their advances in sail design and rigging. Bypassing the need for banks of rowers, by the third and fourth centuries the Chinese were building three- and four-masted ships years before Europe of wind-efficient design. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries they added lug and then lateen sails from the Arabs to help sail against the prevailing winds. By the eighth century, ships feet long capable of carrying men were being built in China the size of Columbus' ships eight centuries later!

By the Song Dynasty , these stout and stable ships with their private cabins for travelers and fresh water for drinking and bathing were the ships of choice for Arab and Persian traders in the Indian Ocean.

The Mongol Yuan Dynasty encouraged commercial activity and maritime trade, so the succeeding Ming Dynasty inherited large shipyards, many skilled shipyard workers, and finely tuned naval technology from the dynasty that preceded it. Because the Yongle emperor wanted to impress Ming power upon the world and show off China's resources and importance, he gave orders to build even larger ships than were necessary for the voyages.

Thus the word went out to construct special "Treasure Ships," ships over feet long, feet wide, with nine masts, twelve sails, and four decks, large enough to carry 2, tons of cargo each and armed with dozens of small cannons. Accompanying those ships were to be hundreds of smaller ships, some filled only with water, others carrying troops or horses or cannon, still others with gifts of silks and brocades, porcelains, lacquerware, tea, and ironworks that would impress leaders of far-flung civilizations.

The Seven Voyages. The first expedition of this mighty armada was composed of ships, including perhaps as many as sixty huge Treasure Ships, and nearly 28, men. In addition to thousands of sailors, builders and repairmen for the trip, there were soldiers, diplomatic specialists, medical personnel, astronomers, and scholars of foreign ways, especially Islam. The fleet stopped in Champa central Vietnam and Siam today's Thailand and then on to island Java, to points along the Straits of Malacca, and then proceeded to its main destination of Cochin and the kingdom of Calicut on the southwestern coast of India.

On his return, Zheng He put down a pirate uprising in Sumatra, bringing the pirate chief, an overseas Chinese, back to Nanjing for punishment. The second expedition took 68 ships to the court of Calicut to attend the inauguration of a new king.

Zheng He organized this expedition but did not actually lead it in person. Zheng He did command the third voyage with 48 large ships and 30, troops, visiting many of the same places as on the first voyage but also traveling to Malacca on the Malay peninsula and Ceylon Sri Lanka. When fighting broke out there between his forces and those of a small kingdom, Zheng put down the fighting, captured the king and brought him back to China where he was released by the emperor and returned home duly impressed.

The fourth voyage extended the scope of the expeditions even further. This time in addition to visiting many of the same sites, Zheng He commandeered his 63 ships and over 28, men to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. The main chronicler of the voyages, the twenty-five year old Muslim translator Ma Huan, joined Zheng He on this trip.