home from the sea

Sinbad the Sailor reviewed: or Zheng He, to give him his proper name.

While it is true that Zheng He brought back, for the exclusive use of the Ming household, lions, leopards, ostriches and giraffes, spices and minerals – his largest vessels were called Treasure Ships – the purpose of the voyages, as the main authorities now agree, was to enfold distant rulers, some of whom sent their envoys to China on Zheng He’s ships, in the ancient Chinese “tribute system”. According to this tradition the Emperor, ruling from the centre of the world, by his virtue and splendour attracted foreigners to his Court. There they presented him with their goods, deemed to be “tribute”, and performed the kowtow. In exchange, the Emperor bestowed on visiting rulers and their envoys goods exceeding in value what he received. As Dreyer and others have pointed out, this process permitted thinly disguised trade. After Zheng He’s voyages, there were no further tribute missions from rulers around the Indian Ocean.

via. He got as far as East Africa. I wonder what would have happened if he’d shown up in the Thames Estuary one fine day, or off Southampton?

The Ming stopped seafaring in 1436, and there’s a school of China historiography that says this is where the rot officially set in. Thenceforth China turned inward, became incurious, decayed. According to Dreyer’s account, the decision might have been consequent on faction fighting at the Ming court, with the pro-naval Eunuchs (of which Zheng was one) losing out to the landward oriented Confucians. Obviously, it’s never as simple as all that, but:

Had the Chinese maintained their great armadas, “Vasco da Gama and his successors would have found a powerful navy in control of the Indian Ocean. Instead China withdrew from the sea . . . .

Unequal treaties? Opium wars? Treaty ports? Might never have happened if they’d had the balls to listen to men without them.

Comments

[Alex]

Well, I'll engage with your counterfactual: absolutely nothing. Jack shit. Look at the massive and continuing influence his voyages had on the places he did sail to...whoops, there is absolutely no trace of him and his fleet in anyone else's history. That includes literate civilisations like India.

Perhaps that's why they stopped. Everyone just ignored them, and on this occasion, the problem really did go away.

Clearly, his demands for tribute weren't enough to seriously alter other people's economies, and his intervention didn't change other people's politics.

[jamie]

Well I wasn't entirley serious, though I believe he sowed Hui settlements across Malaysia and Indonesia and is still remembered there.

But the point is that if the Chinese had maintained or expanded a naval presence he'd be remembered a hell of a lot more.

[Alex]

A naval presence? Or a maritime trading economy?

[jamie]

Has there ever been one without the other? Even Hong Kong sized trading republics like Genoa had their own navies as a consequence of their dependence on trade.

[Alex]

Direction of causality watch. They didn't have trade as a consequence of navy.

[jamie]

But they surely needed a navy as a consequence of trade. Zheng He's trips may have been an attempt to overawe through a synthesis of the two but if China had kept a seaward orientation then they would have had to disaggregate, and at a time when its military technology was still competititive.

[Alex]

Perhaps. But without any traction in economics, the whole thing is so much wanking. Mahan pointed out that the whole point of sea warfare is to stop 'tothersiders from trading over the sea, because the sea is such a great way of moving seriously large amounts of stuff. 90 per cent of trade goes by sea, using less than 10 per cent of the fuel.

It's the difference between sending more people to the technische hochschule to study chemical engineering and trying to go to the South Pole with ponies.

[Alex]

sorry - just had a Corelli Barnett moment.

[Chris Williams]

Scott's problem wasn't that he tried to go to the South Pole with ponies. It was trying to mount a scientific expedition to Antarctica with motor sledges. English over-enthusiasm for technology strikes again. Stare not too long at Corelli Barnett, lest you become the next host for his brain-eater.

[Alex]

Yeah, I sort of worked that out after The Lost Victory, which could be Shorterised as "British power collapsed due to neglect of education, as I keep saying in my dozens of volumes, and the Labour Government of 1945 were traitors for frittering away Marshall aid on luxuries, like education. Pay no attention to my blatant partisanship."