Sailing away for a spell

In the early fifteenth century, Emperor Yung Lo turned outward — an unusual posture

for a Chinese ruler — and sponsored impressive voyages of exploration. Zheng He

(sometimes written Chung Ho or Cheng Ho), a Muslim court eunuch who was also an

accomplished sea admiral, commanded the ventures. (A eunuch was a male servant,

generally a slave, who had been castrated, presumably to make him more docile and

to ensure that he wouldn’t be tempted by the master’s women, or they by him.) Zheng

He somehow overcame his lowly status to become an important member of Yung’s

court.

Zheng sailed seven large, well-financed expeditions. His ships landed in India,

navigated the Persian Gulf, and anchored off East Africa. His vessels were larger

and faster than Arab and European ships of the time and equipped with

sophisticated bulkheads (walls between sections of the ship’s hold), so that if one

part of the ship sprung a leak or caught fire, the damage could be contained and

the ship wouldn’t sink.

After Emperor Yung Lo died, the expeditions stopped and nothing much came of

Zheng’s voyages — no expanded trade, no extended political influence, and no

broadened military influence. But the idea had never been to subdue other parts of the

world anyway. In Chinese thinking, China was not just the best state; it was the only

sovereign state. The ships were, in part, a peaceful effort to broadcast the message of

Chinese superiority. But to Yung Lo’s successors, the rest of the world apparently still

wasn’t worth the trouble, seeing as they didn’t continue exploration efforts.

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