Zoo Station

The implicit euro-centrism in the world we grew up in/live in today is a subject we've turned to time and again on this blog. How else do you explain the fact that most of us have never heard of Admiral Zheng He, the great commander of the Ming Imperial Navy, without question the greatest navy in history before Britain began to rule the waves. Admiral He was making epic journeys into India, Indonesia, East Africa etc about a century before Columbus or Vasco da Gama. This month marks the 600th anniversary of Admiral He's journeys. Obviously, lots of people have marked the occasion with very interesting articles. The Economist has written a 'what if' story.

Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng and his men beat their way down through all of South-East Asia, to both coasts of India and finally to Africa's eastern coast, at least as far as Ethiopia. His journeys towards the Cape of Good Hope took place almost a century before Bartolomeu Dias first rounded it in the opposite direction, and the mightiest of his ships, at close to 500ft long, was four or five times the size of anything the Europeans could build at the time. His fleets were up to 300 strong, carrying 20,000 men.

Equipped with such technology and organisation, China might have discovered Europe long before Europeans sailed into, and in time came to dominate, China: one recent author, indeed, argues that it did so. But Zheng's seventh voyage was his last. The sea-going eunuchs fell from favour (Zheng's missions were staggeringly costly) and by 1500 it was a capital offence to go to sea in a two-masted ship without permission. China had embarked on a long period of isolation like that imposed on Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate in the 17th century. With the mothballing of Zheng's ships, just as Europeans were beginning their own voyages of discovery, came the beginning of the end of China's centuries of superiority. Had Zheng been allowed to continue his voyages, might the advantages of trade and discovery have come to seem more obvious? Might China have avoided decline? Or was, instead, the recall of the fleet a symptom of a deeper malaise in Chinese society?

The July issue of National Geographic also did a terrific story on China's Great Armada. Unfortunately, the article is not available in full online, so you'll have to buy the magazine to read it.

Exactly 600 years ago this month the great Ming armada weighed anchor in Nanjing, on the first of seven epic voyages as far west as Africa—almost a century before Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas and Vasco da Gama’s in India. Even the European expeditions would seem paltry by comparison: All the ships of Columbus and da Gama combined could have been stored on a single deck of a single vessel in the fleet that set sail under Zheng He. Its commander was, without question, the most towering maritime figure in the 4,000-year annals of China, a visionary who imagined a new world and set out consciously to fashion it.

Our friends at Sepia Mutiny had also linked to this National Geographic story a few weeks back, in particular transcribing a few lines about the stela he erected in Sri Lanka.

The stela’s three inscriptions addressed respectively, to Buddha, Siva, and Allah, offering thanks for their compassion and moral virtue, and seeking their protective blessing for the voyages’ aims. The chief Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim shrines of Sri Lanka, the stela recorded, were to be presented with equal offerings of gold, silver, silk, and other precious gifts. Elsewhere in Asia this is the epoch when entire cities were put to the sword in the name of Buddha, Siva, or Allah. It is the epoch of the Inquisition in Europe, when thousands of Muslims and Jews were burned at the stake. In the context of his century’s religious fanaticism, Zheng He’s Dondra stela was an ecumenical manifesto far ahead of its time—indeed, ahead of our own fanatic times—a plea for tolerance, articulated in three languages.

I was particularly fascinated by some of Admiral He's impressions of Kerala, the main destination for the Ming fleet during all seven voyages, and a place he called home. There is also some fascinating detail on spice transactions in Cochin, which Nat Geo describes as 'history's first description of a futures market.' The Sepia Mutiny folks also link to a Time magazine story from 2001 that describes the voyages of the great admiral.

PS:Not that you should need an excuse to go read this story in Nat Geo, but they also have a fascinating story on stem cells.