In 1405, a Chinese naval commander named Cheng Ho [b 1371] set sail from China on a journey of exploration comparable in its geographical scale to the well-known voyage of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. Cheng Ho's grand fleet of 318 ships was laden with cargoes of fine Chinese silk and other valuable trade goods. It was equipped with the latest Chinese navigational instruments, and armed with a massive arsenal of military weapons and a largely military crew of 27,800. From the Yangtze Estuary, it sailed down through the South China Sea to Champa, Java, Sumatra, Siam, Ceylon, and Calicut on India's Malabar Coast before returning home.      

The European Voyages of Exploration: The Ming Dynasty's Maritime History

Two similar voyages followed in 1407 and 1408. Six years later, the fleet again set sail. The two-year excursion took Cheng Ho and his crew as far as the Maldive Islands, Hormuz, Aden, and Mecca, centres which the fleet again visited between 1416 and 1419 to escort home visiting envoys who had joined the fleet on its previous trip. In 1421, Cheng Ho and his men sailed not only to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, but past the Horn of Africa and down the East African Coast. They stopped at such important trade centres as Mogadishu, Zanzibar, and Kilwa. En route home from a seventh and final voyage to Arabia and East Africa between 1431 and 1433, Cheng Ho died at Calicut.

Map of Cheng Ho's Voyages

The purposes of the voyages are much debated amongst historians. Simple curiosity about the outside world undoubtedly enhanced the early Ming emperors' support for the project. One primary goal, however, was clearly a desire on the part of the emperors to reinforce and enhance Chinese political and economic power. In this broad sense, the goals were similar to those of the Portuguese explorers who followed the "treasure ships" into the Indian Ocean several decades later. The Portuguese intent, however, was to conquer new territory and monopolise trade, whereas the Chinese sought only to establish trade links (which implied nominal suzerainty) by extracting tribute from foreign rulers. They accomplished this aim, moreover, largely through enticement and intimidation, rather than through the Portuguese technique of coercion. They were not, however, averse to violence. The armour and size of the Ming ships, and the valuable trade goods they carried were enough to ensure co-operation in most countries. When the Ceylonese king balked at the tribute arrangements in 1410, and tried to seize the Ming fleet, however, Cheng Ho annihilated the Sinhalese army.

Drawing of a Ming Treasure Ship

If Cheng Ho's mission was to collect tribute envoys for the Ming court, he was spectacularly successful. His fourth voyage, for example, produced envoys from nineteen new countries. The tribute he collected in his journeys included a menagerie of curiosities that delighted the emperor. The imported novelties included lions, leopards, dromedaries, ostriches, zebras, rhinoceroses, antelopes and giraffes.

In 1435, a new Chinese emperor, influenced by neo-Confucians, abruptly cancelled plans for future maritime expeditions. These Ming bureaucrats had little luck with foreigners and argued that maintaining an expensive navy was a luxury China could ill-afford in the face of recent floods, famines, and epidemics. Allowing the 1180-ship "treasure" fleet to rot at its moorings, the new emperor re-directed government funds to agricultural and industrial projects and public works designed to stabilise China's internal economy, and placed new restrictions on foreign visitors and residents.

The Treasure Ship expeditions and their abrupt end had much to do with the pivotal role that the city-state of Malacca played in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean segments of the ecumenical trading sphere. Prior to 1405, pirates plying the Strait of Malacca made trade voyages east from Malacca a risky business. In a crucial encounter in 1405, however, the Treasure Ship fleet successfully engaged the pirate Ch'en Tsu-li and his 500-man naval entourage near Palembang, Sumatra. The victory opened safe passage for trade ships through the Strait of Malacca.

After 1433, few Chinese trade vessels ventured beyond the strait, opting instead to disembark at Malacca, where merchants from India, Arabia and East Africa eagerly awaited their arrival. While Cheng Ho's great voyages lived on in legend and novel, ship-builders soon lost knowledge of how to construct the magnificent vessels. In 1477, a Ming government official destroyed the archives describing the Treasure Ship voyages. The spectacular expeditions of the early decades of the century, however, left a lasting imprint on both China and neighbouring states to the south. They stimulated Chinese interest in the tropics, and Southeast Asian hunger for Chinese goods. Despite the isolationist policies of later Ming rulers, China and Chinese merchants were by 1433 an integral part of the South China Sea and Indian Ocean trading community.