A075 - Zheng He

 

Zheng He
Zheng He (Cheng Ho) (Ma He) (Mǎ Sānbǎo) (Hajji Mahmud Shams) (1371–1433/1435), was a Hui Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Africa, collectively referred to as the travels of "Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean" or "Zheng He to the Western Ocean", from 1405 to 1433.

Zheng He was a Chinese eunuch who commanded a series of maritime expeditions through Southeast Asia to India and the east coast of Africa for the Yongle emperor (r.1402-1424) of the Ming dynasty in the first decades of the fifteenth century.

Zheng He was born and raised in a Muslim family in central Yunnan Province in southwestern China.  Both his father and his grandfather were known by the title hajji, which was conferred upon Muslims who made the pilgrimage to Mecca.  At least during his early years, he was raised as a Muslim and may have acquired some knowledge of Arabic.

In 1381, when his locality was brought under the control of the Ming dynasty, the general in charge of the occupying armies selected Zheng He and a number of other boys for palace service.  He was castrated when he was about ten years old, taken to North China, and assigned to serve on the staff of Zhu Di (who later became the Yongle emperor).  During this time, he gained considerable military experience because, for the most part, his duties entailed following Zhu Di on campaign.

Zheng He is described as being very tall and stout (seven feet tall with a girth of five feet by one account) and as having a loud voice and a commanding stare.  He was thus physically suited for the rigors of warfare and proved himself capable in battle, first during campaigns against the Mongols between 1393 and 1397 and later during Zhu Di’s rebellion of 1399, when he played a key role in the defense of Beijing.

After Zhu Di ascended the throne in 1402, Zheng He became one of his most trusted aides.  During the first years of the reign, he held important military commissions.  In 1405, however, he was put in charge of a large-scale maritime expedition to Southeast Asia, and he continued to supervise such expeditions until his death in 1433.

It is not clear why the Yongle emperor decided to mount these costly maritime expeditions.  Several reasons are usually put forth: that he was afraid the Jianwen emperor, whose throne he had usurped, might have escaped to Southeast Asia, and he wanted to find him; that he wanted to suppress piracy in Southeast Asian waters; and that he wanted to extend the hegemony of the Ming Empire to the shores of India and Arabia.  While there is some truth in each of these reasons, it is likely that it was the last one, the desire to extend the limits of his empire, that kept the expeditions alive for more than two decades.

The Yongle emperor sought to re-establish a universal world empire on the model of the preceding Yuan dynasty.  Whereas the Mongols had only had a land-based empire, the Yongle emperor wanted to establish a maritime empire as well.  Zheng He’s expeditions were intended to extend the hegemony of the Ming empire throughout Southeast Asia and beyond by demonstrating that the Ming navy was formidable and not easily defeated and that the Ming emperor protected maritime trade and was not hostile toward Islam.  It is important to note that Zheng He’s expeditions all carried Arabic speakers conscripted from mosques in China who served as translators, for Islamic merchants had by this time come to control most of the trade routes between China and Arabia.

The first expedition, in 1405, carried a crew of 27,000 and comprised a fleet of more than 60 large vessels (440 feet long) and 255 smaller ships.  The principal goal of this and the next few expeditions was to make the sea routes between China and India safe for maritime trade.  In a major battle near Sumatra, Zheng He destroyed the fleet of a powerful Chinese pirate who had been harassing ships in the Straits of Melaka.  During the expedition of 1409 to 1411, which reached the Malabar coast of India, Chinese luxury goods were displayed in Ceylon and other commercial centers to promote trade with China.

The expedition of 1413 to 1415, however, which reached the Arabian Peninsula, had a distinctly diplomatic cast. From this point on the expeditions revolved around carrying tribute missions to and from China.  The expedition of 1417 to 1419 returned the envoys who had arrived in 1415.  The expedition of 1421 to 1422, which reached the east coast of Africa, returned with even greater numbers of envoys.  However, almost immediately after the Yongle emperor’s death in 1424, influential officials at court began to protest that such voyages were too costly to continue, and the expeditions were suspended until 1431.  Zheng He, already in his sixties, was unable to visit every country in person during the last expedition, in 1431 to 1433.  He may in fact have died en route at Calicut early in 1433, but the details of his death remain obscure.

Although the naval expeditions were discontinued after Zheng He’s death, the hegemony of the Ming emperor throughout Southeast Asia, at least as an arbiter of disputes and successions, remained unchallenged until the Portuguese arrived in the first years of the sixteenth century.  In that respect at least, Zheng He did realize the Yongle emperor’s ambitions.  Furthermore, the expeditions constituted the greatest feat of navigation undertaken in the world until that time.  During the first several expeditions all of the major sea routes between China and the Islamic countries of the West were systematically explored and mapped.  A vast amount of knowledge was added to the corpus of Chinese geography.  Ma Huan, a Muslim interpreter who went on several of the expeditions, kept a record of about twenty places that he had visited.  At least two other accounts were written by other members of the expeditions.  Together these works comprise the only major accounts of travel in Asia from the fifteenth century and offer the most accurate and vivid picture of the region prior to the arrival of the Portuguese.

Cheng Ho see Zheng He
Ma He see Zheng He
Ma Sanbao see Zheng He
Hajji Mahmud Shams see Zheng He