When China Ruled the Seas

Another theme that the book explores is how political decisions and debates between competing factions can have much greater consequences than it seems at first glance. From one perspective, decision to end the voyages of the treasure fleet was simply part of an ongoing debate within China over the best way to govern. Levathes frames it as the Confucian scholars versus the eunuchs, with the former advocating an inward-facing policy based on agriculture and the latter an outward-facing policy based on trade and commerce. Each side rose to the fore at various times, influencing different emperors’ reigns, until the Confucians finally prevailed in the mid-15th century. The greater meaning, however, would not be felt until centuries later—and could only be foreseen to the extent that one could predict the future. The ultimate result of the government’s decision to isolate the country came in the 19th century, when a much-weakened China, which had fallen behind in technology, ceded trade control to Western nations whose power had grown in the vacuum created by Chinese isolation.

The story of China’s naval history thus reflects the extent to which highly localized cultural and ideological forces have dramatic geopolitical consequences across centuries. The notion that an ideology like Confucianism played such an outsized role in determining China’s isolationist destiny for hundreds of years is especially ironic, given that the 20th and 21st centuries saw a number of Chinese businesspeople embrace a strain of neo-Confucianism in their affairs with foreign trading partners.

By the early 15th century, China was poised to become the world’s great power. It was in a position to explore the world beyond Africa and the Arab states long before Europeans began their Age of Exploration. They could even have created an extensive network of colonies, given their naval accomplishments and military prowess. Thus, another theme of the book is this “missed opportunity” when the Chinese—on their own initiative—subsequently turned inward. Within a hundred years of their peak, the Chinese virtually banned oceangoing vessels and activities.

At this same time, European nations began to venture out. Levathes previews this already in the Prologue by mentioning the 1498 voyage of Vasco da Gama during which his ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached some of the same coastal regions of East Africa that the Chinese visited decades earlier. She notes, however, that the Portuguese ships were far inferior to those of China’s treasure fleet and wonders if they had met, “would da Gama in his eighty-five to a hundred-foot vessels have dared continue across the Indian Ocean?” (21). Perhaps Zheng might have crushed the Europeans with his firepower and thus prevented their advance to the East. The questions are moot since China had long since receded from the seas and, over time, the Europeans would catch up to and finally surpass the Chinese in technology and maritime skills.