ABSTRACT
When Ferdinand Magellan sailed into the island of the Philippine archipelago in March 1521 he was surprised to find silk, porcelain and other artifacts of Chinese material culture. The European sailors were presented with evidence that other trading empires had visited these islands before them. Magellan was stumbling across the vestigial remains of the once extensive Chinese trading empire. It had begun with the ascension of the new emperor Zhu Di in 1402. The new emperor had a vision of vast global commercial empire. He named one of his eunuchs, Cheng Ho, as admiral. Cheng Ho marshaled the immense power and vast resources of the Chinese empire to assemble a fleet of 1,500 ships and thousands of sailors along the banks of the Yangtze at Nanking. It was the largest single fleet in human history until the British Royal Navy of the nineteenth century. On the first voyage in 1405 the Treasure Fleet, as it was known, sailed to India. Later voyages sailed as far as Africa and throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The fleet established trading and diplomatic relations. But Zhu Di died in 1424 and the new ruler, deeply suspicious, cancelled future voyages. However, this new emperor lived for only a few years and his successor, the grandson of Zhu Di, restored the Treasure Fleet. In 1431 the seventh voyage consisted of over 300 ships and 27,000 men, again commanded by Cheng Ho. This would prove to be the peak of Chinese maritime exploration. The Treasure Fleet was soon mothballed, ships
were destroyed and China began its long withdrawal from the external world. By 1500 it was illegal to go to sea in large ships. From thereon it was to be the Europeans who would dominate the maritime trading routes. Fraying fragments of silk, half-remembered Chinese phrases and the odd piece of distinctive blue plate were all that were left of China’s brief tenure as a maritime power by the time Magellan sailed into the Philippines. The Treasure Fleet reminds us, however, of the contingencies of global dominance. If Cheng Ho had been the first of a long line of Chinese maritime explorers, rather than standing alone, we would have a very different geopolitics. As it was, the Chinese disappeared from ocean-going voyages. By a quirk of history, it was the smaller, more technologically backward European nations that were to dominate the stage.
