Book & Author
Zheng He: The Forgotten Explorer
By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
Ibn Battuta (1304-1368/69) and Zheng He (1371-1433/35) are undisputedly the greatest explorers of pre-modern times. Professor Ross Dunn in The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century, observes, “Since the mid-19th century, when translation of his Arabic narrative began to appear in Western languages, Ibn Battuta has been well known among specialists in Islamic and medieval history. But no scholar had attempted to retell his remarkable story to a general audience.”
Howard Turner in Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction describes Ibn Battuta as a celebrated traveler of pre-modern times. Born in Fez, Morocco, Ibn Battuta spent his life travelling from North Africa to China, Southeast Asia, and lands in between. He started his travels, when he was 20 years old, by going to Mecca for Hajj (pilgrimage). After completing Hajj, he continued his travels. Over the next three decades he travelled about 75,000 miles visiting a large number of territories such as China, Sumatra, Ceylon, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, East Africa, and Timbuktu (equivalent to 44 present-day countries).
After his return, Ibn Battuta dictated an account of his travels and observations to a scholar named Ibn Juzayy who complied them as Tuhfat al-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ib al-Amsar wa-‘Aja’ib al-Asfar, or A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling (commonly referred to as the Rihla).
Battuta’s account of his travel experiences provide some of the most objective, insightful, and intricate observations ever made by a traveler. Ibn Battuta’s sea voyages and references to shipping reveal the state of maritime activities of the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Chinese waters.
His observations stand, along with Marco Polo’s, as the most informative work of the travel literature of the middle ages. After Ibn Battuta’s death, the beginning of the 15th century witnessed the emergence of yet another great explorer; Admiral Zheng He.
Like Ibn Battuta, Zheng He also remained a forgotten explorer to the general public in the West until the start of the 21 st century. In 2002, Gavin Menzies (1937 – 2020), a retired Royal Navy officer, started a public debate in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered America, by putting forth his argument that Zheng He sailed to the Americas seven decades before Christopher Columbus. Menzies also made another astonishing claim: Zheng He sailed to the Americas from the west and not from the east, thus completing a near circumnavigation of the globe.
Zheng He (original name in Chinese, Ma He, son of Ma Hajji) was a Chinese navigator, a Muslim of central Asian descent. As a special envoy of the Ming dynasty’s Emperor Zhu Di, he commanded a fleet of as many as 200 galleons, hundreds of smaller vessels, and 28,000 crewmembers, sailing from China to as far as East Africa. During the period of 1405-1433, he completed seven voyages. Starting from Nanjing, he sailed to more than 30 islands and coastal nations in Asia and Africa (present-day countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, Iran, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania.) His first voyage in 1405, was almost a century before Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, and Vasco da Gama’s in India. His voyages opened a maritime “silk road” which started the East-West commercial and cultural exchanges and projected the prestige of the Ming dynasty to the other nations.
Menzies has also authored 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance (2008), The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed (2011), and Who Discovered America? The Untold Story of the Peopling of the Americas (2013).
In the introduction, the author states that the book is an endeavor to answer the question: "On some early European world maps, it appears that someone had charted and surveyed lands supposedly unknown to the Europeans. Who could have charted and surveyed these lands before they were 'discovered'?"
The author claims that from 1421 to 1423, during the Ming dynasty of China under the Yongle Emperor , the fleets of Admiral Zheng He discovered the lands of Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Antarctica, and circumnavigated Greenland ; and tried to reach the North and South Poles, and circumnavigated the world before Ferdinand Magellan . On March 8, 1421, Zheng He’s majestic fleet set sail from China to visit ends of the earth and returned home in October 1423, finding that the emperor had fallen, and China was in political and economic turmoil. The great fleet was left to decay and in the process the records of their great voyages were destroyed.
The author observes that the knowledge of Zheng He’s expeditions was lost because the mandarin bureaucrats of the Ming dynasty feared that the expenses of future expeditions would destroy the Chinese economy. The author asserts that when Emperor Yongle passed away in 1424, the new emperor Hongxi banned further expeditions, and the mandarins destroyed or hid previous expeditions to deter the future ones.
The book concludes with the author's assertion that at the time only China had the resources in terms of money, manpower, and leadership to dispatch such global expeditions. The book contains numerous footnotes, references, and acknowledgments, but the critics point out that it lacks supporting references.
Although the author's thesis has been challenged by many historians, still readers will find the book a fascinating read about how Zheng He discovered the new world and circumnavigated the globe before Europeans. Academicians in the East and the West ought to collaborate to further research the details of Zheng He’s voyages to the Americas and distant lands.
The publication of Menzies’s book generated enormous public interest in the explorations of Zheng He. In August 2005, academicians, historians, and people around the globe celebrated the 600th anniversary of Zheng He’s first voyage (1405). The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, in collaboration with the Zheng He Foundation, Chicago, and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago also celebrated the 600th anniversary of the first of seven voyages of Admiral Zheng He, on which he led a mighty armada on a mission of diplomacy and trade. Commemoration ceremonies showcased three interesting lectures delivered by prominent Chinese and American scholars.
The first lecture titled ‘Zheng He’s voyages as perceived by the Western scholars’, was presented by Dr Guy Alitto, a History professor at the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago, and an authority on Chinese history. He discussed the historical importance of Zheng He’s voyages from the world as well as Chinese perspective. He said, “From the perspective of world history, the voyages of Zheng He are utterly astonishing. From the perspective of Chinese history, they are less so, in that the technological achievements of the Chinese civilization were usually well in advance of all other civilizations in the world.”
“Most Americans lack a fundamental understanding of the development of the Chinese civilization and so, when discovering them, are usually amazed. If we review the broad outlines of Chinese history and specifically Ming history, we find that this colossal achievement might be considered as representative of China’s cultural past.”
Regarding claims made by some historians that Zheng He circumnavigated the globe and beat Columbus in discovering America, Professor Alitto said, “If any Americans have heard of Zheng He’s name, it is likely that they read, or heard about, 1421, The Year China Discovered America, by a retired Royal Navy officer, Gavin Menzies; he has taken advantage of Western ignorance of Chinese civilization in general and the Ming period in particular by claiming that Zheng He circumnavigated the globe and beat Columbus to the Americas. Most historians, however, consider this thesis to be highly unsubstantiated, if not utterly misguided.” Professor Alitto also noted that Admiral Zhen He’s voyages were peaceful in nature and their main objective was to project the prestige of the Ming dynasty to other regions and collect treasures.
Professor Ming Wan, Director of Ming Dynasty Research Section, History Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing, China (www.cass.net.cn), presented the second lecture titled ‘East-West cultural exchange in Zheng He’s era’. Professor Wan expounded on the role of Han dynasty’s (2000 years ago), Chinese legend Zhang Qian who opened the “silk road” to the “West land,” a region where Asia and Europe meet. In the Ming Dynasty (600 years ago), Emperor’s envoy Zheng He became another legend whose voyages opened the maritime “silk road” to the “West ocean,” a region including the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Red Sea and East Africa.
Professor Wan explained that Zheng He’s voyages had two major objectives; the first was to “make peace with the neighbors,” and the second was to “acquire treasures.” She further discussed the role of the strong economy and the state of advanced technology in the Ming dynasty that enabled Zheng He to successfully complete his voyages, and hence initiate the beginning of commercial exchanges and cultural interaction between various nations via oceanic routes.
The third lecture, ‘Science and technology applied in Zheng He’s voyages’, was presented by Dr Jin Wu, fellow of US National Academy of Engineering, and Professor, Department of Hydraulic and Oceanic Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. Professor Wu started his lecture by retracing the history of Zheng He’s voyages. Following the orders and desires of Emperor Yongle and his successor, Xuande, Zheng He commanded seven voyages during the period spanning from 1405 to 1433; the objectives of the voyages were to project the prestige and power of the Chinese Ming dynasty overseas and to collect tributes and treasures from foreign lands. Professor Wu explained that Zheng He traded Chinese silk and porcelain for foreign luxuries such as spices and jewels and tropical woods; for each voyage, his armada composed of 60 to 300 ships, and about 28,000 crew members. Typically, the Zheng He armada remained on the seas for a period of about two years.
Professor Wu’s lecture also focused on interdisciplinary research on the scientific and technological aspects of Zheng He’s voyages. He reminded the audience that Zheng He’s voyages came a few decades before most of the European expeditions known to the entire Western world: Christopher Columbus (1492); Vasco da Gama (1498); and Ferdinand Magellan (1521). Professor Wu also expounded on the fact that Zheng He’s fleets were much larger, and the ships were marvelous examples of naval engineering.
Professor Wu explained that Zheng He’s treasure ships were 400 feet long, whereas Columbus’s flagship, the St Maria, was only 85 feet in length. Zheng He’s treasure ships, Professor Wu mentioned, were wide and bulky, like the supertankers of today. In addition to treasure ships, Zheng He’s fleet also included a variety of other specialized supply ships.
Professor Wu noted that due to the lack of original records, presently interdisciplinary research is been carried out by historians, scientist and engineers, focusing on four aspects: 1) shipbuilding technology that made the construction of Treasure Boats possible, 2) navigation technology, 3) management techniques used for successful expeditions, and 4) food supplies and health management for crewmen.
The commencement ceremonies concluded with Professor Wu’s key-note speech titled Significance of celebrating the six hundredth anniversary of Zheng He’s voyages. He stated that in the ancient times (Chunchiu-Chanko period) Chinese people had the advanced know-how of naval architecture. In fact, ship building and navigation technology during the Song and the Yuan dynasties could have been more innovative compared to the Ming Dynasty era. But Zheng He’s voyages were on a larger scale; these voyages were not merely a historical coincidence, but rather a product of the scientific and cultural accomplishments in Chinese history.
Professor Wu observed that it is ironic that today little is known of Zheng He’s voyages. This is, Professor Wu explained, mainly the doing of the Confucianists in the imperial court, who saw to it that Zheng He’s ships were burned after his last voyage and who made every effort to “systematically destroy all official records of the voyages”. During much of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) the eunuchs enjoyed great power in the royal court, at the expense of the Confucian scholars who represented the civil establishment.
The voyages of Zheng He were strongly supported by eunuchs in the court and opposed by the Confucian scholars. Professor Wu further elaborated on the fact that Zheng He’s huge armada visited over 40 countries and areas, and yet all his voyages remained peaceful, never arousing a sense of being a threat to anyone. Zheng He’s mission extended the maritime silk-road and contributed greatly towards promotion of commercial and cultural interflow.
Zheng He’s voyages stimulated the cultures and economies of Southeast Asia; they were indeed a milestone along the way to the level of cultural economic and diplomatic interaction that prevails today. Professor Wu said that Zheng He’s accomplishments can prove to be a guide for bringing forth a new peak for exchanges between East and West, and thus can usher an oceanic century which is more orderly and ethical.
(Dr Ahmed S. Khan – dr.a.s.khan@ieee.org – is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar - 2017-2022).
