Cheng Ho's Seven Voyages

During the period 1405-1433, the Ming Dynasty eunuch Cheng Ho led seven imperial Chinese naval expeditions throughout Southeast Asia. The voyages served primarily as diplomatic and exploratory missions, in the course of which numerous exotic objects, personnel, and animals were brought back to the court of Emperor Yung-lo. After Yung-lo's death, his son Zhu Gaozhi succeeded to the throne and put an end to the expeditions. This action was precipitated by several factors: the rivalry between civil officials and eunuchs in the imperial administration, the immense financial cost of the voyages, and the Confucian ideals that were the official doctrine of the Ming Dynasty.

Cheng Ho's seven voyages are historically important because they represent one of China's greatest periods of expansion and exploration, and beginning with their termination, China's period of greatest isolation. The naval technology and might demonstrated by Cheng Ho's fleet, if allowed to persist, would have made China a major maritime power, if not the foremost in the world. The entire history of colonialism would have been rewritten, had China been a participant.

In 1498, when Vasco da Gama and his fleet of three battered caravels�landed in East Africa�they met natives who sported embroidered green silk caps with fine fringe�[Cheng Ho] and Vasco da Gama missed each other in Africa by eighty years. One wonders what would have happened if they had met. Realizing the extraordinary power of the Ming navy, wo

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rge share of the business of government." This fed the bitter rivalry between eunuchs and civil officials, who did not trust the eunuchs and were alarmed at the disregard of Confucian tenets that they observed in Yung-lo's court. Eunuchs were the primary instigators and administrators of naval exploration and trade, a fact that would have been enough to turn the civil officials against such endeavors. However, it happened also that these undertakings violated the Confucian philosophies that were supposed to be the underlying doctrine of the empire. Confucius�believed trade was inherently mean and debasing. There was nothing to be gained from contact with foreigners or strange things�commerce and the barter of goods were shunned as inherently exploitative and corrupt. Yung-lo's successor, Zhu Gaozhi, brought about a virtual reversal of his father's policies. In keeping with his Ming Dynasty predecessors' warnings, he removed himself from the influence of the eunuchs and surrounded himself with the Confucian officials who had fallen out of favor with Yung-lo. Their advisement during Zhu Gaozhi's reign emphasized traditional methods of benevolent rule, including "moderation and attention to the 'root of the state,' that is,

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