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 caravelsàlanded in East Africaàthey met natives who sported embroidered green silk caps with fine fringeà[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, would da Gama in his eighty-five to a hundred-foot vessels have dared continue across the Indian Ocean? Seeing the battered Portuguese boats, would the Chinese admiral have been tempted to crush these snails in his path, preventing the Europeans from opening an east-west trade route?
Various issues of justice are raised in discussing Cheng Ho's voyages. Cheng Ho's treatment of the people he encountered during his travels, namely the native kings from whom he...