The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  Zheng He’s purpose was not, however, to intervene directly in the politics of Yemen. His fleet was bound for Africa; the arrival at the Chinese court of the giraffe sent by the king of Bengal had already alerted the Ming dynasty to the extraordinary treasures of Africa, and on past expeditions there had been plenty of chances to examine African ivory and ebony. Mogadishu in what is now Somalia was named on the sailing instructions given to Zheng He, and it was the first African town his fleet reached. The Chinese were unimpressed by the arid setting of a city that lacked supplies of wood, and in stark contrast to Chinese towns was entirely built of stone, even if the buildings were several storeys high. The Chinese considered the Somalians rather stupid, and were only interested in what they could bear away: frankincense, ambergris and wild animals, including lions, leopards and zebras. Further south, at Brava, they saw more of the same type of housing but were able to add myrrh, camels and ‘camel-birds’, that is ostriches, to their booty, and as they reached the Kenyan coast at Malindi they acquired African elephants and rhinoceroses, as well as the much-vaunted qilin, or giraffes, so that the returning Treasure Ships must have resembled Noah’s Ark.56

  The Chinese were not totally ignorant of Africa. The earliest Chinese reference to Africa so far identified dates from the ninth century; there, as in the accounts of the Zheng He voyages, the Horn of Africa is presented as an arid land, and the inhabitants are described as nomads who drain blood from the veins of their cattle and drink it mixed with milk, rather as the Masai have continued to do. By the thirteenth century, the Chinese had heard of Zanzibar; in 1226, it was mentioned under the name ‘Cengba’ by the geographer Zhao Rugua, who even understood that the name ‘Zanzibar’ was derived from the term Zanj, which indicated black-skinned people. Zhao was aware of the River Nile and of Alexandria (Egentuo) with its great lighthouse, so anyone reading his work would have understood how Aden was linked to a wealthy land to the north.57 By the fourteenth century, Egypt had become a great consumer of Chinese pottery and metalwork, to the extent of making reasonable imitations of Chinese bronzes in order to satisfy ever-rising domestic demand.58 Large amounts of Chinese ceramics also reached Zanzibar, as the archaeological evidence clearly shows. Zhao also looked at the coastline south of Zanzibar and knew that black ‘savages’, as he condescendingly called the inhabitants, were carried off by Dashi, that is, Arab, slavers. He imagined that these black Africans lived on Madagascar, which was an error (Madagascar was even now being colonized by people of Malay and Indonesian origin); but he had time for stories about a great bird similar to Sindbad’s rukh whose massive wings blotted out the sun, and whose diet included camels swallowed whole. He knew too that this was a land that produced rhinoceros horn and elephant tusks.59 One might conclude from the Chinese coins that have turned up all along the coast from Mombasa northwards that Africa was already the target of Chinese merchants well before the arrival of Zheng He; a hoard discovered by a farmer in Zanzibar in 1945 consisted of 250 Tang and Song coins, dated between 618 and 1295. At Mogadishu six coins of Yong-le have been found, so it is quite possible that they arrived on board Zheng He’s fleet. As for porcelain, the island of Pemba, like Zanzibar an important centre of trade, has yielded pieces from the Song and Ming dynasty, and African demand for Chinese pottery grew during the fourteenth century.60 But to say that they were interested in African produce and that Chinese cash has been found along the coast is not the same as saying that Chinese traders travelled as far as this. Chinese cash remained in circulation long after it was manufactured (normally by casting rather than striking); a Song coin might have arrived in Ming times.

  Once again Zheng He brought back to the Ming court ambassadors, including representatives of Hormuz, but they were kept waiting a couple of years for their return trip. Meanwhile, forty-one Treasure Ships were fitted out from October 1419 onwards, setting out at some point in mid-1421. However, the emperor was losing interest in the voyages, and concentrated his energies on the construction of his new capital at Beijing and on war in Mongolia instead. Around the same time he ordered the suspension of further voyages, although he let this one depart. After they entered the ‘Western Ocean’, the ships did not stay together; a eunuch named Zhou Man led part of the fleet to Aden, but much of the fleet apparently stayed behind in India, based at Calicut. By September 1422 the fleet had returned to China, bringing envoys from Siam, Semudera and Aden. But, after spending so much on Beijing, the emperor had run out of money to pay for these great worldwide displays of Chinese magnificence. Then, in 1424, Emperor Yong-le sent Zheng He on a further voyage, but this was a much more modest expedition than those Zheng He had commanded earlier, and it went no further than Palembang, a territory which happily acknowledged Chinese supremacy; Zheng delivered the letter and seal appointing the head of the ‘Pacification Commission’ at Palembang, the figure who was responsible for managing the large Chinese community there. But by the time Zheng He returned home, his patron was dead.61

  This was not quite the end of Zheng He’s naval career. The new emperor, Hong-xi, only lasted a few months, and he was hostile to these projects; on the very day of his accession he abolished the expeditions to the ‘Western Ocean’, and a day later he released an opponent of Zheng He from prison, Xia Yuan-ji, who had been warning of the excessive cost of the maritime expeditions.62 Hong-xi’s successor, Yong-le’s grandson Xuan-de, also had other plans for Zheng He, including a military command at Nanjing and the building of the great Bao-en Temple at Nanjing, also known as the Number One Pagoda, which became a seat of Buddhist scholarship and the main temple in the city. So a perhaps disconsolate Zheng He was sent back to his duties as overseer of construction projects, and languished in prestigious but not politically important tasks, while his foe Xia Yuan-ji held the emperor’s attention and counselled against further expeditions; as Minister of Finance, Xia could see no justification for the waste of money they involved. However, Xia’s death in February 1430 prompted a rethink; Xuan-de became worried that the prestige of his empire was suffering because ‘the foreign countries, distantly located beyond the sea, still had not heard’ of the stable and successful rule he had inaugurated. The ships built for the expedition he launched bore names that set out the fundamental principles Xuan-de was trying to broadcast: Pure Harmony was one, Lasting Tranquillity another.63

  Once again Zheng He set out to proclaim Chinese overlordship across the Western Ocean, and once again he left inscriptions that helpfully set out the aims of the expedition. One of these inscriptions was carved on a tablet in the Temple of the Heavenly Princess Tianfei at Liujiagang on the Yangtze River, newly constructed by Zheng He in honour of his divine patron, while the other was erected on the admiral’s behalf by the chief Daoist priest of Changle, 400 miles from Liujiagang, just as the fleet was about to set off from the coast of China. Both date from 1431, and both reveal how happy the Muslim eunuch was to worship other gods (whether traditional Chinese ones or Buddhist deities) rather than Allah: ‘if men serve their prince with the utmost loyalty, there is nothing they cannot do, and if they worship the gods with utmost sincerity there is no prayer that will not be answered.’64 Zheng He commemorated his past voyages ‘to the various barbarians’ aboard ‘over a hundred seagoing ships’, and carrying ‘several tens of thousands’ of soldiers. Just to give an idea of how easily numbers were inflated, when he mentioned the number of countries he had visited the figure for 3,000 crept in where modern scholars believe the intention was to write ‘thirty’. Zheng He had no objection to the lively trade between ‘barbarian’ peoples, and even thought of himself as its protector: ‘the sea routes became pure and peaceful and the foreign peoples could rely on them and pursue their occupations in safety. All this was due to the aid of the goddess.’65 Yet the second inscription makes abundantly plain the unique achievement (so it is claimed) of the Ming dynasty, which has surpassed the Han and Tang dynasties in encompassing the peoples of the world: ‘from the edge of the sky to the ends of the earth there are no
ne who have not become subjects and slaves’.66 Their reward has been not just material gifts but, more importantly, imperial favour. For these voyages had a more important moral than material purpose.

  The main fleet headed first for Champa and then across the South China Sea to Surabaya on Java, which meant the Chinese had arrived in the heartlands of the Majapahit kingdom. They arrived on 7 March and only left Java after more than four months, suggesting the need for ship repairs as well as politicking; they visited Sumatra next, calling in at Palembang, but they only stopped there for three days, for they had had plenty of time to resupply their ships in Java. At the start of August they were in Melaka, where they halted for another month, and then on to Semudera, where they remained for about seven weeks. No doubt they were also factoring into their calculations knowledge of the monsoons and of the typhoon season, but that was not enough to save them from severe storms as they headed through high seas into the Indian Ocean. Zheng He’s boasts in the two inscriptions that described how the goddess Tianfei had saved them on earlier expeditions must have seemed like wishful thinking. But they found safe anchorage in the Nicobar Islands and bought plenty of coconuts from the friendly natives. Once calmer weather arrived, they headed straight for Cochin and Calicut, and then on to Hormuz. Possibly detachments were sent further, as far as Aden or even east Africa, but without Zheng He on board; ambassadors from Arabia and Somalia travelled back with Zheng He after joining his fleet at Hormuz, but someone must have been sent to fetch them.

  Even earlier, several ships had been sent off to Bengal, which lay well to the north of the route the Ming fleets always took towards India but which, as has been seen, was ruled by kings who cultivated friendship with the imperial court, and had even sent a giraffe as a present. Fortunately, the chronicler of this voyage, Ma Huan, joined the Bengal-bound squadron; he admired the country’s fertility and its fine textiles, but was less pleased by the heat. Fei Xin enjoyed a feast of roast beef and lamb but was a little surprised that no wine was drunk, ‘for fear that it might disturb someone’s character and prevent him from conforming to the ceremonial’. So they drank sweetened rose-dew or sherbet instead.67

  Yet the most remarkable connection was yet to be made. In Calicut the Chinese found a ship bound for Mo-qie, that is, the kingdom of Mecca (by way of the Red Sea port at Jiddah). Some Chinese, including Ma Huan, were allowed on board, and returned in due course with plenty of wild animals, some of which were oddly un-Arabian (giraffes and ostriches, though lions still existed in the Middle East); these were marvellous things they had bought rather than been given, but along with the animals came tribute-bearing ambassadors, or so the Chinese sources claimed. Ma Huan, who was himself a Muslim, also called Mecca Tianfang, or ‘Heavenly Cube’, referring to the shrine of the Ka‘aba (which indeed means ‘cube’), and he described the Great Mosque and some of the hajj ceremonies.68 However, he does not give the impression of knowing a great deal about his religion, without being quite as detached from Islam as Zheng He; he rather distanced himself from the Muslims of Arabia by noting that they were punctilious in their religion, ‘not daring to commit the slightest transgression’.

  In early July 1433 the fleet was back at Liujiagang. On board were ambassadors from ten countries around the Indian Ocean. The official history of the reign of Xuan-de quotes the words of the emperor himself, which, were he not an emperor, one might describe as churlish: ‘we do not have any desire for goods from distant regions, but we realise that they are offered in full sincerity. Since they come from afar they should be accepted, but their presentation is not cause for congratulations.’69 Indeed, having revived the Ming voyages, Xuan-de sent no more expeditions to solicit submission from the peoples of the Indian Ocean. A year or two after his return, Zheng He died and around the same time Emperor Xuan-de also died, leaving a vacuum, since his heir was only eight years old. The eunuchs, who are usually supposed to have favoured lavish spending, lost influence at court, and interest in maintaining a navy plummeted. Foreign ambassadors arrived bearing gifts, but the Ming emperors received tribute from Siam, Java and elsewhere without any longer sending their fleets to collect it.70 Once again China looked away from the sea. Foreign adventures went out of fashion as domestic difficulties accumulated. The sea voyages had always been controversial, and even those who strongly believed in the special place of the Middle Kingdom under Heaven were not necessarily convinced that they brought much gain. Indeed, it is quite likely that the emperor’s words quoted a moment ago were put in his mouth by a later chronicler, who wanted to cast doubt on the wisdom of the Ming voyages without showing disrespect to the emperor.

  Modern Chinese historians like to insist that there was a great difference between Zheng He’s voyages and those of the Portuguese and Spaniards (which were just beginning in the 1420s and 1430s, in the case of Portugal): the Iberian voyages aimed to conquer territory, if need be by force, and to impose trade networks under their exclusive control, whereas the Ming voyages were by and large peaceful – allowing for the eradication of pirates – and aimed to show the flag rather than to create colonies. Zheng He is seen as the potential star of a counterfactual history in which ‘Vasco da Gama and his successors would have found a powerful navy in control of the Indian Ocean’; and even ‘Christopher Columbus might have encountered Chinese junks exploring the Caribbean’.71 This contrast between Europe and China involves an oversimplification of Iberian aims, which evolved slowly; but this view also underplays the imperial dimension to the Ming voyages. Although the settlement of foreign lands by Chinese soldiers and sailors was not on the Ming agenda, a Chinese compound was created in the new trading town of Melaka, and support was offered to the sizeable community of Chinese merchants in Java and Sumatra – indeed, the Chinese in Palembang were governed by a Commissioner whose power clearly extended beyond his own ethnic group. The emperor expected, demanded and received recognition of his superiority. But this came at a price, for the tribute brought back did not compensate for the cost of fitting out the expeditions, nor for the value of the gifts generously bestowed on the emperor’s vassals in the South China Sea, India, Arabia and Africa. Even if fewer and smaller ships than is often assumed set sail, these voyages were an impressive technical achievement for a navy that had little or no knowledge of the Indian Ocean.

  14

  Lions, Deer and Hunting Dogs

  I

  At the centre of vast webs of trade and tribute, feeding their products into the routes leading towards both China and the Indian Ocean – and beyond that to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean – there lay what Marco Polo called ‘the greatest island in the world’, 3,000 miles in circumference and ruled by a great king who, he confidently asserted, paid tribute ‘to no one else in the world’. Inhabited by ‘idolaters’, Great Java was of ‘surpassing wealth, producing black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale, cubebs, cloves, and all other kinds of spices’. It was visited by huge numbers of ships, and the merchants who traded there, including many from Quanzhou and other southern Chinese cities, made an enormous profit. But in reality, as the exaggeration about its size implies, Polo was confused between the real Java (Java Minor) and an imaginary landmass of great wealth lying to the south (Great Java).1 In modern works Java tends to be subsumed into a large mass of East Indian islands that were famous for the production of high-quality spices, some of which ended up on tables in Venice and Bruges. The truth is a little more complicated and rather more interesting, especially as it helps explain the eclipse of the maritime state of Śri Vijaya and the emergence of Singapore and Melaka as important links between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The success of Java was built upon its rivalry with Śri Vijaya. The rulers and merchants of both kingdoms aimed to supply high-grade spices to the Chinese to the north and the Indians, and little-known peoples beyond them, to the west. At first, Śri Vijaya proved stronger than Java. In 1016 the Śri Vijayans sent their fleet against Java, and scored a notable victory. This was not a battle for t
erritory but for command of the trade routes across the South China Sea and of the many subordinate towns that acknowledged the higher authority of the rajah of either Śri Vijaya or Java.

  However great the success of Palembang may have been in the heyday of Śri Vijaya’s trade, by the time of its victory over the Javans its glory days were coming to an end. One reason was that its very success had brought upon Śri Vijaya the envious attention not just of the Javans but of a ruler much further to the west, in southern India, whose subjects knew Sumatra through their lively trade there, and the lively trade of the Indonesians in the Tamil-speaking kingdom of Cōļa, or Chola. Chola had a long reach; objects in the Chola style dating to the tenth and eleventh centuries have been found in the Kra Isthmus, the narrow strip of land attaching the Malay peninsula to the great landmass of Asia; and in 1025 the king of Chola launched a violent attack on Śri Vijaya that has been credited with permanently disrupting the kingdom’s trade. Śri Vijayan bases beyond the Strait of Malacca were also in the firing line. After the Chola invasion, even though it did not result in permanent occupation, Śri Vijaya was no longer able to count on its tribute-bearing dependencies in northern Sumatra and the western Malay peninsula.2 In addition, for whatever reason, the Śri Vijayans shifted their capital away from Palembang towards another city, Jambi, that took advantage of its position closer to the Strait of Malacca to become a new centre of trade, though it too lay some way upriver (which in a time of raids and counter-raids made good sense). The Chinese continued to write about San fo-chi, their transliteration of Śri Vijaya, and both Jambi and Palembang were still visited by Chinese merchants; but the kingdom had lost its leadership to its rivals. That said, the rajah of Śri Vijaya made every effort to foster good relations with China, sending tribute to the Song emperors in 1137, 1156 and 1178, while the Śri Vijayans also asked the customs administration at Guangzhou to reduce the duty payable on frankincense from 40 to 10 per cent, suggesting that the flow of aromatics from south-east Asia continued to be managed in part from Jambi. In 1156 a native of Śri Vijaya was invited to act as the official head of the community of foreign merchants in Guangzhou, with five Chinese assistants appointed to serve under him.3