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Zheng He (zh-Hant 鄭和, Pinyin: Zhèng He, EFEO: Tch' eng Ho, Lagging-Gilles: Arab Cheng Ho, : rear RTL حجّيمحمود Mahmud) called “Eunuque with the three jewels”, born in 1371 and died in 1433, was a Eunuque Chinese and an exploring maritime famous.

Biography

It was born in 1371 in the province from the Yunnan, in the South-west of China. Its initial name was Mǎ Sānbǎo (zh-Hant 馬三保). Zheng He was what is called a Hui , a Chinese Moslem Han. It is also possible that it is of Moslem origin cham, when the Kingdom Champâ arrived to the southernmost edge of the Tonkin with Yunnan at North. The honorary prefix Hajii ( Al Hadj ) indicates that it went to Mecque, like his/her father and his grandfather. The imperial throne had several dignitaries of various ethnic origin, like Venetian the Marco Polo in charge of the exploitation of the Rock salt by drillings with Derrick S and trade of this salt which was a state monopoly.

One knows only few things on his childhood. One then knows that it be the son of a chief of the Mongolian province of the Yunnan, until his invasion by the army of the emperor of China, during which his/her father was killed and captured to him, castrated at 9 years, as it was habit for wire of the captive rival war leaders, to belong to the Eunuque S of the imperial Court (the eunuques ones had many being able thanks to their privileged relation with the emperor). He climbs the levels gradually and became large the eunuque imperial one. Entered the favors of Yongle, the third emperor of the Dynasty Ming, this last will change its name into Zheng He (in 1404).

Yongle wished to extend the limits of China, as well towards north (it transferred the Chinese capital from Nankin to Beijing in 1409) as towards the south. It makes of Zheng He the admiral of the imperial fleet, without this one never going at sea. It launches the construction of hundreds of ships in Nankin, on the Yangzi Jiang (what will reduce half the forest cover of the south of China) and orders great exploring forwardings in all the Indian Ocean. As an admiral, Zheng He accomplishes seven voyages of 1405 with 1433.

The successor of Yongle, Hongxi, did not support these forwardings and Zheng He had to cancel that which was envisaged.

However, its reign was transitory and Xuande, the new emperor, took up the ideas of Yongle and ordered the seventh forwarding, most important of all and that which went further.

The fleet counted approximately: 30000 men and 70 vessels with his apogee. After the discovery of a enormous Rudder at the time of excavations in south-east of China, and while being based on an account going back from close to 100 years after the time to Zheng He, certain specialists affirm that these vessels could reach 138 meters length and 55 meters broad and counted nine masts. A Buddhist parchment going back from the time to Zheng He and representative of the vessels with 4 masts seems to accredit this thesis: those would then have measured only one about sixty meters length. That remains however quite higher than the 30 meters of length and 8 meters broad of the Santa Maria, the Caraque of Christophe Colomb, which will be built approximately 70 years later. Zheng He explored, during all these long years of voyage:

It went up the Red Sea until in Egypt and descended the African coasts until the Mozambique. It is following one of these forwardings that in 1414, the sultan of Malindi (in current the Kenya) inaugurates diplomatic relations with China.

With the difference of the Portuguese, the voyages of exploration undertaken by the Chinese did not lead to a company of expansion overseas. Other remote Chinese forwarding was the Voyage in Occident of the monk Xuanzang to pay of India of the Buddhist texts. The Chinese sea charts circulated in the Persian Gulf with the Arab sailors followed of Venetian.

The majority of the accounts were recalled by My Huan (zh-Hant 馬歡), faithful fellow traveller of the admiral Zheng He. During their voyages, My Huan thoroughly noted things concerning the geography, the laws, the policy, the climatic conditions, the environment, the economy, the local habits. Compilation is called in French Merveilles of the oceans (zh-Hant 瀛涯勝覽). The accounts were initially intended for the emperor, in particular reporting three of seven forwardings in the “Western oceans”:

  • in 1413 (the 3rd forwarding): Champa, Java, Sumatra, Palembang, Siam, Cochin, Ormuz
  • in 1421: Malacca, Aru, Sumatra, Ceylon, Cochin, Calicut, Zufar, Ormuz
  • in 1431: Bengal, Chittagong, Sonargaon, Gaur, Calicut until Mecque.

The first compilation goes back to 1416 approximately. After its first return, the final version is printed in 1451. The translation English E is carried out by John V.G. Millets for Hakluyt Society in 1970.

Chinese inventions, the impression of the sea charts, the rudder of stern post and the compass allowed the ocean navigation which did not interest imperial China, but which made it possible the Occident to make its colonizations.

Assumption of discovered of America

A recent thesis, exposed in 2002 by the British author Gavin Menzies, even claims that part of the fleet would have circumvented the south of the African continent to go up the Atlantique until the the Antilles, another part would have crossed the Magellan Strait to explore the west coast of the America and, finally, another would have sailed in cool water of the the Antarctic. The coasts of the Australia would not have been put aside at the time of these voyages of exploration.

This thesis was elaborate starting from the study of old Italian and Portuguese charts maritime former to the voyages of Christophe Colomb and showing islands and unknown territories of the Europeans at that time, generally interpreted by the historians like imaginary islands. The author affirms that these territories correspond indeed to real grounds, contradicting the generally allowed explanation. Although this thesis was well accommodated by the Chinese academic world, it however is discussed and collects a careful skepticism on behalf of the historians. Only the discovery of physical vestiges (stray of ships, Chinese artefacts) and the discovery of historical texts reporting these voyages (which in theory, all were destroyed) in the Chinese files will be able to confirm the assertions of the author.

At the time of Zheng He, the Chinese navy was most powerful of the world, from the number and the size of its ships, the number of its sailors and the modernity of technologies employed. But all explorations undertaken did not lead to any Colonisation, China being folded up on itself to live in autarky as of 1433. Prohibition to build large ships, the destruction of large the Jonque S and their plans, reduced to nothing the immense Chinese potential as regards exploration and any capacity to hold in respect Europeans who were going soon to furrow the seas of Asia.

To explain the little of continuations of these forwardings, the fact generally ahead is put that imperial China regarded itself as the center of the world (“Empire of the Medium”). It should especially be understood that China of the emperor Yongle did not have, in commercial terms, to await other nations much - whereas great Spanish voyages and Portuguese in the beginning was motivated by the trade of spices.

The voyages of Zheng He were thus above all the operations of prestige intended to affirm the power of the Empire of Ming and to gain the recognition of remote kingdoms - from where the exchanges of luxury items, which raised more practice of the tribute than of true business transactions. The difference is thus large with forwardings which left Europe later a few years. If forwardings of Zheng He largely increased the prestige of the Empire in all Asia, it were not profitable economically and did not constitute a paramount policy issue - what undoubtedly explains why China scuttled what was then the most formidable navy of the History.

Reference

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