In the early 1400s, Zheng He led the largest ships in the world on seven voyages of exploration to the lands around the Indian Ocean, demonstrating Chinese excellence at shipbuilding and navigation.
A monument to Zheng He at the Stadthuys Museum in Malaysia, photograph by Hassan Saeed
Background
Zheng He (pronounced jung ha) was born in 1371 in Yunnan, in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains, 6,000 feet (not quite 2,000 meters) above sea level and two months’ journey to the nearest seaport. As a child Zheng He was named Ma He. Ma He’s father, a minor official in the Mongol Empire, was not Mongol; his ancestors were Persian Muslims. Both Ma He’s father and his grandfather even made the “hajj,” or pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Mongols had controlled the Silk Road routes across Central Asia from roughly 1250 to 1350, and ruled China for much of that time too, but the empire then splintered into a number of smaller khanates, each ruled by a different khan. The resulting anarchy and warfare on land encouraged traders to use sea routes and later, by about 1400, most long distance trade was moving by sea.
Three years before Ma He’s birth, the Chinese regained control of their empire under the new Ming dynasty. When Ma He was about 10, the Ming army invaded Yunnan to take it back from the Mongols and bring it under Ming control. The Ming soldiers killed Ma He’s father in the fighting and captured Ma He. As was customary with juvenile captives, they castrated him by cutting off his testes and penis with a sword. He survived this trauma and was handed over to be a servant in the household of the emperor’s fourth son, Zhu Di.
Castrated men, called eunuchs, were a recognized group inside and outside of China. Emperors, princes, and generals employed them as staff members, figuring this as a way to have male servants serve women without risking the genetic integrity of the ruling family.
An unsigned hanging scroll depicting the Yongle Emperor, public domain
The prince whom Ma He served, Zhu Di, was only 11 years older than He. They were based in Beijing, in the north of China near Mongol territory, and they spent a lot of time together campaigning on horseback on the Mongolian steppe. Ma He grew unusually tall and strong and became a skilled fighter and brave leader. When the first Ming emperor died, his grandson (the son of his deceased oldest son) succeeded him. In 1402, Zhu Di took the throne from his nephew by force and proclaimed himself Emperor Yongle (“Perpetual Happiness”). He made his companion Ma He the director of palace servants (similar to a chief of staff), and changed Ma’s name to Zheng He in commemoration of his role in battles to win the throne. (Zheng was the name of Yongle’s favorite warhorse.) Yongle ruled from 1402 to 1424.
The Seven Voyages
Yongle proved extremely ambitious. He temporarily conquered Vietnam and tried to overpower Japan. He built a new imperial capital in Beijing, including the Forbidden City, and extended the Great Wall. Since he was determined to control trading in the Indian Ocean, one of his first acts was to commission the construction of 3,500 ships, with Zheng He supervising the construction and then commanding the fleet.
Some of these ships were the largest marine craft the world had ever known. Zheng He’s nine-masted flagship measured about 400 feet long; for comparison, Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria measured just 85 feet. On the first voyage, from 1405 to 1407, 62 nine-masted “treasure ships” led the way, followed by almost 200 other ships of various sizes, carrying personnel, horses, grain, and 28,000 armed troops.
Historians were skeptical of accounts describing the size of these ships until, in 1962, workers on the Yangtze riverfront found a buried wooden timber 36 feet long (originally a steering post) beside a massive rudder. It was the right size to have been able to steer a ship of 540 to 600 feet in length, and the right age — dated at 600 years old — to be from one of Zheng He’s ships.
