• DOI:10.1177/084387140401600105
• Corpus ID: 162302303

The Myth of Zheng He's Great Treasure Ships

@article{Wake2004TheMO,
  title={The Myth of Zheng He's Great Treasure Ships},
  author={Christopher Wake},
  journal={International Journal of Maritime History},
  year={2004},
  volume={16},
  pages={59 - 76}
}

• C. Wake
• Published 1 June 2004
• History
• International Journal of Maritime History

Zheng He the "Grand Eunuch of the Three Jewels" has long been celebrated in Chinese popular culture and among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia for his heroic exploits as commander of the Ming naval expeditions to the Indian Ocean in the early fifteenth century.' The purpose of these expeditions, and of earlier ones in the Song and Yuan periods, was to impress foreigners with China's power and wealth and to exalt the emperor's position in the eyes of his own subjects by fostering a regular procession of tribute-bearing missions from foreign lands. Where the Ming expeditions differed from those of earlier times was principally in the scope of their operations which included state trading alongside the traditional exchange of presents between tributary and suzerain and in their sheer scale. Zheng He commanded a series of voyages which extended over three decades and involved the deployment of great fleets and tens of thousands of soldiers and officials on journeys that lasted for years and which eventually took the Chinese as far as the Red Sea and the coast of Africa. Some indication of the scale of these voyages is conveyed by figures in Chinese sources. The Shu yu zhou zi lu [Record of Despatches Concerning the Different Countries], a work that dates from 1520, records an order from the beginning of the Yongle emperor's reign (1402-1424) for the construction of 250 vessels for the use of envoys going to the Western Ocean.' According to the official history of the Ming dynasty, the Ming shi, a work not completed until 1736, Zheng He went with sixty-two "large ships" (da bo) and 27,800 "government troops" on the first voyage in 1405-1407. 3 Another source gives