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A hundred years before Columbus and his fellow Europeans began making their way to the New World, fleets of giant Chinese junks commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He and filled with the empire's finest porcelains, lacquerware, and silk ventured to the edge of the world's "four corners." It was a time of exploration and conquest, but it ended in a retrenchment so complete that less than a century later, it was a crime to go to sea in a multimasted ship. In When China Ruled the Seas, Louise Levathes takes a fascinating and unprecedented look at this dynamic period in China's enigmatic history, focusing on China's rise as a naval power that literally could have ruled the world and at its precipitious plunge into isolation when a new emperor ascended the Dragon Throne.
During the brief period from 1405 to 1433, seven epic expeditions brought China's "treasure ships" across the China Seas and the Indian Ocean, from Taiwan to the spice islands of Indonesia and the Malabar coast of India, on to the rich ports of the Persian Gulf and down the African coast, China's "El Dorado," and perhaps even to Australia, three hundred years before Captain Cook was credited with its discovery. With over 300 ships--some measuring as much as 400 feet long and 160 feet wide, with upwards of nine masts and twelve sails, and combined crews sometimes numbering over 28,000 men--the emperor Zhu Di's fantastic fleet was a virtual floating city, a naval expression of his Forbidden City in Beijing. The largest wooden boats ever built, these extraordinary ships were the most technically superior vessels in the world with innovations such as balanced rudders and bulwarked compartments that predated European ships by centuries. For thirty years foreign goods, medicines, geographic knowledge, and cultural insights flowed into China at an extraordinary rate, and China extended its sphere of political power and influence throughout the Indian Ocean. Half the world was in China's grasp, and the rest could easily have been, had the emperor so wished. But instead, China turned inward, as suceeding emperors forbade overseas travel and stopped all building and repair of oceangoing junks. Disobedient merchants and seamen were killed, and within a hundred years the greatest navy the world had ever known willed itself into extinction. The period of China's greatest outward expansion was followed by the period of its greatest isolation.
Drawing on eye-witness accounts, official Ming histories, and African, Arab, and Indian sources, many translated for the first time, Levathes brings readers inside China's most illustrious scientific and technological era. She sheds new light on the historical and cultural context in which this great civilization thrived, as well as the perception of other cultures toward this little understood empire at the time. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, When China Ruled the Seas is the fullest picture yet of the early Ming Dynasty--the last flowering of Chinese culture before the Manchu invasions.
- Sales Rank: #331183 in Books
- Published on: 1997-01-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.13" h x .67" w x 9.25" l, .80 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Levathes, a former staff writer for National Geographic , here tells the story of seven epic voyages made by unique junk armadas during the reign of the Chinese emperor Zhu Di. These "treasure ships" under the command of the eunuch admiral Zheng He traded in porcelain, silk, lacquerware and fine-art objects; they sailed from Korea and Japan throughout the Malay archipelago and India to East Africa, and possibly as far away as Australia. Levathes argues that China could have employed its navy--with some 3000 vessels, the largest in history until the present century--to establish a great colonial empire 100 years before the age of European exploration and expansion; instead, the Chinese abruptly dismantled their navy. Levathes describes the political showdown that led to this perverse turn of events, revolving around a clash between the powerful eunuch class and Confucian scholar-officials. Her scholarly study includes a section on the construction of the seagoing junks (the largest had nine masts, was 400 feet long and would have dwarfed Columbus's ships) and provides a look into court life in the Ming dynasty, particularly the relationship between the emperor, his eunuch and his concubines. Illustrated.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In the early 1400s China was poised to become the world's premier maritime power. Emperor Zhu Di (who also built Beijing's Forbidden City) planted vast orchards of tung trees to provide oil to seal his huge "treasure ships," which ranged the South China Seas and the Indian Ocean loaded with silks and porcelains traded for gemstones, coral, pepper, and the cobalt used to improve the very porcelains for which his Ming dynasty would become known. But due to shrinking funds, foreign aggressors, and the Confucian distrust of trade and prosperity, the Chinese abruptly abandoned shipbuilding and began their long plummet into isolationism. A former staff writer for National Geographic, Levathes writes history in the praiseworthy tradition of Barbara Tuchman. There are substantial notes and a bibliography of works in Chinese, English, and French. Highly recommended.
Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Levathes, a former staff writer for National Geographic, tells the tale of Chinese emperor Zhu Di and his favorite eunuch admiral, Zheng He, who tried during a 30-year period to break China's isolation with seven major naval expeditions to India, Indonesia, and Africa. Levathes writes popular history and therefore sprinkles her text with scene-setting and little digressions into everyday life in Ming China. The descriptions of the giant naval docks at Longjiang are fascinating, as is her account of the eternal intrigues between the eunuch faction and the Confucian bureaucracy at court. The eunuchs and merchants wanted trade, exploration, and capital venture; the Confucians wanted moderate taxes, isolation, and priority given to agriculture. The struggle between these outlooks dominated--and still dominates--China's dealings with the outside world. Zhu Di was with the merchants, and his fleets were veritable mercantile armadas, with boachuan (treasure boats) 400 feet long. Their principal destination was Calicut in Kerala, the only state that the Chinese did not regard as barbarian. From here they brought back spices, elephants, and the first eyeglasses from Venice. Having established Chinese domination of the Indian Ocean, Zheng seemed to be on the brink of ushering in an era of global Chinese imperialism and openness to the outside world. It was not to be. Zhu Di died in 1424 and was succeeded by his son Gaozhi, a devout Confucian who banned all naval voyages. A hundred years later, China had no navy and anyone caught even sailing on the high seas was summarily put to death. Levathes illuminates a historical crossroads: the century in which Western and Chinese expansion overlapped. She does not fully explain why one continued and the other did not, but she does expose one piece of the historical jigsaw puzzle, namely the root of the Chinese inability to open a door to the outside world. She does this entertainingly and with a minimum of dry analysis. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
105 of 111 people found the following review helpful.
"When China First, at Heaven's Command ..."
By John D. Cofield
This is an entertaining look at the voyages of Zheng Ho, a eunuch in the service of the Ming Emperor of China, in the fifteenth century C.E. China's navy was then the most powerful in the world, and Levathes helps us recognize this with some skillfully drawn comparisons between Zheng Ho's treasure ships (the largest wooden vessels ever built) and the puny Santa Maria. China was unquestionably the most advanced civilization in the world during Zheng Ho's time, and had the voyages been allowed to continue, resulting in permanent Chinese influence on and control of the Indian Ocean, Africa, and possibly America and Europe, our world today would be very different indeed. Levathes does a good job of explaining why Ming China decided to stop the voyages and its international trade, and points out that while Westerners tend to see this as a failure, to the Chinese at the time it seemed a success. This is probably the most valuable insight of the book, the illustration of a very wide gap between the psychological makeup of East and West.
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
Menzies and Levathes, read both
By Atheen
The book is an interesting one, compact but full of information. The first few chapters are actually dedicated to a brief overview of early Chinese political history. It discusses the ethnic mix of the country, the rise of a centralized state, the struggle among early dynasts for control of power, and ultimately the central characters involved in overseas exploration.
Unlike Menzies' 1421 A. D., Levathes' book focuses on China's rapport with countries closer at hand, concentrating on routes between China and SE Asia, India, and Africa. There is no attempt to integrate archaeological finds throughout the world with what is known of Chinese exploration activities, which leaves the author on much firmer ground from a historical standpoint. For most of her documentation she relies on government records, family histories, historical romances, and poetry, and these are outlined and discussed in some detail in the notes to the chapters. Although she speculates about early contact with North and South America, she does not make this the central focus of the book. In fact her primary theme seems to be the social and political causes of the sudden interest in the outside world and its equally sudden reversal.
While Menzies' book is more intriguing and examines the Chinese experiment with overseas exploration from the standpoint of a seaman and navigator, Levathes approaches it as a historian. 1421 A. D. gives one a sense of the wonder of exploration and its possibilities; When China Ruled the Seas makes sense of both its occurrence and its cessation. I'd recommend reading both.
68 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
History & cultural lessons
By Tony Watson
While the West was still dragging itself out of the Dark Ages, China had a thriving sea trade with India and Africa, and arguably with places as far off as South America and Australia, not to be beaten for hundreds of years.
There is an incredible amount of history here, most of it unknown in the West, which sets the scene for the building of a massive trading fleet by the eunuch Admiral Zheng He, and his subsequent voyages of exploration. At least one type of ship was 400 feet long, at the time when Columbus's ships were under 100 - about 50 times the capacity.
So what went wrong? What could stop such a powerful naval nation in its tracks? An Imperial Decree - forbidding sea voyages, considering them unproductive, uneconomic and, more importantly, un-Confucian - effectively shut the door on Chinese expansion and fostered the introversion that has only ceased in the last few years.
Ms.Levathes has uncovered information hidden for years to present this highly informative and unusual subject in a very accessible form, although I did find the similarity of the Chinese names slightly confusing, which made for heavy reading at times. However, it still gets *****.
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