Zheng He and the Ming voyages of exploration

Zheng He Review

As China enters the 21st century and begins to take it's place as an economic power, this is not the first time that China stretched out it's hands and touched the distant parts of the world. While most think of China as a secluded, almost xenophobic country, there was a time in the 1600's when Chinese fleets sailed the Pacific and Indian Oceans projecting Chinese power throughout the region. Edward Dreyer, in his book Zheng He: China and the Sea in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 investigated a time when the Chinese did not eschew foreigners, but actively sought contact with foreigner lands. But unlike others who have discussed this subject, Dreyer's basic premise was that the Chinese were not simply exploring the world in the way the Europeans would a few decades later, but were projecting Chinese military and political power throughout Asia.

Edward Dreyer, before his death in 2007, was a professor of history at the University of Miami where he specialized in military history of the Ming dynasty. (Beck 2007) Dreyer put his military expertise to use in his investigation of the major naval expeditions to the outside world the Chinese undertook in the early 1400's. At that time a new Chinese Emperor, known as the Yongle Emperor, reversed centuries of fear and mistrust of the outside world by ordering a Eunich named Zheng He to lead a series of expeditions into the Indian Ocean; extending even to the coast of Africa. (National Geographic) While many historians have looked at these expeditions more as journeys of discovery, Dreyer has concluded that the Chinese were projecting their military and political power into new regions of the world. Dreyer described in extensive detail the many military clashes Zheng He and his 30,000 man armada engaged in with local nations and tribes who refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chinese Emperor. These details backed up the book's main assertion was that the Chinese sent these fleets of heavily armed ships out to distant parts of the world in order "to enforce outward compliance with the forms of the Chinese tributary system by the show of an overwhelming armed force." (Dreyer 2007 p163)

In order to accomplish this stated goal, Edward Dreyer used a number of Chinese primary and secondary sources to exhaustively research and support his position. The most impressive support for his assertion that the Chinese were projecting military power came in his extensive description of the military forces involved in the expeditions and the conflicts these forces engaged in. By providing such an involved description, the author adds much weight to his argument and dismissed the notion that such military force was necessary for a journey of discovery.

If there are any deficiencies in the book, they come with Dreyer's somewhat long winded and boring descriptions of the 30,000 man expeditions and the details involved in the preparations. There is also a descriptive account of the battles fought and the forces used, while such discussions may greatly support the author's claim that the fleet's primary mission was the projection of power, they also slow down the reading and overload the reader's attention with too much detail.