1424 - Zheng He Sails Northeast

After five extraordinary voyages, the legendary Treasure Fleet of China was ordered to stay in port by the Yongle Emperor in 1421. His campaigns against the Mongols and Yuan to the north for the last decade had stretched the military thin, and it did not seem wise to dispatch another expensive expedition despite the promising reward of spices, animals, and trade routes with foreign ports. Now the fleet would serve as garrison in Nanjing, which was its official title, and its admiral, Zheng He, would be tasked with local duties while one of his commanders, Hong Bao, delivered ambassadors back to their home countries in what would be considered a sixth voyage.

While capable and respected in court, Zheng He was a member of the eunuch faction, which met with increasing friction the Confucianist civil servant faction. As the Yongle Emperor’s health faded, a secret plan was hatched among the civil servants to dispatch Zheng He out of court so they could be closer to the emperor’s son, who was not so enthused by the extravagant treasure ships or the wonders they brought back to China. Originally they intended to send him on a diplomatic mission to Palembang in Indonesia, but an idea was hatched to send him into unexplored waters in hopes he might not return for many years. Cleverly winning over support from the military faction and gaining the emperor’s ear, they concocted the plan to send Zheng He along the coast northward in supposed hope of finding allies on the far side of the Mongols.

Zheng He left in the early spring of 1424 with a much smaller, sturdier fleet than he usually led. After obligatory visits to the courts of Sejong the Great of the Joseon dynasty in Korea and Shogun Ashikaga Yoshikazu in Japan, the fleet moved on northward. Islands became increasingly bare stone and ice, but human life could be found even there. Zheng He traded with Ainu and Aleut in the northern Pacific, noting the vast capabilities of fishing and the potential for introducing manufactures.

At the Bering Strait, ice made travel impassable, so Zheng He continued eastward in hopes of finding a northeast passage that could take him to kingdoms beyond the Mongols as potential allies. The coast unfortunately turned southward, but Zheng He pressed on. He mapped and traded with more groups along the coast, revealing thickly wooded lands and extensive bays. Once past an enormous peninsula in desert lands, the fleet came to the complex city-states of the Toltec. An overland journey brought them to the growing Aztec Empire, fierce warriors with obsidian blades and a relatable respect for jade. The Aztecs stated that they had no knowledge of the Mongols or even the distant Europeans at the western end of the Silk Road. In fact, there seemed to be another sea to the east of their empire. Though disheartened by finding the mandate impossible to complete, Zheng He was excited to see that the Aztec stores of gold were seemingly as infinite as the emperor’s and that they were eager to trade for iron weapons and cannons.

Zheng He returned to China in the fall of 1425 to learn that not only had the Yongle Emperor died, but so had his son, the Hongxi Emperor. The new Xuande Emperor was much more excited than his father about the expeditions, and the tobacco, wild animals including jaguars and colorful birds, and immense piles of gold prompted him to order another voyage. This next voyage established trading posts with tribes along the Pacific to supply the route to the Aztec as well as exploring farther southward, which led to contact with the formidable and wealthy Incan Empire. Chinese interest in this new-to-them world grew even more when an upriver expedition from the Great Golden Bay discovered immense gold fields.

As government-controlled maritime trade dwindled through the fifteenth century, private commerce expanded widely. The middle class grew with merchants and manufacturers, leading to organized companies beyond the normal Confucian family order. New philosophy came to the population, which encouraged expansion and growth, expanding Chinese influence westward to counter European expeditions. China became the unquestioned center of world affairs even though political turmoil would change its governance over time.

On the eastern side of the ocean, populations faced bitter plagues from the disease exchange, prompting Chinese physicians to introduce variolation to immunize against smallpox and medical research analyzing contact that would lead to a germ theory. Populations largely recovered by the time of European arrival from across the Atlantic, where settlers only made footholds in the larger native nations who had adapted not only with biological resistance but also to warfare with firearms.

 

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In reality, Zheng He went to Palembang. Though documents at the time show that the Treasure Fleets turned strong profits, later ministers condemned them as wasteful and destroyed much of the archives about them. Some researchers suggest that Chinese ships did, in fact, visit the Americas, such as Gavin Menzies describing a voyages Zhou Man and Hong Bao mapping much of the continents' coasts. In 1980, John Furry of Natural History Museum of Northern California stated he had found a submerged shape in Sacramento River bearing a resemblance to a Chinese junk and that core samples judged the ship’s building at roughly 1400.