Zheng He and Ming China’s Voyages in the Early 15th Century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Wade
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
21St Century ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Naval Fleets

Over the first three decades of the 15th century, Ming China dispatched a succession of naval fleets through the Southeast Asian seas and across the Indian Ocean, reaching South Asia, the Middle East, and even the east coast of Africa. These were the largest and best-armed naval fleets in the world at that time, comprising more than 100 ships and tens of thousands of troops. Like similar overland military missions sent to Đại Việt and Yunnan in the same period; these missions were initially intended to awe foreign powers and create legitimacy for the usurping emperor, Yongle. The maritime missions were generally led by eunuch officials, the most famous of whom was Zheng He. In the 21st century the Chinese state depicts these missions as “voyages of peace and friendship” and utilizes this trope in its contemporary diplomacy. However, the Ming sources reveal that military violence was an integral aspect of the successive voyages, whilst the fact that many rulers from Southeast Asian polities were taken to China by the eunuch-led missions also suggests that some degree of coercion was employed. The missions were ended by the court in the mid-1430s over concerns about the costs and the need for such missions.

scholarly journals The shift from indirect to direct trade between China and South Asia, 1684–1740

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Ryan Holroyd
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Structural Evolution ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Trading System ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Direct Trade

Abstract This article will examine the structural evolution of China’s maritime trade with South Asia from 1684, the year in which the Qing dynasty legalized private commercial voyages, until about 1740. It concludes that, initially, most of the Chinese goods that entered the Indian Ocean destined for South Asian markets were first exported by Chinese merchants to Southeast Asian ports, and were then relayed from there to the Indian Ocean. The two most important hubs in this indirect trading system were Ayutthaya and Johor. However, between about 1715 and 1725, political changes in these two centres, combined with a short-lived Qing ban on Southeast Asian trade, encouraged South Asian-based merchants to increase the number of direct voyages they made to China each year. The result was an expansion of direct trade between South Asia and China at the expense of the indirect routes.

Glass Beads and Trade in the Western Indian Ocean

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilee Wood
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Glass Beads ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Eastern Coast ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Plant Ash

The glass beads found at archaeological sites up and down the eastern coast of Africa between the 7th and 17th centuries ce bear witness to the trade that connected communities from all reaches of the Indian Ocean and beyond. Glass beads are small, relatively inexpensive to produce, and easy to transport as well as being colorful, often beautiful, and very durable. They were thus ideal trade items, especially when glass was a rare commodity that was produced in a limited number of places. Careful study of the glass beads traded into eastern Africa illuminate trade connections and patterns in the Western Indian Ocean that are not seen through a study of ceramics or glass vessels. In the earliest period, from the 7th to the mid-10th century, the East Coast (Kenya and Tanzania) first received beads made from a mineral soda glass from Sri Lanka (or possibly South India). The next to arrive were all made of a type of plant-ash glass that was probably produced in Iraq, but, because raw glass was widely traded, the beads were made in different places: perhaps the Persian Gulf/Iraq/Iran and even Thailand. In southern Africa in this period all beads were made of this same plant-ash glass but the beads—cut from drawn tubes—may have been finished locally. Similar beads of this glass have been found around the Old World including South and Southeast Asia, both East and West Africa, the Mediterranean, and as far north as Scandinavia—all date from the 8th into the mid-10th century. From the mid-10th to mid-13th century mineral soda beads from India were found in both the southern and northern regions of Africa’s east coast, but many of them appear to be from different areas of India and would likely have arrived by different routes. In the mid-13th to mid-15th century period, during which the gold trade out of southern Africa was at its peak, southern Africa turned away from Indian beads and accepted only ones from a region that has yet to be identified, while East Africa continued mainly with ones from South Asia. However, early in the 15th century a small number of Chinese beads appeared on the East Coast that might have arrived on ships from the fleet of the Chinese general Zheng He. The final period, the mid-15th to late 17th century, saw the two ends of the coast receiving the same beads for the first time, reflecting the growing dominance of European traders in the Indian Ocean. Although from their first arrival Europeans had attempted to trade their own beads in eastern Africa, populations there refused to accept them, forcing the outsiders to purchase beads in India, for which they were obliged to pay—often in silver.

The Indian Ocean In World Politics: Reflections On Its Future By Prasanta Sen Gupta

1987 ◽  
Vol 43 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Alfred Mahan
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
21St Century ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Whoever controls the Indian Ocean dominates Asia. This ocean is the key to the seven seas. In the 21st century the destiny of the world will be decided on its waters.

The “bowl-shaped” bloomeries of Pingnan County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the origins of “bowl-shaped” bloomery in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-170
Author(s):  
Yingfu Li
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Han Dynasty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region ◽  
Iron Smelting ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean

AbstractBased on the discussion on the shape, nature, iron-smelting products and technical characteristics of the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries of the iron-smelting remains of the Han dynasty at Liuchen Town in Pingnan County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, this paper puts forward the issue of the origin of the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries in China, and referring to the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries found in West Asia, South Asia, Europe, and Africa and their smelting technical traditions. This paper pointed out that the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries in China had the same origin with that of the other regions of the world, which was the result of the far and wide diffusion of the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries of West Asia, and its introduction route might be from West Asia via South Asia and Southeast Asia along the Indian Ocean.

Spatial and Temporal Continuities of Merchant Networks in South Asia and the Indian Ocean (1500-2000)

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 91-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gita Dharampal-Frick ◽  
Bhaswati Bhattacharya ◽  
Jos Gommans
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
The People ◽  
Merchant Networks ◽  
The Indian Ocean

AbstractWe believe ourselves to be the most astute men that one can encounter, and the people here surpass us in everything. And there are Moorish merchants worth 400,000 to 500,000 ducats. And they can do better calculations by memory than we can do with the pen. And they mock us, and it seems to me that they are superior to us in countless things, save with sword in hand, which they cannot resist.

From Quanzhou to the Sulu Zone and Beyond: Questions Related to the Early Fourteenth Century

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderich Ptak
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
China Coast

Ships sailing from Fujian to Southeast Asia could choose between two different sea routes. The first route followed the China coast to central Guangdong; it then led to Hainan, the Champa coast and Pulau Condore, an island near the southern tip of Vietnam. From there it continued in three directions: to Siam, to northwestern Borneo and to the Malayan east coast. Going south to the Malayan east coast was the most direct way to Trengganu, Pahang, Pulau Tioman, Johore and modern Singapore whence it was possible to sail into the Indian Ocean or to cross over to Sumatra, Bangka Island and Java.

scholarly journals Africa and the wider world: creole communities in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans

Tempo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-481
Author(s):  
Malyn Newitt
Keyword(s):  
Technology Transfer ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
The World ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Sub Saharan

Abstract: Portuguese creoles were instrumental in bringing sub-Saharan Africa into the intercontinental systems of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. In the Atlantic Islands a distinctive creole culture emerged, made up of Christian emigrants from Portugal, Jewish exiles and African slaves. These creole polities offered a base for coastal traders and became politically influential in Africa - in Angola creating their own mainland state. Connecting the African interior with the world economy was largely on African terms and the lack of technology transfer meant that the economic gap between Africa and the rest of the world inexorably widened. African slaves in Latin America adapted to a society already creolised, often through adroit forms of cultural appropriation and synthesis. In eastern Africa Portuguese worked within existing creolised Islamic networks but the passage of their Indiamen through the Atlantic created close links between the Indian Ocean and Atlantic commercial systems.

A Secret People of South Asia. The Origins, Evolution and Role of the Luso-Indian Goan Community from the Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries

Itinerario ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Ocean Region ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Until fairly recently, histories of European imperial expansion in the Indian Ocean region have been written largely in terms of the endeavours of Europeans in creating and controlling empire. Only in the last couple of decades has recognition been given slowly to the role of the indigenous economic and political compradors, both large and small, who were vital to the evolution and sustenance of European colonial empires.

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