In Our Time - The Ming Voyages

Episode Date: October 13, 2011

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Ming Voyages. In 1405 a Chinese admiral, Zheng He, set sail with an enormous fleet of ships carrying more than 27,000 people. This was the first of seven voyages of discovery which took Zheng and his ships all over the known world, from India to the Gulf of Persia and as far as East Africa. They took Chinese goods, evidence of the might of the Ming Empire, to the people they visited; and they also returned to China with treasure from the places they visited, and exotic items including a live giraffe. These seven voyages were an expression of the might of the Ming Dynasty; but they were regarded by some Chinese courtiers as a wasteful extravagance, and after internal disputes they came to an end in 1433. These extraordinary journeys live on in the imagination and the historical record - and had a profound effect on China's relationship with the rest of the world.With:Rana MitterProfessor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of OxfordJulia LovellLecturer in Chinese History at Birkbeck College, University of LondonCraig ClunasProfessor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford.Producer: Thomas Morris.

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I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in the winter of 1405, a fleet of 317 Chinese ships manned by more than 27,000 crew members set sail from the Yanktze estuary and headed south towards Siam. These were the treasure ships of the Ming Empire, so-called because some of them not only carried treasure, such as silk, porcelain and gold, but also sought riches from distant lands. This was the first of seven voyages over the course of 28 years.

We saw the Chinese sail to myriad ports across the globe, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa. They brought back much booty to China, including precious stones and even a giraffe. But what was the purpose of these voyages, and why did they come to an end in 1433? With me, to discuss the Ming voyages, Iran Amita, professor of the history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford. Julia Lovell, lecturer in Chinese history,

Birkbeck College University of London, and Craig Clunis, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. Aramita, these epic journeys are known as the Ming voyages. Can you tell us a bit about the Ming first? Well, the Ming dynasty lasted all the way from 1368 to 1644,

and it's the very last of China's dynasty that has actually ruled by ethnic Chinese. The one that followed that was actually ruled by Manchus, who came from the north. And I'd sum it up, perhaps very crudely, with two terms. And those terms are commerce and culture. It's an immensely rich and prosperous period, at least during its flourishing. It's a time when China's internal market means that a newly prosperous middle class, you might almost say, starts to eat exotic fruits and foods from different parts of the

country which are sold in an internal market. Also the development of much more sophisticated art and commercial art as part of that. So the two come together very much during this period. It's a prosperous, it's a confident time. It's a time when China has a chance to think once again about its own culture and what kind of society it is. It also got an extraordinary unity of administration, didn't it? Very much so. After periods of conflict and also a period of foreign rule by the Mongols in the previous centuries, China was reunited under a founder, Ming Emperor, who basically made his business to try and hold the whole country together. He was motivated a little bit by the fact that he was in fact from a very humble background originally. he was a peasant who had, as it were, fought his way up to the supreme office in the land.

And the tool that he used was China's traditional bureaucracy, the magnificent civil service chosen through public examination, which extended to all parts of the empire, all parts of the land, and helped to hold the country together. Had that fallen into the seetude under the Mongols? It had operated in a slightly different sort of way. It had actually operated one way or another for the best part of three or four hundred years by that. that stage. But certainly the Ming was a time when once again it came together as an integrated way

of keeping the empire running and smooth. I think lest we come to the conclusion this is a paradise of tranquility, there was great ruthlessness. Tens of thousands of people were slaughtered and a lot of sharp elbows. Yes, it's certainly the case that the foundation of the Ming and the earlierers of the Ming were not all sweetness and light. In fact, the founder of the Ming was, as many emperors tended to be something of a paranoiac. He was terribly worried that he might be undermined. And this meant that an awful lot of expeditions were sent out to the more remote parts of the Chinese territory to make sure that anyone who had any ideas of trying to launch a rebellion,

to usurp the rule of the emperor would be crushed pretty quickly. So there's a lot of blood and guts going on too. So can you tell us something about the emperor Yongleur who launched the first of the seven expeditions? In fact, you launched six of the seven. Yes, Jungler, the emperor who came to the throne in 1402, had two problems, as it were. The first one is that he wasn't actually supposed to be the emperor. He had basically shoved rather viciously, of course, a nephew out of the way to take the throne. And secondly, of course, he had what's always a problem with dynasties,

which is coming after someone who had founded a magnificent empire. He found himself needing to find a way to make his own mark, to give his own rule a sense of even greater splendor than the person who had actually founded this empire. So there was a bit of sense of status anxiety on the part of the Jungler Emperor. Is there any evidence for this? To, in terms of...

Any evidence for this race, status anxiety on his part? Well, one of the things that we know about him is that he spent a very great deal of time trying to justify the fact that he had come to the throne. And this meant that making his own sense of legitimacy within the empire, an important part of his sense of status, was a large part of what he wanted to do.

This is why he liked to project the idea of himself as an even greater emperor than his predecessor. And Julia Lovell, can we give, listen to some idea of the position of China in the world at this time at the beginning of the 15th century? It's important to remember when we're thinking about the Ming that before it is founded, parts of and sometimes all of China have been occupied by foreign non-Chinese peoples for several centuries preceding. And this leaves a substantial mark on Ming Chinese policy consciousness of this earlier foreign occupation.

What the Ming want to do early on in their dynasty is re-establish Chinese cultural and political dominance throughout the region. The Ming emperors, in fact, never really forget the humiliation of Mongol conquest, and for later emperors, defeating the Mongol tribes on the step will become a kind of all-consuming passion. Now, as Ming emperors look to manage their relations with countries outside their borders, they made use of a form of tribute system. By this reckoning, China was a universal empire, a Tiencia, whose influence radiated outward to civilise its non-Chinese neighbours. So China essentially was the centre of the civilised world. In theory, at least, all of its non-Chinese neighbours owed the Chinese emperor, the son of heaven, ritual, obeisance and tribute.

And the tribute system was a way of colonising without occupying? You paid tribute, you got something back but basically you let the Chinese make the big decisions. The tribute system, it had an outward foreign policy element but it also had an important domestic audience. Very early on in the Ming dynasty, the set of ideas governing the tribute system are formalised into a set of codes and rituals

which will govern the way that tribute visits are organised. So when ambassadors enter China, they are escorted to the capital, they are banqueted, gifted, required to prostrate themselves before the Chinese emperor and then escorted out again, all within a carefully stipulated length of time. Now, this is done at great Chinese expense, and what the Chinese emperor is getting in exchange is acknowledgement of China's dominance through kowtows. Can I just ask you, how Chinese, if they want to be the world empire, were they conscious of any consciousness of Europe at all? They didn't go as far as Europe to the fleet this time. So for instance, we're being a bit Eurocentric, but why not? We're in London.

Are there any conscious of what was going on over here in the high Middle Ages? Later on in the Ming dynasty, the trade with Europe will become a very, very important part of the Ming economy. By the end of the 16th century, hundreds of thousands of kilos of silver. are entering China via Manila coming from the new world, also via Spain and Portugal. So later Ming China certainly is very locked into a global economy. So let's go back to Emperor Yongle in 1405. He launches this first great fleet of ships.

What's his purpose? There have been various explanations advanced for what he was trying to achieve. One possible explanation is military conquest. Now these fleets were certainly armed to the teeth. One fleet in particular carried perhaps as many as 30,000 soldiers. However, they don't seem to have formally acquired any colonies as a result of these expeditions. Another explanation has been that these voyages were for exploration. And certainly some of the travellers who went with the fleet completed very detailed, observant accounts. of the extraordinary creatures and customs and people that they encountered on their travels. It should still also be counted, though, that many of the places visited by the various fleets between 1405 and 1431 to 33 had already been visited by Chinese travellers and merchants. I think perhaps a slightly more convincing general, explanation is that the voyages were part of a general enterprise of power projection by Yongle.

The fleets were meant to shock and awe with both their cultural and their military might. As the vessels left China, they were loaded not only with tens of thousands of soldiers, but also with the signature treasures of Chinese civilization, so silk, jade, ceramics. And these things were designed to dazzle the peoples and rulers that Jung He encountered. And Craig Lunas, is it, can you develop the idea of why you think these fleets set up? There is a theory that he was, he pretended he was setting off to find the man who should have been emperor. Yes, that theory surfaces in much later texts in the early 18th century and no Ming dynasty text of the time.

contains any hint that this is what he was actually doing. So I think that's part of the later impact of these, the popular culture of this event. And I think Julia's right, that we're looking at a projection of power, a way of really forcing people to enter into a ritual relationship. We tend to think of ritual as being insubstantial, whereas trade and politics are something real.

But I think in an early 15th century, Chinese context, ritual is politics and therefore a ritual relationship, the giving of gifts, the mutual giving of gifts between rulers in other parts of Asia, and simply showing the rest of the world that the Ming dynasty is in business and showing audiences within China that the emperor has the power to cause the far parts of the world, to offer in return these dazzling and spectacular treasures. I think that's the main thing that we're dealing with here. Are we any evidence, Julia spoke about the being loaded, the shoes being loaded with unique Chinese products? Is there any evidence of how these were received? Were people

duly dazzled and grateful? One of the things we would very much like to know about these voyages is how they were received. And we have very little sense of what individuals thought about these voyages. But we know that, again, as Julia said, these are, these voyages are entering into trade routes that have been well-traveled over previous centuries. And luxury goods from China, porcelain, for example, the archaeological record across Southeast Asia and South Asia tells us that elites in this part of the world had a high regard for these things. They wished to get Chinese ceramics. Chinese ceramics were important to them. So that's the main evidence, I think we have for the fact that people wanted to receive these voyages.

How they conceived them in their own mind is a slightly more difficult problem. It's interesting a sort of idea of a cultural conquest, isn't it? Yes. The other parts of the world know about China. There is also a theory that the Ming are responding to the rise of another superpower at the other end of Asia, which is the Timurid Empire, the Empire, the Empire of the Empire, of Tamerlane, who is very much projecting his power outwards from the other end of Asia, and in fact who dies

on the point of attempting to conquer China. And it may well be that the Ming Empire were more aware than we now know that there was a competing superpower at the other end of Eurasia. Now, I mentioned once or twice already in the trial and at the beginning of the programme, the greatness, the size of the fleet, there wasn't going to be a fleet as big as that until, 500 years later in the First World War, that's some fleet. Did they build it especially, or were they already a powerful naval country?

Did they build special shipyards? Can you give us some idea how they assembled the fleet of that size? Yes, they did have special shipyards, and we have archaeological evidence again for these. In the early 1960s, the shipyard in which some of the very largest of these ships was excavated outside the city of Nanjing, and provided evidence for the first time that these ships were as big as the textual record says they were.

People had been slightly sceptical that ships of this size could even have been built. Such size? What size? Well, ships that were over 440 feet long, which is very, very large indeed. They had very shallow drafts these ships. We know they must have had shallow drafts because they were built well up river

from the Pacific Ocean and sailed down to the sea. I think, although Chinese imperial states had not tended to have large military naval capacity. There's no Ming navy as such. Certainly the Yuan dynasty, that is the Mongols who had ruled prior to the Ming, had attempted to use naval power to conquer Japan. They'd failed. They'd attempted to mount naval expeditions against Java in Indonesia and also failed. So really what you're seeing here is not something that is completely

new technologically but is new in scale. That is long established, highly developed maritime and shipbuilding technologies are used with the full weight of the imperial state behind them to build

individual ships that are bigger than ever seen before and to put together a fleet that is much larger than ever seen before. As either Rana or Julia said, I can't quite remember which it would be a shock and all when this fleet arrived Julius said it. Rana, the Emperor Yongler

may have commissioned the voyages, well, he did commission the voyages, but he wasn't the one who led them. This important role went to a man called Yong He. Can you tell us a bit about him? Jung He, yes, the admiral who was in charge of the fleet, given the formal title of the grand

eunuch of the three treasures, and in his life they come together a whole variety of threads that really say something about the cosmopolitanism of the Ming Empire, because number one, he was a eunuch and this was a figure, those were figures of some importance at traditional Chinese courts. Secondly, he was a Muslim. And this is something we don't necessarily tend to associate with classical China. But in fact, there was a very longstanding presence of Islam within China itself.

And in fact, when I say Muslim, this actually is something that we know went back through his family. Both his father and his grandfather had visited Mecca and had achieved the title of Hajj. And it was probably because of this connection. that he was given the commission of taking on this particular set of voyages. Because, of course, we talk often about the African connection and we'll come to that. But of course, the first voyages and many of the important trade visits were actually made to the Gulf, to the Islamic world. And having someone who understood something about the cultural and religious significance

of that particular area was, in terms of diplomacy, a very good move from the point of view of the Ming. When and why was he made a eunuch? The way in which eunuchs were chosen, as it were, early on in the imperial system, was part of a long-standing system of having an alternative group of power brokers within the imperial government who, because very early on they were castrated, this was as teenagers essentially, they would not be able to have successes, they couldn't have children, and therefore couldn't challenge the emperors for the power. Do you know the details of what happened in this particular?

case. I'm not talking about the scissors stuff, but I'm just talking about when he was captured. In this particular case. Do you? Yes, he was actually captured as a child at the age of 10. He was a prisoner of war. His father had been one of the Muslim officials of the preceding Yuan dynasty down in the southwest of China in Yunnan province. And when the Ming conquered Yunnan in 1381, when Zheng He was 10, that's the point of which he was cast. and I think it's important that he was then put in the service of the man who would become the Jungler Emperor, who was at that point still a prince. And so he had a very close personal relationship with this man, which came to be important after he usurped the throne and became the Jungler Emperor. Julia, can we take this on?

What place, can we develop the idea of the eunuchs at that court? What place did Jong-Hur hold in the Ming court? I just would like to pick away about why in it was so important. Rana's talked about because they couldn't have children, therefore there was no threat of succession. Is that all of it? Just to backtrack a little bit about the cultural political history of eunuchs in Chinese imperial history.

Most dynasties from at least the first millennium BC had made use of eunuchs, primarily because they were a class of trustworthy males for gullors, the palace Harim. But in other cases, they were also used as personal factotums or even de facto prime ministers by emperors. And as Rana pointed out, their great value to emperors lay in the fact that their position depended on imperial favour. They weren't at the court through having come through a stable system of recruitment like the civil services, but they were there on imperial whim. So emperors very often made use of them.

as a personal circle of loyalists to be played off against civil servants. And their influence in the Ming Dynasty becomes particularly marked. The founder of the Ming dynasty, Yongle's father is very suspicious of eunuchs. He forbids them from learning to read or to write or to having any role in politics at all. That changes under Yongle, precisely because Yongle usurps the throne. when he leads his coup against the designated heir, he needs a personal, trusted band of eunuch followers to fight for him, to administer for him,

and also to spy for him, to root out potential opposition among the traditional class of scholar officials. And Zheng He is a perfect example of such a eunuch loyalist. And it's worth remembering that that tension runs, not only in this dynasty, but certainly through this reign, in terms of the civil service bureaucrats who come up through a recognised system and the UNIX as these almost sort of special advisors in the system,

perhaps a bit more than that. And that tension runs all the way through the story of the fleets as well. There's a real political battle going on underneath back in China while these fleets are being commissioned and sent out between these two groups vying for power under the Emperor. Let's go to the first voyage, Corey Clunis, and be specific about it. The first ship sailed in the winter of 40.05. Why did they go?

Well, they sailed south from the Yanksy Delta. They touched at the state of Champa, which is now the southern part of Vietnam. So we have to imagine them then going on to Java in modern Indonesia. They sailed north then through the Straits of Malacca. And then at the Straits of Malacca, they turned straight west and sailed directly across the Indian Ocean. This is the most difficult and dangerous part of the voyage,

sailing across the open. Indian Ocean. They sailed to Sri Lanka and their final point of destination was the port of Calicut, which is on the west coast of southern India. And that was a crucial trading centre and the hinge really between two great trading networks of the eastern and western halves of the Indian Ocean. Have we any idea of any trouble they had? Did ship sink? Were they really were they attacked by pirates and that sort of thing. Any notions of what went on in this, it sounds like to take those more than 300 ships

across the Indian Ocean at that time, especially if they had a very shallow draft, sounds quite a dangerous thing to do. It was. And we have to presume that, of course, they're not sailing into the unknown. I'd like to stress, I think, that these are not really, this is not like Columbus.

These are trade routes that have been well-traveled by Chinese sailors. and the technical specialists on these ships, the men who steered them, the men who navigated them, they would have known what they were doing. They weren't going somewhere they'd never been before. Sorry to interrupt you, but not with ships as big as this before. Not with ships as big as this before.

We don't have any specific evidence of disaster or shipwreck or catastrophe. The fact that we don't have evidence of it doesn't mean that it didn't happen because the kinds of evidence that we have tend to accentuate the positive about these voyages rather than tell us, oh, this was very difficult. They certainly demonstrated their willingness to fight by, for example, overthrowing a Chinese, what they called a pirate.

He probably didn't call himself a pirate. He probably thought he was a merchant prince. But he had established himself at one of the port cities of Sumatra, and he was overthrown, taken back in change, and we can imagine that the reverberations of this willingness to use military force went right through Southeast Asia, that people understood that these fleets meant business and that if you did not respond in the correct way, they were certainly prepared to deal with you in unpleasant ways. How long did this first voyage take?

And what did they bring back? Two years in total. and they brought back a variety of treasures, exotic objects and animals that they found there. But the really important thing that they brought back from these voyages and on several of these voyages, in fact, was hordes of ambassadors from the countries visited who were willing to declare themselves tributaries of the Ming Empire. So if we're trying to assess again the aims of these voyages, I think one central idea behind them is to shore up the Ming Dynasty's self-image

as the civilised centre of the world and to support the tribute system. And this was particularly important to the Yongle Emperor, who was always tainted as a usurper. As he saw it, the more ambassadors he came to, that came to China to kow to him, the more legitimate he was in front of a domestic audience. Ron Amita, there were six more voyages and they went a bit further sometimes. Did they all follow the same pattern?

Well, they all had a combination of the same aims. I mean, it's these two things that Craig and Julia have mentioned. One is the question of projecting power, and that's the diplomatic element, you might say. But also they all had a very strong commercial imperative. These journeys were supposed to pay their way. They were not lost leaders in that sense. They were taking a whole variety of things that China

produced and produced very well for export, I mean, ceramics, porcelains and obviously example of that, and made sure that they were trading to bring back other sorts of goods that would actually make a commercial profit, or at least break-even. So in terms of intent, they were very similar. In terms of the direction that they went, of course, depending on whether they went east to what we now think of as the East Indies, to Java, and so forth, they would be looking for different sorts of goods as compared to the voyages to the Gulf, to the Middle East. there was in a sense an advantage taken of the fact that the markets of the Middle East had been somewhat battered by the devastation caused by the Mongol Empire's advances into that area.

And that was a sort of trade opportunity that the Ming were able to take up for a while. So it was also about seeking advantage where they could find it, before they made their way even to Africa. Craig Jonas, the fifth voyage seems to have been particularly significant. Why was that? The fifth voyage is particularly significant because it is the one that sells the furthest. It's not the first one that goes beyond South India. The fourth voyage went to Hormuz, which is on the Persian Gulf.

But in the fifth voyage they reached Aden in modern Yemen and Mogadishu, now the capital of Somalia and Melindi on the east coast of Africa. So this is them sailing right into the furthest parts of the Indian Ocean. It's also the voyage that brings back one of the most spectacular finds in the form of the giraffe that is brought back to the imperial court and causes a great sensation there because it's identified with a particular kind of Chinese mythical animal that only appears when a just and humane emperor is on the throne.

So, of course, this is taken by the emperor as a wonderful sign of heaven's blessing. And we also have from that voyage very recently and very excitingly a piece of archaeological evidence in the form of a golden ingot dated 1419 which is found in a Ming aristocratic tomb and which says this is the gold from the Western Ocean.

And one of the things that shows us is that the central imperial court were taking the gemstones of South India, the gold that came from Africa and they were redistributing it to the aristocracy, to members of the imperial family. And that tells us, I think, that an awareness of the fact that the Ming dynasty was now connected

to the furthest reaches of the world was spreading among Ming elites at this time. If, as you all are suggesting, it's somewhere in the area of profile and not so much exploration, because as you point out, Greg, they knew these places that some of the sailors had been there before, just the mass that was completely different.

If they were doing that, did they, and you've talked about the soldier, Julie, did they encounter, did they provoke any military encounters, Rana first? We don't have that many direct accounts of actual clashes and battles, but there is some evidence often in a slightly sort of sideways manner that suggests that everything may not all have been sweetness and light. For instance, there is actually a novel that dates actually from somewhat, it's during the Ming Dynasty, but somewhat after the actual voyages themselves. But in that it takes an actual memoir that we have written by a man named Fei Xin and adds a certain amount of slightly fantastic element, but amongst that accounts of battles between the arriving fleets of Zheng He and the African indigenous populations who come and meet them.

And while clearly it's written as a novel and therefore is fiction in that sense, it's perhaps drawing on some cultural memories that existed in the Ming culture that perhaps the encounters that they had been with the African peoples hadn't been entirely peaceful. On the third voyage, when they went to Sri Lanka, one of the several rulers of Sri Lanka just refused to play ball. And a large number of troops were landed. That was a battle.

He was captured. He's hauled back to China in chains. On the fourth voyage, for example, there's a power struggle going on between rulers on the island of Sumatra. And again, Ming troops are landed. The Ming decide to back one side against the other. And so there's definite evidence that they were prepared to use these troops. They weren't just for Shoal.

And in the great inscription which Zheng He set up in 1431, which provides his own account of the history of these voyages, these battles are very prominent. In his own account of what he did, the fact that I dealt with rulers who were unprepared to acknowledge the Son of Heaven and it is very, very important to him. So that military aspect of the thing is always there in the background. Julia, can we continue to move into this area of evidence about these journeys?

We've touched on it two or three times, but can you give us some idea of the nature of the evidence, the amount of the evidence and the reliability of the evidence? We have various sources, some official, some less so. Two very important sources of primary evidence are, inscriptions that Zheng He himself left in 1431 as he was departing on the seventh and final voyage. And these inscriptions tell us, well, they enable us to say with some confidence where and when the previous fleets went. There are also references to the voyages in the shulut, the veritable records of the Ming.

and this is the diary of day-to-day court proceedings, a list of the items that the emperor received and processed. There's also a biography of Zhang He entered in the official history of the Ming, although it's important to point out that this official history of the Ming itself was not written until the 18th century, although it was based on sources from the veritable records of the Ming. In addition, we have three travel accounts written by men who went with the fleets. Ma Huan, who was a Muslim translator, Faisin and Gongjun, who were both literate soldiers. To what extent, Craig Lunas, do we trust these?

I mean, this is a man, these are emperors who are, this is an emperor particularly, who's setting out to convince the world of his own image of himself, and he would want his own image of himself to be written up in that way. It's always difficult, isn't it? So how would you find it? I think it's always difficult with historical sources, and part of the problem about the Ming is not that we have so little, but that we have such a large body of text,

that it creates a sort of reality effect, making us think, well, this must have been what it was actually like. And I think it's more recently that historians have begun to ask precisely those sort of questions about, well, what is the agenda behind this? And I think it's very clear that all of the accounts that we've got are for public presentation in one way or another. I think the facts that they relate are accurate. I think if it says we sailed in such a year.

Yes, yes. I think they cross-check out with one another, and particularly these three accounts by people who actually went on the voyages. Again, this is not something, they fit into a kind of Chinese writing about foreign parts and writing about the rest of the world and writing about travel, which has existed for a number of centuries.

And so those sort of factual things tend to be accurate. But in terms of getting at motivation and agenda and what people felt about these events, there I think we have a harder problem. Can we push on round and talk about the reliability of this evidence? Just one more round, really. What's your view of it? Well, I think, I mean, as Craig and Julia have been saying,

the problem that they've identified in terms of looking at these written sources that we have is actually a problem for the whole of that period of Chinese history and beyond. There tend to be a relative dearth of the problem. kind of things that come from other sources, perhaps in the European tradition, you know, so church sources or particular types of private account as well. But one of the sources that we haven't mentioned, and I think is obviously in this context, very important, is of course the material culture aspect, the artefacts. We know for, in terms of physically checking out that these vodges actually existed,

that there are pieces of porcelain, there are coins in the area around Mogadishu, for instance, in Africa. And obviously the various trading agreements that were made, meant that we still have evidence of goods being both brought back and forth. So in terms of getting some idea of the commercial importance of these voyages, we have non-written sources that are also very important. But there was trouble at one stage, until you say the 60s, Craig, about the size of the ships.

People just didn't believe that the sizes being claimed were available to the craft at the time. Some people didn't believe there was a certain amount of debate, but I think that debate has been pretty much put to bed by the discovery of the shipyards. and colossal rudders, for example, which certainly the size of the dry docks in which these ships were made, very much fit with the kind of textual records. They may not all have been as big as that.

And when we read of a fleet of 255 ships, it doesn't mean that every one of the ships was of this colossal size. I think we have to imagine a number of huge flag ships surrounded by ships of a much more normal size down to quite small ones. These voyages went on for 28 years, Julia. And they came to an end. Did they come to an end abruptly? I think one thing we haven't mentioned. How would they cost in terms of the...

Not in terms, there's no way of reckon. In terms of the income, the economy of China, were they cripplingly? Anyway, you can tell me. Well, I will defer to Craig in a moment. One reference that I read said that the one fleet, one set of vessels, cost something in the region of half the annual taxation income for a particular year in the Ming dynasty. Craig, would you like to...

Well, I think all the numbers in Ming sources have to be taken with an enormous pile of salt and a statement like it cost half the tax revenues is the kind of thing that those factions of the bureaucracy that think this is a waste of time, that's the sort of thing they're going to say. I think we just don't know. I think what we do know is that when the empire put its mind,

to a vast project, it could find the resources for it. Because, of course, these voyages are only one of a number of vast projects that are going on at this time. The building of a new capital city, the reopening of the Grand Canal, a very expensive war in an attempt to conquer Vietnam. So if the state decided to do things, it could do things. The opponents of these voyages within the civil bureaucracy very frequently bring up that this is an outrageous cost and absolutely unsustainable. but whether it was actually unsustainable or whether that's just a good argument to use if you disfavour them, we don't know.

It is true that Yongle's expenditures run consistently far higher than those of his frugal father. So one set of statistics alleges that they're two to three times the levels of his father and it's no coincidence that when he's succeeded by the Hongxi Emperor in 1425

one of the new emperor's first acts is to call the general taxation. amnesty. Can we then come to a conclusion, not at this programme quite yet, but why the voyages came to an and, Your Honor? Essentially, there was a political move. As we've, I think, been stressing over and over again, the Jungha voyages, particularly the seven great voyages, were very much personally tied to the Jungler Emperor's desire to project himself in his image as a great ruler with a great deal of prestige abroad, as well as at home. And as we've also heard, there always been a lot of opposition to these from many factions within the civil bureaucracy.

When the Jungler Emperor died, essentially the sponsor, the person who was going to be most clearly tied to the success of these expeditions, also had disappeared off the scene. And this meant that politically it was much more difficult to actually bring together the will and the money to actually set up any more voyages. Did they think, Craiglin, is that the voyages had actually served the purpose that they set out to? Well, I think that's one aspect. of them that we ought to consider very seriously,

that they may have come to an end simply because they had achieved what they were meant to do, which is to tell the rest of the world how grand, how mighty, how powerful the Ming Empire is. And having done that, they had served their purpose and didn't need to continue. How were the, Julia, how were these voyages seen by later emperors as the centuries drifted on?

Well, there was a move at the end of the 15th century to perhaps resurrect the Ming dynasty's traditions of maritime travel. And when the emperor on the throne at the time asked to see Zheng He's records and logs, it was revealed that a scholar official had in fact burnt these records declaring that they'd wasted tens of thousands of ounces of silver and lives and they hadn't achieved anything particularly noteworthy. When we're considering early and late Ming foreign policy, there is a very striking contrast, I think. The first 50 years see this form of borderless maritime imperialism in vogue, with Ming ships reaching as far as the east coast of Africa.

By contrast, the last century of the Ming dynasty sees the building of the bricks and mortar structure that we now know as the Great Wall across north of China. And this builds a physical and psychological barrier between China and its neighbours further north. Rana? Yes. I mean, essentially there is a whole variety of political and military crisis in the later part of the Ming that essentially turns attention away from the sea. And in fact, there's also much more of a clamp down even on private trading.

I mean, even in the hundred years leading up to the Ming, there have been quite a lot of private trading on the seas. And that begins really to fade away somewhat by, the period after these great voyages, as in a very broad sense, the Ming begins to look inward rather than outward. On the other hand, this is the period when very large Chinese communities

are established across Southeast Asia, in Indonesia, in the mainland states of Southeast Asia, like Thailand and Vietnam and Cambodia. So although they're forbidden by the state, it might sound shocking, but not everybody in the Ming-Denist actually did what the state ordered them to do. And one of the things that certainly people continue to do

is to engage in maritime trade. And so by the time Europeans are arriving in these waters in 1600 and after, there are very substantial Chinese communities established right across Southeast Asia. Can I just come in, Julian, ask, how are these voyages regarded now by current Chinese historians and commentators? Through the modern period, these voyages are seen as a symbol of China's great technological greatness. But particularly in the present day, memory of these voyages has a powerful political message. Over the last 10 years, China's rulers have come up with the idea of China's peaceful

rise. And this holds that China's rise to superpower status will not be accompanied by the kind of violent conflicts that came with the expansion of Europe. And so in this context, commemoration of Zheng He's voyages seems to give serious historical ballast to this theory showing that the Chinese have never acted as aggressive maritime colonial powers. Finally, Ron. At a time when China is beginning to really have an economic presence in Africa,

the voyages to the African coast have also played a particular political role in trying to stress that China has a very long-standing history with Africa and is not a newcomer. Yes, and this is presented to a Chinese audience, through things like an enormously expensive television series, a historical series made in 2009, many, many hours of television showing these voyages with the Jungler Emperor, played by an actor

who had also portrayed Mao Zedom. Thank you very much. Thank you to Iran Amita, Julia Lovell and Craig Clunis. Next week we will be talking about Delacroquas paintings, Liberty Leading the People. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this BBC podcast, why not try others such as The Forum,

the Discussion Programme, about Global and Global ideas. To find out more, visit BBCworldservice.com slash forum.