Download Chapter 21: Reaching Out: Expanding Horizons of Cross

Chapter 21: Reaching Out: Expanding Horizons of Cross-Cultural Interaction
EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION
62. China and western Europe recovered most quickly from the Black Death and
led the way in reviving long-distance trade, with the former’s early Ming dynasty
accommodating foreign merchants and conducting massive naval expeditions across the
Indian Ocean maritime system, and the latter by 1500 making several return voyages to
the Indian Ocean and the American continents.
The Chinese Reconnaissance of the Indian Ocean Basin
63. Early Ming emperors allowed foreign merchants to do business in the closely
supervised ports of Quanzhou and Guangzhou, trading spices, gems and exotic shells and
animal skins for silk, porcelain and other manufactured goods, while also refurbishing the
Song dynasty’s neglected navy and allowing Chinese merchants to trade in Japan and
southeast Asia.
 Zheng He’s Expeditions
64. The Ming Emperor Yongle organized a series of seven enormous naval
expeditions (1405-1433) to the Indian Ocean to impose imperial control over foreign
trade with China, as well as impress the world with how the Ming had restored authority
in China following the Mongol era.
65. Admiral Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch and trusted advisor to Yongle, led the
expeditions, which featured armed forces and hundreds of the world’s largest ships, some
of which were nine-masted “treasure ships” more than 400 feet in length and capable of
accommodating 500 passengers on four decks.
66. On these travels Zheng He exchanged gifts of silk and porcelain for African
zebras and giraffes, among other things, venturing all the way to the eastern coast of
Africa in the later voyages.
 Chinese Naval Power
67. Zheng He only occasionally had to flex Chinese military might on these
voyages, generally overawing hosts in foreign lands and bringing back from one voyage
envoys from thirty states to pay their respects at the Ming court.
 End of the Voyages
68. By the 1430s the expeditions had become controversial inside China for two
reasons: 1) Confucian ministers didn’t trust Zheng He and other influential eunuchs who
supported the voyages, arguing the money spent on these voyages would be better spent
on agriculture; and 2) the Mongols were threatening again from the northwest, which
required financial resources to pay for a land defense.
69. This era of Chinese naval power ended with Zheng He’s seventh voyage in
1433, after which Chinese merchants continued to trade in Japan and southeast Asia, but
nautical charts were destroyed by imperial officials, the treasure ships rotted away and
Chinese craftsmen eventually even forgot how to build them.
European Exploration in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans
70. European mariners were preparing to enter the Atlantic and Indian Ocean
basins as the Zheng He era came to a close, and they were motivated by two distinct but
complementary desires – to expand the boundaries of Roman Catholicism and profit from
commerce.
 Portuguese Exploration
71. At the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator, Portugal led the way for
European exploration of the seas, seizing from Muslims the Moroccan port city of Ceuta,
which guarded the Strait of Gibraltar and Atlantic entry to the Mediterranean Sea.
 Colonization of the Atlantic Islands
72. Portuguese mariners soon colonized Atlantic islands off of Africa and the
southern tier of Europe (including the Madeiras, Azores and Cape Verde islands),
planting sugarcane there, often with the financial collaboration of Italian investors, who
had cultivated Mediterranean sugarcane since the 12th century.
 Slave Trade
73. As the Portuguese probed farther and farther down the western coast of
Africa, trading guns, textiles and other manufactures for gold and slaves, in the mid1400s they dramatically increased the volume of the long-standing African commerce in
slaves by redirecting many of them to their new sugar plantations, a development that
augured the subsequent trans-Atlantic slave trade.
 Indian Ocean Trade
74. Portugal then set out to enter the lucrative trade in Asian silk and spices,
trying to establish a sea route around Africa to avoid the monopoly on this trade held by
Muslim and Italian intermediaries – an effort that came to fruition in 1497-1499 when
Vasco da Gama made it to Calicut, India, and back with a hugely profitable cargo of
pepper and spices.
75. Vasco da Gama’s voyage signaled the beginning of European imperialism in
Asia, as Portuguese merchants and mariners dominated trade between Europe and Asia
through most of the 1500s, their ships easily outgunning the vessels of Arabs, Persians,
Indians and Malays, though with their relatively small numbers hardly monopolizing
Indian Ocean trade.
 Christopher Columbus
76. Columbus, aware that the world is a sphere but unaware it contains two
continents in the Western Hemisphere (North and South America), came up with the idea
to sail west to reach Asian markets, and he convinced the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand
and Isabella of Spain to underwrite his 1492 voyage, which landed him in the Bahamas.
77. Despite a total of four voyages to the Caribbean, Columbus never
acknowledged that he hadn’t reached Asia, but news of his voyages spread rapidly and
others soon noted that the western hemisphere was a world apart from Europe, Asia and
Africa.