Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 (review)

The seven Chinese voyages to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean led by the eunuch admiral Zheng He, involving hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men, have become a staple of World History curricula, where they are presented as a counterpoint to the smaller scale but more consequential voyages of European explorers. Since both textbooks and specialized studies usually present the early Ming expeditions as peaceful voyages of discovery, Edward L. Dreyer's book might at first glance seem an unlikely candidate for review in the JMH. The author's central argument, however, is that Zheng He's master, the Yongle emperor, was in fact engaged in power projection aimed at bringing distant states within the ambit of the Ming tributary system. The book presents compelling evidence in support of this thesis. Zheng He's expeditions were crewed by regular military personnel, followed existing trade routes already well known to the Chinese, and had recourse to arms on at least three occasions (including the defeat and capture of the recalcitrant king of Ceylon, circa 1410). The size of the Ming fleets went far beyond what would have been needed for exploration; Dreyer plausibly suggests that the idea was to awe foreign potentates into submission, thus realizing Sunzi's ideal of winning without fighting. Yet he is also careful not to claim that Ming China had a Mahanian understanding of seapower avant le mot: Chinese merchant shipping was subjected to severe restrictions by the imperial state, and pirates were allowed almost free rein in China's home waters at the same time Zheng He was cruising the Indian Ocean.

Dreyer sheds new light on both the eunuch admiral and the expeditions he led. He questions whether the Ming fleets ever got as far as Malindi (in Kenya) or the Red Sea coast near Mecca, and points out that due to the pressures of campaigning against the Mongols to the north, imperial interest in south seas voyages was fading even before Yongle's death in 1424. Drawing on archaeology and other physical evidence, Dreyer accepts that Zheng He's "treasure ships" were probably the largest wooden ships ever built—more like gigantic river barges than the oceangoing vessels of the West. He doubts that they would have been seaworthy outside the relatively calm waters of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. He has little use for the sensational claim of Gavin Menzies that Ming flotillas reached the Americas in 1421, drily observing that "These ideas will have to clear various hurdles before they are generally accepted" (p. 30). Although he offers little direct criticism of Menzies's ideas, the intellectual stakes could not be more zero-sum. If Dreyer's understanding of the purpose of the voyages is correct, Menzies must be wrong.

In contrast to Menzies and others (notably Louise Levathes) who have written in English about Zheng He in recent years, Dreyer is a fully qualified sinologue conversant with the Chinese-language sources for early Ming history. The present work is based on careful examination of the relevant information in these sources and includes Dreyer's own translations of Zheng He's biography from the Ming dynastic history and two stele inscriptions drafted by the eunuch admiral. Despite the author's erudition, the book is marred by the absence of scholarly apparatus. This is no doubt because it was published in Pearson Longman's series of biographies intended for use as supplemental texts in World History classes. Notwithstanding the format limitations imposed by his publisher, Dreyer has succeeded in producing the most judicious and authoritative study of the early Ming voyages available in...