The Indian Ocean Trade Circuit And The Unprecedented Zheng He

9 Pages 2129 Words

The Indian Ocean Trade Circuit
And
The Unprecedented Zheng He


Zheng He's Nine-Masted "Treasure Ship" in Comparison to a European Treasure Ship
China And The Indian Ocean Trade Circuit
In the fifteenth century Chinese maritime trade was influential and very successful in the Indian Ocean. China’s influence and success with trading and exploration would provide a crucial segue for European influence and success in the Indian Ocean trade circuit towards the mid-to-late fifteenth century and well in to the nineteenth century. China’s eventual withdrawal from both the sea and technological leadership during the Ming dynasty would occur at the same time that European intellectual life was initially being transformed. The Indian Ocean had been, and would remain, not just a crucially important link in the global trading system, but a source of great wealth; and access to luxuries, spices, and manufactured goods to any and all that got their merchants, goods, or ships to the major trading cities on the Indian Ocean (Marks, 48).
China’s influence in the Indian Ocean gained foundation and presence in the early days of the Ming dynasty. China was, in economic progress, a very advanced country in the world. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, however, Europe was not yet a force in Asia, and China could continue to look on the outer world in traditional terms. The second half of the Ming dynasty coincided with the great age of European exploration and the first phase of its expansion. The early Ming emperors had no desire to return to the multi-state system of the Song dynasty; their goal was to reassert Chinese centrality in East Asia on the model of the Han or Tang dynasties. They re-established the tribute system, posited on the moral centrality of the Chinese emperor who received tribute and conferred largesse. Taizu forbade foreign trade, wanting all exchange to occur through the framework of the tribute system. The ...