The Chinese discover America in 1435

[Hendryk]

Yes, this is about admiral Zheng He (and to give credit where credit is due, Gavin Menzies develops much the same idea, in his controversial book "1412: the year China discovered America"--except that, whereas I claim Adm. Zheng might have done it in 1435, Menzies argues he actually did it as early as 1412).
Those familiar with ol' Zheng know that he was born in 1371 in the Chinese Muslim community of the Yunnan province, was made a eunuch at age ten and became a courtier of Ming Emperor Zhu Di (dynastic name: Yong Le). The Emperor had ambitious plans as well as a problem: he was seen by the Imperial bureaucrats (Confucian to a man) as an illegitimate upstart. To bolster his authority, he decided to spread the influence of civilization (i.e., the Chinese civilization) far and wide, and to that end sponsored a series of massive exploratory expeditions, with Zheng He in charge. How massive? We're talking about a fleet of 300 ships, some over 400 ft. long, with a total of 27,000 crewmen. The admiral ship alone was five times the length of Columbus's Santa Maria, which would not be launched for another 80 years.
So, between 1405 and 1433, Adm. Zheng sailed the Eastern seas, awing the locals wherever he went and militarily overwhelming those who were not awed enough (a hostile ruler in Sri Lanka was swiftly overthrown and replaced by a friendlier one); although as a rule he was more interested in setting up trade links than taking over. He sailed as far west as Mogadishu, and brought giraffes back to Nanjing.
We now get to 1433 and the POD. The succession of Zhu Di created a power struggle at the court between the eunuch advisers (of which Zheng He was one) and the Imperial bureaucracy, the latter viewing foreign expeditions as vainglorious and a waste of tax money better spent on domestic infrastructures. The bureaucrats' side won and Zhu Di's successor abruptly cancelled all further expeditions; the ships were left to rot and the records of the previous journeys erased. The Chinese empire, at the height of its power, with a highly developed economy, a 100-year technological edge over the Western world and enough manpower to subdue any adversary, gave up the chance to take over the world, and a century later Europe gladly filled the geopolitical vacuum.
So what if? What if the upper hand had gone to the eunuchs and those who supported the expeditions? Having gone as far west as he thought he could, Zheng He's next journey would have been to the east, across the Pacific ocean. Whether he would have gone due east into the open sea or simply followed the Asian coastline until he bumped into the Aleutian islands and the shores of Alaska, there is little doubt he would have found the American continent.
I'd appreciate some suggestions as to what might happen next. Here's my hypothesis:
Zheng He disembarks, meets some natives ("first contact" is something he must have become good at by then, after 30 years of meeting new peoples), spends some time figuring out what he could bring back to China, and in the meantime probably contaminates his hosts with the same Old World diseases that wiped them out a century later in OTL. After he sails home, the Chinese add to their maps of the Empire a place called Dongsheng (the Eastern Province), and send further explorers. The first items they bring back are probably corn, potato, cocoa and other native plants; once grown on Chinese soil, they provide a more abundant and varied diet to the population, leading to a demographic boom (it happened in OTL in the 18th century, after those crops were imported to China by way of the Spanish-controlled Philippines). Within a couple of generations, population pressure thus becomes acute enough for someone to have the obvious idea and send the human surplus to the province across the ocean. By then, the Europeans may quite possibly have set up outposts on the opposite shore of the continent, but they would be aware of China's claim to the land and would know better than to challenge it. Columbus, in this timeline, would indeed achieve his stated goal, which was to open a Western trade route with China; I picture him wading ashore, and being shown by the unfazed Caribbean natives to the nearest Chinese trading post.
To be continued.

 

[Kaiser]

Very, very interesting! In the thread "Alternate Histories of interest" I had the little idea of these WIs:
What if the Chinese seafarers had discovered Australia long before the Europeans?
What if the Chinese seafarers had discovered Europe, before the European seafarers came to China?
By the way, when was this trade-route between Madagascar and Indonesia established?

 

[Hendryk]

Kaiser
If you're familiar with role-playing games, perhaps you know about GURPS (Generic Universal Role-Playing System): one of their ATL settings is "Ming 3", in which the POD is that Portuguese attempts to establish a trading network of their own across the Indian ocean in the late 15th century is met with a retaliatory strike by the Chinese navy, who hunt down the Western "pirates" and, having learnt of their land of origin, send a task force all the way around Africa and onto the Portuguese coasts. Portugal is swiftly annexed, and over the following decades all European countries are transformed into vassal states of the Ming dynasty. Over time, most of the world undergoes a process of "sinization", as the Chinese culture, ethics and way of life become accepted as the epitome of civilization.
As for the Australian idea, here's my take: the discovery would have been made either under the late Song or the early Ming, the two golden ages of Chinese seaborne trade. The new continent would probably not have been made much of at first, except possibly as a destination for convicts and other undesirables (Britain was not the only empire that liked to deport its anti-social element; the Chinese have done it at least since the time of Qin Shi Huangdi in the 3rd century BC).
However, Dahainan ([the land] south of the great sea), as Australia may have been known, would have made a fine base for the supporters of a deposed dynasty, whether the Song after the takeover of mainland China by the Yuan (Mongols) or the Ming after the takeover by the Qing (Mandchus). In the latter case, in OTL, the Ming legitimists, organized into a secret society known to us as the Triad (and to the Chinese as the Tian Di Hui, the Society of Heaven and Earth), retreated to Taiwan and held on to it for some 30 years. (Incidentally, this means that Taiwan was, for a time, openly ruled by the Triad). One may add that the Guomindang did the same thing in 1949, when they lost the civil war against the Communists, and that Taiwan is to this day officially not a country but a breakaway province of China.
In either case, the exiled legitimists would likely claim to represent the true rulers of the Empire and make their new land a kind of second China while waiting for the opportunity (which may or may not have come) to reclaim the first one. I must add that, in the classic Chinese political world view, which in OTL lasted until the fall of the Qing in 1911, the Mandate of Heaven is by essence indivisible and China (meaning the world) can only have one legitimate ruler. So, even if a de facto division exists for centuries between Dahainan and the rest of the Empire, eventually they would have to be reunited, under whichever rule. And in the meantime the denizens of Dahainan would never cease to consider themselves Chinese.
Given the Chinese settling habits (which geographers refer to as "flood-like", in that they fill up plains and valleys like water but stay clear of mountains and places too dry to accommodate intensive agriculture), Chinese Dahainan would by 2004 be densely populated along the coastlines, especially in the tropical north were the wetlands would have been converted into rice paddies, but be almost completely empty in the interior, except perhaps for migrant nomads (resettled Mongols might feel quite at home in the bushlands; as for the Aborigines, they would have been left mostly to themselves). A fair guess would be a population of about 150 to 200 million.
I hope this is helpful.

 

[Chrispi]

But what happens to Oregon, which is now the Chinese land of Meiguo (Beautiful Land?) From the above post, they'll settle the Fraser, Willamette and Sacramento valleys.

 

[Hendryk]

Chrispi:
I'm not familiar with the geography of Oregon (I did live for a while in Washington State, though). I guess whatever flatlands can be found between the coastline and the Rocky mountains, plus the odd estuary valley, would have been given over to intensive agriculture. I estimate the two largest population centers of the West Coast of a Chinese-settled America would be the San Francisco Bay area and the coastal lands around Puget Sound, because of their potential as trade crossroads between the open sea and the hinterlands.
Another densely populated area would be the lower Mississippi--lots of potential with the river to the north, the Caribbean to the south, and a great climate for growing rice.

 

[Kaiser]

@Hendryk: Thank you very much for the great interesting reply!
Two little questions about China:
What is the Chinese word/title for the Chinese Emperor? (In Germany he was traditionally just called "Kaiser von China", just as the Tenno was called "Kaiser von Japan").
And how big were the areas ruled by the ancient dynasties, before the first Emperor of United China (I guess 2230 years or so ago), compared to the entire area of Chinese culture at the early times? And whenever I see a timeline of ancient Chinese history, there is always one dynasty after another, but shouldn't there be lots of local rulers simultaniously and *not* one dynasty, before the first Unification of China?

 

[Leo Caesius]

My understanding is that, at least from the semi-mythical Zhou dynasty, all Chinese emperors refered to themselves with the title tian zi, "Son of Heaven." The title that literally means "emperor" (huangdi) didn't arise until the 2nd century BCE with the Qin.

 

[Straha]

the american southeast has a climate EXACTLY like china...............

 

[Leo Caesius]

The northern part of China (Beijing northwards) is not all that different from New England and the Canada - except much, much colder during the winter.

 

[Straha]

The northern part of China (Beijing northwards) is not all that different from New England and the Canada - except much, much colder during the winter.

precisely! so Eastern north america could support alot of chinese! Maybe by 2004 we see a chinese empire of 3 billion?

 

[Cockroach]

controversial book "1412: the year China discovered America"

Small correction: 1421 not 1412.

Well, some of the elements of this AH are plausible (e.g. continued chinese voyages) but other seem a bit more unlikely, for instance I am not aware of any concerted and centralised attempts by China to establish overseas colonies.

 

[Hendryk]

Cockroach:
Thanks for pointing out the mistake. Apologies to any Menzies fans out there for the wrong date. (Menzies argues the discovery took place when Zheng He sailed past the Cape of Good Hope, into the South Atlantic, and reached the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego; then he went past into the Pacific and home to China)

 

[Hendryk]

Kaiser:
You raise an interesting point, about the way the dynasties follow one another. One should keep in mind that classic Chinese history used to be based on the Imperial archives, which obviously were tidied up by the bureaucrats according to the wishes of the current ruler, who every time wanted to emphasize his legitimacy by making himself the successor of a long and orderly line. Further, the state ideology from the rise of the Han to the fall of the Qing (2nd century B.C. to 1911) was Confucianism. Confucian scholars elaborated the concept of "Mandate of Heaven" to explain the replacement of one dynasty by another: a given dynasty was legitimate only so long as it was "virtuous" and upheld "harmony" between human society and the cosmic order, referred to as "Heaven" (Tian)--an impersonal, all-encompassing principle both stable and dynamic. Whenever that harmony was broken, the dynasty was no longer legitimate and the people's duty was to overthrow it so another one could take its place.
Besides, on several occasions throughout Chinese history, the Empire was divided between competing dynasties, two or more at a time. Thus the period between the 5th and the 3rd century BC was a time known to historians as the "Warring Kingdoms" period, when the weakening Zhou rulers were no longer able to prevent their former vassals to invade and annex one another, much as in feudal Europe 1,500 years later. If you have seen the wonderful movie "Hero" by Zhang Yimou (with Jet Li, Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi), you have an idea of the general atmosphere. Later, after the fall of the Han dynasty in the 2nd century a.D., another period of division ensues with the "Three Kingdoms"; the Empire is only reunified by the Wei in the 5th century. Later still, the Southern Song had to coexist (uneasily) with the Liao, a dynasty of sinified steppe nomads that had taken over the Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River basin, and then with the ascendant Yuan, who took some 40 years to submit all of China to their rule.
As for the size of the Empire: it has varied widely throughout the times, expanding and contracting like a huge lung (nice image, huh?). Under the Han, the Tang and the early Qing, it went as far west as present-day Kazakhstan, halfway across the Eurasian landmass. The Yuan under Qubilai Khan ("In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree..." if you remember Coleridge) ruled an empire that actually stretched from Korea to Hungary. No wonder Marco Polo was so impressed.

 

[Kaiser]

@Leo Caesius and Hendryk: Thank you very much!
I once read a text about the Shang-Dynasty, beginning in the Bronze Age 3700 years ago (and including the oldest known documents of Chinese writing) and ending about 3100 years ago. The text at least gave the impression to me that China (or precisely the entire area of Chinese culture back then) was indeed united at some time during the Shang-Dynasty. Is that false or is the talk about Qin Shi Huangdi being the *first* Emperor of United China rather just 2220 year old propaganda?

And regarding the alternate history scenario: You said: "to be continued". I'm especially curious about how the Chinese interacted with Mesoamerica. And did the Chinese travel around Cape Hoorn and northwards again to arrive in the Carribean?

 

[Hendryk]

Kaiser:
As regards Qin Shi Huangdi, he named himself the "First Emperor" mostly out of megalomania. That man was the ultimate totalitarian tyrant, he applied methods of oppression that would not be used again for another 2200 years. Imagine Hitler, Mao and Stalin all rolled up into one, and you get a pretty good idea. He made Legalism the state ideology; it's a political theory elaborated in 4th and 3rd centuries BC by Chinese scholars like Han Feizi, according to which all power must be concentrated into the hands of the ruler, and the law must be both ruthless and enforced with the most implacable severity so that the people will be scared into obedience. Qin Shi Huangdi decided among other things to erase history so that no memory would remain of a time when he was not Emperor; all books were burnt except those dealing with safe topics such as ingeneering, medicine, and (strange to us but not to the Chinese) divination.
Chinese unity, this being said, comes and goes. To his credit, Qin Shi Huangdi did reunify China, which had been in the throes of civil war for some 300 years when he came along. But it had indeed known unity before, under the Shang, then the Xia, and then the early Zhou. It was the weakening of the Zhou during the Spring and Automn period (8th to 5th century BC) which led to the division of the Warring States period (5th to 3rd century BC), and Qin put an end to that.
An interesting comparison can be made between China and Europe. Both are civilizations that have alternated between unity and division; except that, in China's case, the center has generally held, and unity has usually won out; whereas in Europe the periods of unity have been shorter-lived once the Roman Empire had fallen. It's a pity indeed that contact between the two civilizations (as opposed to contact between individual members of the two civilizations) did not take place during the time of the Roman Empire, because back then we had much more things in common. Both Europe and China were centralized empires which viewed themselves as civilized and surrounded by barbarians to be assimilated or destroyed; both had a healthy pluralism of religions, and a rich philosophical heritage.
Both, what is more, were overrun at some point by barbarians who gradually adopted the cultural traits of the people they had invaded (Europe in the 5th century, China in the 3rd); and both were transformed by the rise of a new religion (Christianity in Europe, Buddhism in China). It is at that point that we began drifting apart: Europe became politically fragmented and was unable to resist the "spiritual monopoly" established by Christianity; China, on the other hand, managed to restore its political unity within a few centuries, and "tamed" Buddhism to make it one component among others of its spiritual makeup.
By the way, I'll continue with the narrative of my ATL soon. Just hang in there.

 

[Kaiser]

Thank you once again! I'm looking forward to the continuation of your ATL!

 

[Dave Howery]

wasn't it about this time that the Chinese started pulling back from exploration and long range trade? I know it was about this time they pulled out of the SE African trade with the coastal cities. It was particularly bad timing, as the Portuguese rounded Africa right about that time. Anyway, even if the Chinese did discover a new land 'out there', would the Imperial Court have made any use of it?

 

[DominusNovus]

The first items they bring back are probably corn, potato, cocoa and other native plants; once grown on Chinese soil, they provide a more abundant and varied diet to the population, leading to a demographic boom (it happened in OTL in the 18th century, after those crops were imported to China by way of the Spanish-controlled Philippines).

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Chinese actually got the crops only a few years after they arrived in Europe...

 

[Brilliantlight]

Kaiser:
As regards Qin Shi Huangdi, he named himself the "First Emperor" mostly out of megalomania. That man was the ultimate totalitarian tyrant, he applied methods of oppression that would not be used again for another 2200 years. Imagine Hitler, Mao and Stalin all rolled up into one, and you get a pretty good idea. .

That is hard to believe. Any one of those three were so evil that they would have looked like overdone villians if they were shown in the movies instead of existing in real life.

 

[Hendryk]

Brillianlight
I understand your skepticism, it does indeed seem hard to believe that such a ruthless dictator could have existed. Yet he did, he was the "one in a millennium" tyrant, and the first ruler ever to practice totalitarianism as opposed to mere despotism. Mao was actually a great admirer of his methods (it figures). If you're interested I could get into more detail about him. (at the moment I'm putting together Part 2 of my ATL)