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On December 18, 1412, the Yongle Emperor ordered the fourth expedition of treasure ships. This was the largest treasure fleet assembled – 63 grand vessels, each with nine masts, over 300ft long and 150ft wide, and manned by 500 men, including sailors, clerks, interpreters, soldiers, artisans, medical men and meteorologists. On board were large quantities of cargo including silk goods, porcelain, gold and silverware, copper utensils, iron implements and cotton goods. This voyage was to go into the Persian Gulf, a very ambitious goal on the part of the emperor. The fleet left the Fujian coast in 1414. Getting to Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, required quite a bit of planning and preparation. Hormuz was a fantastic city with many riches. One of the reasons the emperor may have wanted to get there was to bring back some of those riches to refurbish his new capital city at Beiping.

On the way, the fleet made the same traditional stops, uneventfully so until they reached Semudera on the island of Sumatra. There, Zheng He got involved in an internal political struggle on behalf of Zhu Di. They stopped in the Maldives, where they purchased ambergris and cowrie shells. When they finally reached Hormuz, they were quite pleased with what they saw, and thought that the people there were all rich; there was no evidence of the poor. They obtained sapphires, rubies, oriental topaz, pearls, coral beads, amber, woolens, and carpets. The supply of wealth also included lions, leopards, and Arabian horses as gifts for the emperor. From Hormuz he coasted around the Arabian boot to Aden at the mouth of the Red Sea, and then onwards down the Zanj Coast, stopping at Mogadishu, Baraawe, and then continuing as far south as Malindi, which he reached in 1415.

The arrival of the fleet caused a sensation in the region, and 19 countries sent ambassadors to board Zheng He's ships with gifts for Emperor Yong Le, including such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory and giraffes. Zheng He also met with merchants from Africa, whom he invited back to China with him to pay tribute to the emperor. And instead of continuing southwards from Malindi, Zheng He and the fleet turned back around and began their return voyage to China. However, not all of the junks in the Fourth Ming Treasure Fleet were fortunate enough to make it back to Nanjing. At least one of the vessels was shipwrecked, on the coral reefs off the coast of the Lamu Archipelago. But not all of the junk's crew drowned. A few survivors managed to make the swim to shore on the island of Pate, with these shipwrecked Ming Chinese settling in the independent town of Shanga, intermarrying with native Kenyan women, and building a graveyard of coral to commemorate their dead.

In 1417, after two years in Nanjing and touring other cities, the foreign envoys were escorted home by Zheng He, aboard the Fifth Ming Treasure Fleet. On this trip, Zheng He sailed down the east coast of Africa, perhaps as far southwards as Mozambique; and along the way, the Treasure Fleet stopped in the Lamu Islands, presumably to find out about the fates of those who'd been shipwrecked on their previous voyage. Shanga, a thriving town for at least 6 centuries prior, was be permanently abandoned between 1415 and 1425, and one can only speculate as to why and how this happened- but the remnants of its population, the Washanga, moved to Siyu, where they still reside to this day.

Archaeological work on Pate island has found evidence to suggest this connection, including the Asian features and names of the Washanga (with 'Famao' and 'Wei' some of the more prominent names which were speculated to be of Chinese origin), along with Ming Chinese porcelain artifacts and the Ming dynasty style tombs made of coral in the ancient graveyard. And further DNA testing done on several residents has confirmed that the Washanga do indeed have Chinese ancestry- they are indeed the direct descendants of the survivors of the Ming Treasure Fleet vessel/vessels which got shipwrecked on the coral reef off the coast of the island in 1415.

So then, what do you all think that the best case scenario for these Chinese settlers on the Swahili Coast could have been, in an alternate timeline? If, for instance, a higher percentage of the Chinese crew members had managed to survive the swim to shore after the shipwreck/wrecks, or if the surviving crew members had a broader, stronger and more useful skill set (eg, such as Chinese medicine, literacy skills, working with dyes, pigments and paper, and the knowledge of how to constructing and use gunpowder weaponry), how much more populous and powerful might these Chinese settlers along the Swahili Coast possibly have become- enough to establish an empire?
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