Why did the Chinese vanish in the 15th century?

By Song times, dozens of Chinese junks regularly sailed west to Calicut, an entrepot on the Malabar Coast of India. Some Arab geographers even claim that the Chinese reached the East African coastline. This Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean culminated in Zheng He's famed treasure voyages, when the Ming government tried to get in the action.

Then in the later fifteenth century, the Chinese withdrew from the Indian Ocean and never returned.

Of course, the Ming ban on private maritime commerce (enforced around this date) probably had something to do with this. But why did the Chinese never return to India and beyond, not in the 17th century when Ming loyalists fanned across the seas, nor in the 18th century when Qing merchants controlled virtually the entire Southeast Asian economy?

I've speculated on whether this was caused by the increasing militarisation of the Indian Ocean, which put merchants without state backing at a disadvantage. Thoughts?
 
Is there evidence that Song vessels journeyed to Calicut? Or were they just vessels that came from Indonesia and were called Song?
 
A different focus by the government would account for this. An internally- and eastern-focused policy would avoid involvement with a 'second front'? They didn't think going west would be profitable and would be more trouble than it was worth.
 
Might be that European, Arab, and Indian vessels started doing a lot of the heavy pulling to bring things to China, or they used land routes for some stuff from India. Whatever they brought back would be luxury goods for the most part, and that would have a market for the upper echelons of society, but not the bottom.
 
On the contrary,I was under the impression that Haijin pushed Chinese traders into becoming militarized--since Chinese traders were also effectively pirates/smugglers who had run-ins with the law.
 
On the contrary,I was under the impression that Haijin pushed Chinese traders into becoming militarized--since Chinese traders were also effectively pirates/smugglers who had run-ins with the law.
Probably also had to compete with Japanese piracy which was in full swing at that time
 
Probably also had to compete with Japanese piracy which was in full swing at that time
No.Most of these Chinese smugglers WERE THE SO-CALLED JAPANESE PIRATES.I've read estimates where it's stated that 'real Wo' constitutes only around 30% of these so-called Wokou that plagued the Chinese coast.
 
No.Most of these Chinese smugglers WERE THE SO-CALLED JAPANESE PIRATES.I've read estimates where it's stated that 'real Wo' constitutes only around 30% of these so-called Wokou that plagued the Chinese coast.
Ah! Would you have a source or something with a bit of meat about this? I'm quite interested!

It's interesting cause the reports we have about this are from Portuguese who were dealing with both sides, they should know better
 
Ah! Would you have a source or something with a bit of meat about this? I'm quite interested!

It's interesting cause the reports we have about this are from Portuguese who were dealing with both sides, they should know better

Koxinga! Limahong! Chinese pirate lords everywhere in the days of my country's founding as a colony. :p
 
Ah! Would you have a source or something with a bit of meat about this? I'm quite interested!

It's interesting cause the reports we have about this are from Portuguese who were dealing with both sides, they should know better
I read it online--it's source was a book called '明史日本傳',which roughly translates as Ming History:The tale of Japan.Apparently the main reason why 'Real Wo' even constituted thirty percent of the lot was because the Ming Pirates/Smugglers trade a lot with Japan and enjoyed employing ronins.

Make no mistake though,originally during the fourteenth century,most of the Wokou were genuinely Japanese,but by the 16th century,that's entirely not the case.
 
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Is there evidence that Song vessels journeyed to Calicut? Or were they just vessels that came from Indonesia and were called Song?
If you insist...
Every historian I've seen says they were actually Chinese. From Mailaparambil, a historian of southwest India speaking about changing trade patterns in the Malabar Coast:
The fifteenth century was a time of tremendous changes in the pattern of the Indian Ocean commerce which had been laid down in the preceding centuries. The Chinese junks abruptly withdrew from long-distance, oceanic trade, although so far no satisfactory reason to explain their disappearance from the stage has been found. [Lords of the Sea, p. 53]​
From Timothy Brook, eminent historian of the Ming:
Even in the Yuan dynasty, the Chinese sailed no further west than Calicut, where they transferred their cargoes to the ships of Muslim merchants.​
Or primary sources:
The Yuan Shi mentions that when the Mongols sent an embassy to southern India, a sailor (舟人) with the extremely Chinese name of Zheng Zhen (鄭震) told them to go to Madurai.
Wang Dayuan, a 14th-century Chinese explorer, noted that in the Tamil port of Nagapatnam there was a pagoda "several meters high. Chinese characters written [on it] say: 'Construction completed in the eighth lunar month of [1267.]' It is said, people from China visited the place that year and wrote [the characters] on the stone and engraved them. Up to the present time, they have not faded." Three centuries later the Portuguese also noted this pagoda and said that it was "believed by these people [local Tamils] to have been made by . . . [the Chinese] when they were lords of the commerce of India."
Ibn Battuta explicitly says that the thirteen 'Chinese junks' he saw in Calicut were made in Guangzhou and Quanzhou. Even if he was reporting local hearsay, why would the locals confuse Chinese ports with Indonesia (which the Arabs generally called bilad al-jawi or 'the land of Java,' not China?)
A different focus by the government would account for this. An internally- and eastern-focused policy would avoid involvement with a 'second front'? They didn't think going west would be profitable and would be more trouble than it was worth.
Chinese involvement in the oceans has almost always been driven by private actors, to whom going west would be very profitable and far less trouble than it is worth.

Didn't the Chinese government turn against their top admiral and ban big ships ??
True. But the Manchus allowed maritime trade again (they didn't really encourage or discourage it, they just let it happen organically), nevertheless the Chinese didn't return to India.
 
I've always learned that Zheng He was almost best friends with the emperor, which was pretty much why he got to go on the voyages he did (with monetary gain also a primary reason), and when the emperor died his son wanted to distance himself from his father, so he appealed to traditionalists. Also, Zheng He died around the same time as the emperor, and the whole program started to collapse without him. After the next emperor's restrictive policies on trade, the Chinese did not return for many years, after which they had huge internal and external problems.

Oh, and the emperor after Zheng He's also burned all the records of the journey and stuff so.... yeah, he was willing to do a lot to show his rule as seperate.
 
I've always learned that Zheng He was almost best friends with the emperor, which was pretty much why he got to go on the voyages he did (with monetary gain also a primary reason), and when the emperor died his son wanted to distance himself from his father, so he appealed to traditionalists. Also, Zheng He died around the same time as the emperor, and the whole program started to collapse without him. After the next emperor's restrictive policies on trade, the Chinese did not return for many years, after which they had huge internal and external problems.

Oh, and the emperor after Zheng He's also burned all the records of the journey and stuff so.... yeah, he was willing to do a lot to show his rule as seperate.
It's a bit more complicated: China's power revolved around the tributary system. All countries should acknowledge the power of China and pay a symbolic tribute. But that system needs China to appear strong, otherwise nobody will pay.

After the death of the first Ming Emperor, China appeared like a paper tiger and when Yong Le came to the throne, he wanted to assert China's might over the world, this was deeply symbolic.

Hence the treasure fleet, which were draining but served the same purpose as the flight to the moon: scientific discoveries and prestige.

However, the humiliating peace treaty following the draining war of Vietnam (1406-1427) followed by a resurgence in steppe nomads meant they had to pull back from those projection effort and focus on the interior (also why the capital moved from Nanjing to Beijing). These projections were seen as extremely wasteful by the confucean leaders, confucianism being a very inner focused ideology.

If you insist...
Every historian I've seen says they were actually Chinese. From Mailaparambil, a historian of southwest India speaking about changing trade patterns in the Malabar Coast:
Didn't they also go to the Horn of Africa? I thought it was fairly established they got a giraffe there and brought it back to the Emperor?
 
It's a bit more complicated: China's power revolved around the tributary system. All countries should acknowledge the power of China and pay a symbolic tribute. But that system needs China to appear strong, otherwise nobody will pay.

After the death of the first Ming Emperor, China appeared like a paper tiger and when Yong Le came to the throne, he wanted to assert China's might over the world, this was deeply symbolic.

Hence the treasure fleet, which were draining but served the same purpose as the flight to the moon: scientific discoveries and prestige.

However, the humiliating peace treaty following the draining war of Vietnam (1406-1427) followed by a resurgence in steppe nomads meant they had to pull back from those projection effort and focus on the interior (also why the capital moved from Nanjing to Beijing). These projections were seen as extremely wasteful by the confucean leaders, confucianism being a very inner focused ideology.


Didn't they also go to the Horn of Africa? I thought it was fairly established they got a giraffe there and brought it back to the Emperor?
Beijing was moved to the north because it was Yongle/Zhu De's power base. He'd just finished killing off the prior emperor and torching the imperial palace, not something that would endear him to anybody. As for Zheng He's voyages, you are correct in that they were a fleet for show - something to tell the world that the Ming were still their boss. Confucianism certainly bred an anti-trade attitude in the government, although with regard to power projection, it was considered no longer needed. Think Great White Fleet, not general exploration.
 
Beijing was moved to the north because it was Yongle/Zhu De's power base. He'd just finished killing off the prior emperor and torching the imperial palace, not something that would endear him to anybody. As for Zheng He's voyages, you are correct in that they were a fleet for show - something to tell the world that the Ming were still their boss. Confucianism certainly bred an anti-trade attitude in the government, although with regard to power projection, it was considered no longer needed. Think Great White Fleet, not general exploration.
I'm deeply suspicious about the link between Confucianism and anti-trade attitude in government.If anything,a large portion of the scholar elite in the Ming Government--especially the ones at the end(the infamous Donglin Party)--mostly came from gentry families that own vast businesses or came from academies(like the Donglin Academy from which the Donglin Party had it's name derived from) which were sponsored by merchants,which rendered a lot of officials spokesmen for the mercantile interest.The Ming government if anything was largely tolerant of merchants with the exception of seaborne trade for some reason.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
wouldn't massive loss of expertise by Black Death might be the cause ?
Chinese source also mention that in Guangdong/Canton exist hundred of thousands of Muslims in Tang/Song. we did not have good historical analysis on effect of Black Death on Asia, it might be that casualty is massive enough to cause change in pattern of trade. it might be that Zheng He is last gap of collapsing maritime trade.
 
Part of the problem was the Ming faced threats from the land (the Yongle emperor was killed on campaign) making my treasure fleets which were already massively expensive a luxury that could not be afforded. Me dying on my last voyage didn't help...
 
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