What if Ming China Continued Its Imperial Projection into the Indian Ocean?

[Roma_Victrix]

Many here probably already know about Zheng He's Treasure Fleet of the 15th century, those massive Ming Chinese ships traversing all the way to East Africa, Arabia, Persia, and back to China. In addition to gathering tribute from Southeast Asian countries and Indian kingdoms, Zheng's fleet also interfered in a war in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) between the Kingdoms of Jaffna and Kotte in 1410. The Ming navy overthrew King Alakeshvara of the Sinhalese ruling house of Kotte as a result.

Fast forward a few decades past the death of the Yongle Emperor, and the Ming naval forays into the Indian Ocean were all aborted, the treasure fleets left to rot or scrapped for wood. China turned inward, keeping only a select few seaports open to periodic trade and tributary relations with Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia. After a fairly disastrous first start at the beginning of the 16th century (due to the overthrow of the Malacca Sultanate), it took the seafaring Portuguese a long while to gain Ming China's trust, helping them to eradicate Japanese Wokou pirates along their shores and establishing Portugal's colony at Macau. Then came the Spanish, whose trade with Ming China became pivotal with the exchange of Chinese goods like silk for Spanish silver from the Americas. By the end of the Ming Dynasty in the first half of the 17th century, the English and the Dutch also began trade relations, and the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci called Beijing his home (where he worked on various treatises with Chinese colleagues).

My question is, before the direct European trade relations and contacts with Ming China, which continued as the Manchu Qing Dynasty supplanted their regime, what if China had continued its power projection into the Indian Ocean? What would have happened if later Portuguese and Spanish explorers ran into situations where China through its navy had already clearly established itself as the hegemonic power over the regions of the Indian Ocean? Would that have dissuaded European powers from the slow process of colonizing the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia? What would the world be like today if such regions weren't colonized by European powers?

An argument could be made that, with Africa and the Americas extensively colonized, European powers like Spain and England would have gained enough resources and material wealth to then challenge the later Qing Chinese in the Indian Ocean, but before this they would have perhaps been in no position to challenge the Ming. When the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate (in what is now Malaysia) in 1511, without a navy Ming China was powerless to restore the Malaccan sultan to power.

[hellheaven1987]

My ancestors would crush Ming's government fleet anyway.

[Captain Jin]

As I understand the fleets were never about colonization. And had they continued it would have just been to continue China's relations with the states that paid them tribute. But that wouldn't have been a benefit to China anyhow. In most instances they weren't really benefiting from these relationships. Instead they just sent extravagant gifts and big fleets to small kingdoms to impress them and garner some meager degree of tribute and create a relationship in which China was the senior and superior member. As far as I see it the Treasure Fleets were an overall hindrance to the Ming that only served to expedite Ming economic deterioration. It was an extravagance during a time of economic prosperity, but one that could evidently not be maintained.

And anyway, what challenge would Ming warships have been against more modern ones from the western Navies that came to dominate the sea? It's hard to say exactly what sort of ships they had and in what sort of strength. Certainly the Ming dominated the region with its naval power, but those countries weren't exactly naval powers to begin with.

[hellheaven1987]

Unless Ming started building oversea outposts, its navy would play little role in history. In the end, it was more a burden than benefit to Ming to maintain a government-fund navy, so it simply hired PMCs to protect its sea.

[Roma_Victrix]

Well, we all know how the unorganized Chinese navy, even with its paddle wheel ships, fared against modern Western tech, artillery, and iron clad ships during the Opium Wars of the 19th century: they got handled by the British.

However, the very first sea battles between China and a Western power - in this case Portugal - fared very well for the Chinese. The Ming navy were victorious in two small engagements in 1521 and 1522, although these skirmishes leaving at most 50 Portuguese dead were hardly battles one should compare to large scale definitive engagements of the age like the Battle of Lepanto. It's hard to say how a large Portuguese fleet would fare against a large Ming fleet of the same era.

Not long after that episode, in 1557, the Ming government granted the Portuguese rights to settle Macau as a trade colony, and the rest is history. Apparently the Portuguese and Ming built better relations after the Portuguese helped to disperse some Wokou Japanese pirates.

[hellheaven1987]

CEO of naval PMCs during Ming Dynasty.

[Roma_Victrix]

Yeah, Koxinga was pretty badass indeed. The Dutch would have kept Taiwan as a colony if not for him. He was magnanimous enough, though, allowing all the Dutch to leave with their supplies once Fort Zeelandia surrendered.

[hellheaven1987]

Yeah, Koxinga was pretty badass indeed. The Dutch would have kept Taiwan as a colony if not for him. He was magnanimous enough, though, allowing all the Dutch to leave with their supplies once Fort Zeelandia surrendered.

Dutch was his trade partner before the war, although Dutch East India Company was infamous for conducting piracy against other India Company so I guess it was fair.

But yes, all those "India Company" were technically PMCs with full government approvement; it is quite interesting how those evil capitalists could conquer so much land under the guideline of capitalism.

[Cyclops]

If China stayed outwardly focussed in terms of projecting their navy into the Indian ocean i think the European powers would have a much harder time colonising/provincialising the East Indies and India.

I think the stable government model of China as well as the conservative and educated culture of the elites would make for more strongly established polities than the IRL muddle of Indo-Islamic influenced petty island kingdoms. Whether these states would remain closely affliated to China or would make their own way would be the question: would Sino-Malaya be more like Korea or Japan? Both basked in the light of Chinese civilisation buit Japan remained resolutely independent, whereas Korea had a less well defined seperation.

In any case the stronger states and over-arching Chinese interests would slow down European penetration of the East Inides and India, perhapos allowing a unified response from Maratha or Sikh states in India and Sinicised Malay or Indonesian states in the Indies.

The collision of Chinese and Indian civilisations this presence would precipitate wouild be a wonder to behold. The arrival of Buddhism and attendant Indian culture onto China and neighbours is a tremendous cultural event, surely the arrival of Confucian and Taoist thought and state structures in the Indian ocean would be as important.

I doubt China would create/impose rule over South and Southeast Asia as they had over Vietnam and Mongolia. I think the area too vast and too culturally different at first. However tributary arrangements would allow cultural and technical exchanges across the many islands and even into India and perhaps Africa too.

Maybe the trade in exotic animals would spark a kind of Atlantic triangle in the Indian Ocean, powering a trade engine to drive cultural development? I doubt it, I don't see educated Chinese elites and bureacrats ravaging Africas like the European and Arab slave traders did.

[Roma_Victrix]

I wasn't really arguing for the Ming Chinese to have a colonial presence in the Indian Ocean, and especially not have their civil service and administrative model adopted by far-flung foreign states. I was merely conjecturing what would have happened if Portuguese and other European explorers and colonizers started interfering and colonizing countries of the Indian Ocean that the Ming Chinese Imperial Navy would hypothetically be calling on frequently for tribute. It took a few decades (and occasional outbreaks of hostility) for the Chinese to accept the Portuguese as legitimate trade partners following their conquest of the Ming Chinese vassal Malacca in Malaysia. That episode occurred decades after the Ming Treasure Fleet was disbanded. If it hadn't been disbanded, one could only wonder how sensitive Ming China would have been to seeing Portugal, Spain, and then the Dutch, French, and British entering the fray in attempts to carve up influence and stake claims on territories across the Indian Ocean that Ming China considered its backyard full of tributaries.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I suppose if they conquered Burma then the rest would be easy. But last time that happened Qianlong was all "Fuheng, Arigun and Agui! Give me back my legions! and my son!"

[Roma_Victrix]

LOL. Qianlong = Augustus, but does Burma = Germania? Not really at all.

[Cyclops]

I wasn't really arguing for the Ming Chinese to have a colonial presence in the Indian Ocean, .... one could only wonder how sensitive Ming China would have been to seeing Portugal, Spain, and then the Dutch, French, and British entering the fray in attempts to carve up influence and stake claims on territories across the Indian Ocean that Ming China considered its backyard full of tributaries.

Yeah I agree with your ideas, I was just burbling ideas as they popped into my head. The Chinese definitely took a proprietary view of their backyard, and the example of Taiwan has been raised above.

If the Son of Heaven felt the East Indies was his backyard, and had the fleet to keep tabs I suspect lots of Spanish and Portuguese would wind up in chains before provinicial governers in coastal China for not having the correct paperwork.

Indigenous regimes in SE Asia might try to play off the European pirates against the Chinese fleet but wholesale takeovers by Europeans would be less likely as China could simply project massiv4e power to obliterate European arrangements with a much shorter supply line. Maybe in the fruitful tension between Europe and China Malay and Indonesian states could flourish and combine into sates of regional importance?

India would be pretty hard for China to penetrate politically as they weren't interesed in mass conquest. I think the arab trade of the Indian Ocean might be disrupted or taken over by Chinese who would then clash with the Portugeuse coming round the Cape: these two forces would hasve an interesting clash as both are a long way from home. Perhaps the Europeans would still make their way in India, albeit with interference from China requiring more direct government intervention in the form of naval support. So more RN and less John Company.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Well if I had to compare any region associated with Chinese military expansion to the Roman Empire then Vietnam or Mongolia would be more like Germania. Burma would be more akin to say... Caledonia perhaps?

[Roma_Victrix]

This is how my OP should have looked.

In 1488 the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounded the the Cape of Good Hope in what is now South Africa. This milestone marked the beginning Portuguese exploration (and eventual colonization) of the countries along the vast Indian Ocean, paving the way for the Spanish, French, Dutch and English to follow. However, several decades before this such territories were considered the tributary backyard of the Ming Empire of China. And the Chinese weren't just coming by every few years to exchange gifts. The costly building and repeated launching of their giant Treasure Fleet under the Yongle and Xuande emperors, commanded by their Admiral Zheng He from 1405 to 1433, signaled a desire to gain the tributary submission of the entire Indian Ocean region, as well as to project the image of power befitting the Son of Heaven (or in Chinese, tianzi 天子). As with tributary states that bordered the Chinese empire on land, these states were then viewed as being within the reach of the Chinese emperor and were accountable to him. Nothing could emphasize that more than when the Ming Treasure Fleet of Zheng He engaged in the Ming-Kotte War of 1410, in what is now Sri Lanka. Alakeshvara (Vijayabahu VI of Gampola), the Sinhalese ruler of Kotte in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), defied the Chinese by engaging in piracy against them and attacking other tributary states the Ming viewed as their protectorates (such as Jaffna). This led to the Ming invasion of the island, the sacking of its capital, and the capture of Alakeshvara along with his entire royal family. The captives were brought back to the Ming capital at Nanjing (this was ten years before Beijing was made the capital) and were only freed later when the Yongle Emperor decided that Alakeshvara should be reestablished. However, by that point a rival Sinhalese dynasty had taken his place.

Fast forward about a century to 1527 and we find the Portuguese beginning their fight to control the same island, following initial trade contacts with both Kotte and Jaffna. By the mid 17th century the Portuguese were ousted as the Dutch took over. The latter were then followed by the British in 1815, before Sri Lanka gained commonwealth status under the Dominion of Ceylon in 1948. Yet Sri Lanka was just one piece to a larger puzzle of Portuguese expansion. When the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in Malaysia in 1511, this was cause enough for the Ming to be wary when Portuguese started to arrive in China. Among the first were Jorge Álvares and Rafael Perestrello, the former being the first European to reach southern China (Guangdong) by sea, the latter being the first to trade directly with the Chinese since the days of Marco Polo and other Italian merchants at the Yuan dynasty court (which also brought a short-lived series of Catholic bishops in the late 13th and early 14th centuries). In 1517 Manuel I, King of Portugal, authorized Fernão Pires de Andrade and Tomé Pires to head a new trade mission to China. The Zhengde Emperor greeted the Portuguese briefly at Nanjing and promised them an official audience at Beijing later on.

However, when the emperor died suddenly in 1521 and was succeeded by the Jiajing Emperor, policy towards the Portuguese changed abruptly. Due to the hostile and provocative actions of Simão de Andrade, Fernão Pires's brother, the Portuguese had already made a bad name for themselves at the imperial court (especially after building a fort at Tuen Mun). Chinese officials who sided with the overthrown representatives of the Malacca Sultanate convinced the new emperor to have the Portuguese expelled. When they were told to leave port at Tuen Mun and refused, a naval battle ensued. Fernão Pires de Andrade and Tomé Pires, who traveled back to Canton from Beijing, were taken prisoner, living out the rest of their lives in captivity in China while writing letters to their fellow Portuguese back home in Portugal and at the Portuguese colony of Goa, India. Many of the prisoners of the naval battles didn't fair as well, since they were eventually executed by Chinese authorities, while other prisoners were allowed to retire and resume trading in Guangdong, including at Macau. The latter was only officially recognized by the Ming emperors as a Portuguese trade colony in 1557, yet before that a trade agreement was made between it's first governor Leonel de Sousa and the Ming court in 1554, while annual trade missions to Shangchuan Island had been authorized in 1549. The Ming court apparently saw the Portuguese as far more trustworthy trading partners when they helped to dispatch coastal pirates in the South China Sea. Macau would remain in Portuguese possession until its transfer to the Chinese government in 1999, ending the last European colony held in China (since Hong Kong had been handed over by the British in 1997).

My question is a simple one: what if the Ming Treasure fleets hadn't been scrapped in favor of insular diplomacy and cost cutting measures by the Ming court? What sort of conflicts would the Portuguese and Chinese see in the Indian Ocean should they butt heads over similar territories?

[hellheaven1987]

Nothing, unless China decided to pursue an aggressive oversea mercantilism.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I recall reading in "Firearms a Global History" that the Ming initially believed the Portuguese to be Indians. Portuguese were considered notorious pirates (which to be honest they did engage in piracy and smuggling) so the Ming actually tried to combat them to much success in the 1520s. Somehow this led to the Ming recognizing them as a trade partner.

[hellheaven1987]

Consider pretty much every trader on China Sea in 16th Century was also a pirate, that conclusion probably was not surprised.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Let's see; Dutch, Japanese, Malaysians, Portuguese yeah sounds about right.
Ever individual boat on the China Sea was probably engaged in some sketchy dealings. Based on my class readings of the Opium Wars that seems to be the case in the 1800's as well.

[IrishBlood]

I read a great deal about this some time ago, in terms of 'who would win' in large scale naval battles, the Ming fleets would. Hands down. No question.

At this period of time the only 'European' fleet large enough to pose a threat were the Venetians, but they obviously were not going to venture into the Indian Ocean.

Take for example this Ming treasure ship compared to one of the ships columbus used to sail the ocean blue around the same time;



I think its pretty easy to see who the victor would be. Fair enough the Chinese did not have many of those ships, but they had many more smaller warships and merchant ships that were a great deal larger than comparable European ships. To my knowledge Chinese firearms and cannon were not that much different to their European counterparts and unless a European power sailed a vast armada around the horn of Africa into the Indian Ocean, they would always be outnumbered by the Chinese in a large pitched battle (assuming of course that the ming presence in the Indian Ocean was maintained).

Trade did flourish in this time period, it wasnt just symbolic tributes sent back to China. A great deal of trade did occur and with more time this could have increased exponentially, especially if trade could have been established with the Europeans. The Indian ocean could have become a Chinese controlled transit hub for trade between Europe/Africa and China/Japan/South-East Asia.

I dont think its inconceivable to imagine the Ming fleets establishing secure naval ports along the Indian Ocean as the Europeans would later do to secure their supply routes and have dry-docks for supply and maintenance of the fleets.

Also here's a discussion on another site regarding a similar topic: the Spanish Armada Vs the Zheng He treasure fleet.

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forum...ad.php?t=91738