When China Ruled the Seas

In 1418, in the East African coastal city of Malindi in what is today Kenya, an impressive armada of ships appeared on the horizon, which the observers on the beach first took to be storm clouds. In fact, the “clouds” were giant sails on the massive ships. Totaling almost a hundred ships, the armada included supplies, water tanks, horses for a cavalry, and thousands of soldiers. The largest cargo ships were 400 feet in length and equipped with nine masts. This was the Chinese treasure fleet, commanded by Admiral Zheng He, which sailed from China through the Indian Ocean as far as Africa seven times between 1405 and 1433.

As Levathes explains, China under the newly established Ming dynasty “extended its sphere of political power and influence throughout the Indian Ocean” and was poised to “become the great colonial power, a hundred years before the great age of European exploration and expansion” (20). Then it ceased its sea voyages and retreated into isolation as quickly as it expanded. This allowed the West to catch up and surpass China technologically, leading to a very different outcome than the one contemporaries might have imagined in the early 15th century.