[No Truce With Kings]

"I know the true story of this but the details escape me. The Dynasty tha ruled China did send out huge junks to many parts of the world to gather information and bring back samples and impress the barbarians. Once those huge junks returned the Emperor decided that the Chinese had nothing to learn from the outside world and burned the fleet, banned contact with outsiders and closed itself from the outside world."

Kinda, sorta, what happened.

The Ming emperors (yep, them of Ming vase fame) were the outward-looking emperors. They were the ones that commissioned the voyages. Then a bunch of horse barbarians from the north, the Manchu, started moving into China. The Ming defunded the great voyages of exploration -- at least in part because they needed to repell the Manchus. In the end, the Manchu won, kicked the Ming off the mainland, and took over as the ruling dynasty -- the last emporers, as it turned out.

The heart of the Ming regions included the maritime provinces, and the rump of the Ming military fought on from the islands, including Taiwan. However, they were cut off from the mainland, and withered away, finally degenerating in the Chinese pirates so prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Manchu, having started as plains horsemen, were uncomfortable around seagoing vessels, anyway. They helped the "withering" process by banning seagoing boats, and closing off contact with the outside world. It was the easiest way to weaken what was left of the Ming supporters.

Unfortunately for China, which historically *had* been a powereful maritime nation, this atypical "hermit" policy went into place in the middle 1600s, to be enforced through most of the 18th and 19th century. Since this coincided with the European Age of Exploration, it resulted in the Chinese getting caught in a historical back-current, just when they could least afford to have done so.

Thus western opinion of China has been taken from a limited and atypical period. Win some, lose some.

Frankly, I think the author's contention that the Chinese circumnavigated the globe 60 years before Magellan to be dingo's kidneys, because this would have placed it in the period when China had been retreating from exploration. If he had claimed 100 or 120 years earlier, it would seem more plausible. Oh well, I will have to get the book.

[Destro]

Yup, that's the story. The problem is people take some historical truth and build fantasies around them which in turn spooks the scholarly community from this sort of specualtion.

[yankeedame]

Excellent post!
The "sea-friendly" Ming emperor-- and usurper-- was Emperor Yung-Lo who ruled in the first half of the 15th c. Some speculate that he commissioned these voyages b/c he was a usurper and so felt the need to bolster his reputation and power at home. Almost everyone disapproved of these "missions" as a waste of money, as a misdirection of money, and the fact that it gave extraordinary power to the already powerful upper ranks of palace eunuchs.
The emperors in the later half of the century were Ying Tsung, 1457A.D.(a spend-thrift playboy) and Cheng-hua, 1465A.D.(who stuttered so badly that he effectly withdrew from court/political life, turning over darn near everything to the court eunuchs). Neither had any interest in the "barbarians" outside the border of China.

[blam]

"Then a bunch of horse barbarians from the north, the Manchu, started moving into China. "

When did this occur, who were these folks and where were they from. Your estimates of those questions is okay, I'm not expecting exactness. (I'm interested in this area...could they have been Hakka? Xiongnu?)