A Chinese wedding in the reform style
Geoff Wade, in a 2005 article for the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, challenges the dominant “ambassador of friendship” narrative surrounding the Ming eunuch Zheng He’s early fifteenth-century maritime expeditions. Wade argues that these voyages were not peaceful diplomatic missions but rather instruments of aggressive maritime proto-colonialism, forming the third prong of the Yong-le emperor’s southern expansion alongside the invasions of Đai Viet and the Tai polities of Yun-nan.
Summary
Wade’s central intervention is to situate the Zheng He voyages within a broader framework of Ming imperial expansion rather than treating them as isolated acts of benevolent diplomacy. He identifies three concurrent prongs of Yong-le’s southward push: the colonization of the Tai polities in Yun-nan, the invasion and occupation of Đai Viet (1406–1428), and the eunuch-led maritime missions to the Western Ocean. By placing the maritime voyages in this tripartite context, Wade demonstrates that they shared the same strategic logic as the land-based campaigns—military coercion, the imposition of tribute, the extraction of wealth, and the establishment of administrative control over subordinate polities.
The article draws heavily on the Ming shi-lu (Veritable Records of the Ming), the Wu-bei-zhi military compendium, and the Ying-yai sheng-lan of Ma Huan, supplemented by Portuguese sources such as De Barros and the Novus Orbis of Simon Grynaeus. Wade catalogues specific acts of violence and coercion—including the attack on Old Port in Sumatra (1407), the killing of 170 Chinese troops in Java (1407), the invasion of Sri Lanka and capture of its king (1411), and the seizure of Su-gan-la from Samudera (1415)—to demonstrate that the fleets functioned as gunboat armadas rather than trading convoys. He further argues that the establishment of military garrison depots at Melaka and Samudera, and the Ming role in fostering the rise of the port-state of Malacca, reveal a deliberate strategy of controlling the Straits of Malacca and the broader East–West maritime trade network.
Wade then engages with the historiography of colonialism, drawing on definitions by Armitage, Osterhammel, Emerson, and others to justify his use of the term “maritime proto-colonialism” for the Ming voyages. He distinguishes this from the full territorial colonialism seen in the occupation of Đai Viet and the longer-term colonization of Yun-nan, arguing that the maritime missions controlled nodes and networks rather than territory per se. He draws a direct parallel with the later Portuguese “protection racket” in the Indian Ocean, as described by M. N. Pearson, suggesting that the Ming system was functionally equivalent in its early phase.
Key Findings
- The Yong-le emperor mobilized approximately 800,000 troops (official figure; Whitmore estimates 215,000) for the 1406 invasion of Đai Viet, with 95,000 from southern provinces, 75,000 from Yun-nan, Gui-zhou, and Si-chuan, and 30,000 “native troops” from Guang-xi (pp. 42–43).
- Shipbuilding for the maritime missions was massive: 137 ocean-going ships ordered from Fu-jian in 1403, nearly 400 more from various military units the same year, 1,180 from Zhe-jiang and other commissions in 1405, and 48 “treasure-ships” (bao-chuan) built by the Ministry of Works by 1408 (p. 45).
- Individual missions comprised between 50 and 250 ships with 27,000–30,000 personnel; in one cited case, 26,800 of 27,400 aboard were rank-and-file military men, sailors, and clerks (p. 45).
- The 1407 attack on Old Port (Sumatra) resulted in 5,000 persons killed, 10 ships burnt, and 7 captured; the polity was subsequently reorganized as a “pacification superintendency” with a Ming-appointed ruler, Shi Jin-qing, a designation that ended in 1430 (p. 47).
- Following the 1407 Java incident in which 170 Chinese troops were killed, the Ming demanded 60,000 liang of gold in compensation from the Western king of Java, explicitly threatening military punishment and citing the Annam invasion as precedent (p. 48).
- A 1445 entry in the Ming shi-lu records the capture of three Javanese traders sailing to Siam, indicating that Ming policing of regional maritime trade continued for at least half a century after the formal end of the Zheng He voyages (p. 52).
Conclusion
Wade’s definitive takeaway is that the Zheng He voyages constituted a form of maritime proto-colonialism functionally analogous to the early Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean—a system of military coercion applied to port-polities and shipping lanes to extract tribute and maintain a pax Ming—and that the history of colonialism in Southeast Asia must be extended backward to include the actions of successive Chinese polities, not merely the European powers from the sixteenth century onward.
Context
- Primary sources: Ming shi-lu (Veritable Records of the Ming), Wu-bei-zhi (seventeenth-century military compendium containing fifteenth-century charts), Ying-yai sheng-lan (Ma Huan, 1433), Dong-xi-yang kao (Zhang Xie, 1618), and Portuguese sources including De Barros and the Novus Orbis (Grynaeus, 1555).
- Historiographical contribution: The article challenges the “popular” Chinese narrative of Zheng He as a peaceful envoy (represented by PRC officials and academics cited in the introduction) and repositions the voyages within the comparative historiography of colonialism, drawing on Armitage, Osterhammel, Emerson, and Pearson to argue for the applicability of colonialist frameworks to pre-modern Chinese maritime expansion.