Compare Columbus’s exploration of America and Zheng He’s trip to “The Western Ocean”

Compare and contrast Columbus’ exploration of America and Zheng

He’s trip to “The Western Ocean”

Material Science and Engineering School,Xu Xuehui,5110519027

Tutor: School of Foreign Languages, Wei Xiaofei

ABSTRACT

Columbus’ exploration of America and Zheng He’s trip to “The Western Ocean” are both magnificent feat of that era. But through the comparison we can find out that although in many ways Zheng He's voyages are much superior to Columbus's , but the influence of Zheng He's voyages is far less than the Columbus’ discovering the new world.The most important reason is that their primary purposes differ.And the root cause is that Chinese and Western countries’ social system and culture distinguishes from each other. What we people today can do is to adopt the global strategy and learn more from forien countries. Keywords：Columbus, Zheng He, influence, cause

1. Events

1.1 Columbus’ exploration of America

On August 3, 1492, 42-year-old Columbus departured from Barros Port with 87 sailors. They went through numerous difficulties and dangers when they went across the Atlantic and finally they reached Cuba, Haiti and some other islands in America. After Columbus’s first arrival in America, he was appointed by the king of Spain to go on with his exploration of America in 1493 September, 1498 March and 1502 May and he didn't’t disappoint the king.He succeeded to go across the Atlantic to the new world three times and left his footprints on almost the whole Caribbean Sea areas.He also reached the south of the continent.

1.2 Zheng He’s trip to “The Western Ocean”

On July 11,1405,the Yongle Emperor ordered Zheng He to lead a large fleet of two hundred and forty ships and twenty-seven thousand four hundred crew to make a sea voyage to “The Western Ocean”.He visited more than 30 regions and countries which were of the coast of the Western Pacific Ocean and India Ocean.As a result,his visits deepened China's friendly relationship with Southeast Asia and East Africa. He had journeyed up to seven times until 1433.

2. Comparison of their purposes

2.1 Columbus’ purposes

Representative point of view s of Columbus’ purposes are “L ooking for a direct sea route to India”[1], “Opening a new sea route towards Africa and the East and plundering new territories”[2], “S eeking for spices and other articles of luxury in Asia”[3] and looking for gold. These views are all reasonable.However, from my point of view, the primary purpose of Columbus’ exploration of A merica is to get gold because benefit counts.No benefit,no exploration.

2.2 The purposes of Zheng He's voyages

Different people have different opinions about the purposes of Zheng He's voyages. Here are some typical opinions. The first is to look for Emperor Zhu Yunwen who was usurped the throne by Emperor Zhu

Di. The second is to show off how strong the Ming Dynasty is to the foreign lands.To resume diplomatic relations with some western countries and regions[4]and seek for internal and external stability are also important[5].For economic purposes,to meet the needs of the rulers of the priceless treasures and strengthen cultural exchanges count. To sum up,Zheng He sailed to “The Western Ocean” eight times for the reason of both political needs and economic aspects.I personally hold the view that his political purposes are the most essential. “During the last years of Hongwu period, most of countries overseas had not paid tribute to the emperor for a long time.”[6]“S o soon after Emperor Zhu Di became the emperor, Zheng He was dispatched to Asian and African countries many times to attract envoys to pay tribute and open up the tributary trade.”[7] All in all, Zheng He's aim is to maintain and expand the suzerain-vassal system.

https://www.360docs.net/doc/0911333646.html,parison of their scales

On the one hand,Zheng He’s expedition which traveled to “The Western Ocean” was the largest ocean-going fleet in fifteenth century.He had a crew of about 27000 people and his fleet had over 200 ships of all kinds each time he sailed to “The Western Ocean”. Among them, the hugest ship which was called "the Treasure Ship" was the backbone of the fleet. The length of “the T reasure Ship” ranged from 130 to 150 meters and its width ranged from 50 to 60 meters. In addition to “the T reasure Ship”, there were speedsters, grain ships, warships, water ships and other types of ships too. We can say that it was a hybrid fleet with an excellent structure.On the other hand,the scale of Columbus’fleet was much smaller than Zheng He’s. On his first voyage, he had only 3 caravels and 87 sailors. The displacement of the largest flagship "Santa Maria"was no more than 250 tons which was just one-tenth of the displacement of a treasure ship. On the second time, the scale of Columbus’fleet was the largest.He had a crew of 2500 people and 17 boats.Even though,when compared with Zheng He’s fleet,his was put into the shade.

4. Analyses of the effects on the development of their countries and the world

From 1405 to 1424, Zheng He had traveled to “The Western Ocean” fo r seven times. Their advanced ship-building technologies and navigation technologies,great influences,large displacement of ships, the huge amount of sailors and the strict organization were unmatched at that time all over the world. Their achievements of navigation were inferior to the western people by no means compared with Columbus’ achievements. Even during the sailing time, Columbus’ maritime activities were much inferior to Zheng He’s when compared in the aspect of the scale of fleet and maritime technologies.However, why did the magnificent of Zheng He's voyages become the beginning of China’s further isolation and decline instead of making China more open and more prosperous? Why did Columb us’ voyages which were nearly a hundred years after the Zhe ng He’s trips become the prelude of Spanish and the whole Western Europe’s large scale of colonial expansion overseas and open a prologue of the prosperity of European in spite of their small scales? My analyses are as follows.

4.1 The effects of Columb us’ voyages to the western world

The opening of new routes changed the course of world history. It opened up a new era in the new world’s development and colonization. Columb us’ opening up new routes aroused the maritime upsurge in Western Europe. Oriental goods and the profits of maritime trades directly accelerated the primitive accumulation of capitalism.On the one hand, the Western European countries accumulated abundant mineral resources and raw materials. On the other hand, Europeans could build many colonies overseas with this findings, which relieved the pressure of the expansion of the population in Europe. The opening of the new sea routes resulted into the American Indian civilization's destruction and the appearances of some

new countries in the Western Hemisphere from the point of view of in the long run. These countries are quite different from the indigenous Indian tribes which had greatly affected all countries on the old continent. This kind of influence prompted the European trade routes and trade centers to transfer from the Mediterranean to the the Atlantic coast. From then on, the West had finally come out of the darkness of the middle ages,began to rise up with an irresistible trend at an incredible speed and achieved their maritime hegemony in the following centuries. A new industrial civilization had become the mainstream of the world economy. From this point of view, Columb us’ voyages had a far-reaching influence to the development of Western Europe and even of the whole world.

4.2 The influences of Zheng He's voyages to China

In ancient times, China attached great importance to agriculture and despised commercial. Official trade mainly served for the court, so the tributary trade which was brought by Zheng He’s voyages had little effect on the development of domestic civil economy and commodity economy but greatly hurt the development of overseas business. Because Ming Dynasty's tributary trade carried out the principle of "giving more and getting less", overseas countries which were original to do business with Chinese businessmen all joined the ranks of tributary trade and gained huge profits from the gifts of Ming Dynasty. At the same time, the number of Chinese goods which were carried by Zheng He's fleet was enough to meet the overseas market demands for Chinese goods. So, since then all of the regions which were located in the East and the India Ocean no longer relied on Chinese maritime merchants to get Chinese goods[8]. What’s more, Zheng He's costly voyages which made government's coffers almost empty were hard to continue because of the lack of lasting economic support. In fact, Chinese economy had appeared the new trend which conformed to the historical trend of the world before Zheng He's expeditions.On the contrary because of the financial deficit, the government implemented bans on maritime trade and adopted a policy of seclusion, which made China cut off the links with Western countries abruptly and caused China to retire and gradually fall behind the western developed countries. Since then, the Chinese traditional overseas trade markets were gradually occupied by European and China eventually quit the world market which was under formation.

5.Conclusion and inspiration

Columbus’ exploration of America and Zheng He’s trip to “The Western Ocean” are both magnificent feat of that era. They both have injected fresh blood to the country and the world in varying degrees. But through the comparison we can find out that although in many ways, such as the size of the fleet, the sailing time and so on,Zheng He's voyages are much superior to Columbus's , but the influence of Zheng He's voyages is far less than the Columbus’ discovering the new world.Thhe most important reason is that their primary purposes differ.Zheng He’s trip to “The Western Ocean” aims at showing off how strong the Ming Dynasty is while Columbus’ exploration of America aims to discover a whole new world and do some influential things.And the root cause is that Chinese and Western countries’ social system and culture distinguishes from each other. History is history and what we people today can do is to remember the lessons that history teaches us.To make it more specific,our country should adopt the global strategy and learn more from foreign countries.

References

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