The Eunuch Admiral (2011) | Hacker News Reader

The Eunuch Admiral (2011)

alumni.berkeley.edu

44 pointsbreathnow27 comments

> More than a mere diary, Ying Yai Sheng-lan is a treatise on society and nature across half the planet in the 15th century, and the comprehensive account of a novel undertaking: Zheng’s fleet, the most lethal in existence, will ply the seas for three decades without conquering a single foreign state or annexing a sliver of territory.

> In the words of the late Franz Schurmann, another legendary Berkeley sinologist, the vision behind the mammoth enterprise is “a world of exchange, rather than a world of conflict.” An inconceivable world, by the standards of Western imperialism, which takes the stage a century later.

Seems likely that Cheng Ho was a likely inspiration (given both his name and the description of his voyages) for Vernor Vinge's Qeng Ho space-faring trading decentralized civilization of sorts.

> The Ming ships are fantastically larger than anything the world has ever seen. Europe’s conquest of the global seas will begin in the 1490s, with the departures of Vasco da Gama for India and Christopher Columbus for the Americas. All seven of their vessels would have fit easily on the 80,000-square-foot main deck of Zheng He’s flagship; the Europeans’ combined crews of 260 amount to less than 1 percent of Zheng He’s 30,000.

I am not sure how much those numbers are to be trusted. For one thing, that is a huge leap in a single generation. Secondly, you are limited in how big you can make wooden ships (especially ocean going ships) because they have to be able to withstand the forces caused by waves lifting up one end of the ship. It wasn’t until steel ships that we had a material that was strong enough to be able to build these massive ships.

indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He#Disputes_of_historica... covers this

also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He#Treasure_Shipyard_exc...

both are an interesting read.

So you think the unearthed rudder mentioned later in the article is fake?

No. But scaling from the rudder size to a ship size is very inexact and involves a lot of assumptions.

No. But rudder size doesn't linearly scale with the ship. Different types of vessels have different rudders, based on their hull and environment. And it wasn't a rudder, but a rudder pole. And size of the rudder it was supposed to be part of is under heavy dispute.

The article discussed a rudder pole AND the remains of a large rudder.

I'm wondering if this is a propaganda meme, as someone shared a related article with me within the last few weeks: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/zheng-he-china-explore...

> Both Marco Polo and the Moroccan explorer Ibn Batuta wrote of seeing huge seagoing vessels in their visits to the East. Some experts believe the treasure ships Zheng sailed were 400 feet long, or five times the size of Columbus’ ships, with 70,000 square-foot decks, though those numbers remain in debate.

Taking it at face value, it appears some other force of history in their culture annihalated all evidence of an technologically advanced civilization and allowed the region to be exploited by the Portuguese and British without even a land invasion. If this mega ship tech existed in the region, what did the invaders have that prevented them from being repelled?

China went into isolation after Zheng Hes journies, going as far as burning the ships and declaring basically the coast a no-go zone. What little seafaring the Chinese did was illegal smuggling (a lot of others, e.g. Japanese, seafarers contributed there) and coastal fishing. Hence, when the Europeans showed up, with better armed ships, there was not much in opossing them on the seas.

So the answer is, by the time the Europeans showed, those ships didn't exist anymore.

This is slightly inaccurate.

The "little seafaring the Chinese did" in illegal trade was actually a huge business, and these "pirates" ended up merging with the remnants of the last Ming court, and eventually drove away the Dutch forces settled in Formosa (aka Taiwan). See eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Zeelandia

Even during the Qing dynasty, "pirate" forces in the China coastal seas were huge, often commanding forces up to tens of thousands of men, and hundreds of war ships. The Chinese government in Beijing of course did not do much though, and basically repeatedly and actively sabotaged the sea trade in order to suppress the "pirates". (see eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao )

If the Chinese governments at the time did not see these "pirates" as an adversary but instead figured out profit sharing schemes like the European powers did with the "East India Companies", it's hard to say whether the Europeans would have dominated the Far East trade so easily.

Had the Chinese emperors not retreated from the Pacific, world history would look a lot different now, that's for sure.

> it appears some other force of history in their culture annihalated all evidence of an technologically advanced civilization

There have been multiple occasions both in the imperial eras and the Cultural Revolution when the upcoming Chinese power has attempted to eradicate all evidence of a previous power that didn't fit an approved narrative. In particular, the "treasure fleets" were the victim of domestic power struggles.

The Japanese invasion of China was enabled by China's internal collapse and the final demise of the Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Dowager_Cixi

Isn't that the geopolitical equivalent of 'You wouldn't know her. She goes to another school. In Canada."?

Chinese records by the 1600s note that European ships were more maneuverable especially sailing against the wind and had longer range cannons. The advantages hadn't grown large enough so the Ming were still able to beat the few limited European incursions that made it all the way to China, but the differences grew larger over time that the Qing fleets were too slow and their gun ranges were much much worse.

In addition, there’s 300 years of intense competition and iterative design between European ships of thee 1490s and the Santisima Trinidad(to name a big ship). Including embarrassments like the Vasa going straight to the bottom of the Baltic.

So I’m curious where the design expertise for the massive treasure fleet came from? Earlier Chinese designs? Maybe Malay peoples?

Southern China has always had a lot of sea trade activity. You don't hear that often because Chinese history is mostly written by people from the North, where the political center is usually situated (i.e. Beijing).

> Each of the vessels was roughly 450 feet long and 180 feet across the beam.

There is no way that Zheng He's ships were anywhere near that size. The largest practical ocean-going wooden ship was "Great Republic" at 102 meters (330 ft). It had steel keel reinforcement.

The largest ever "wooden" ocean-going ship was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_(schooner) at 450ft, and it had to have steam pumps constantly working just to keep it afloat.

I wouldn't be so quick to claim "no way", given our past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula%27s_Giant_Ship (about 312 feet... done about two thousand years ago).

I'm sure that isn't the only example of "very large, very long time ago". And yes, we have a tendency to completely ignore anything east of Ankara, while I can't imagine the whole other side of the planet not having cool things, including large ships, too.

The keyword is "ocean-going". You can make barges or freshwater craft that are larger. But not ocean-going vessels.

You are assuming the naval architects in question were sophisticated enough to make that distinction.

Do you know what was that ship for? I'll give you a hint, ocean it was not.

Ocean going vessels have to deal with stresses beyond those experienced on rivers, or lakes. This ship was probably similar to those from Nemi. That is, a semi mobile floating palace.

Wood species have much variation in strength. What is available in European countries is not an example of the most dense and rigid wood.

And what is then?

>> It had steel keel reinforcement

I answered to that sentence. There are multiple species that are very hard.

olea capensis or Guibourtia in Africa, Schinopsis brasiliensis in Brasil.

In addition even hundred years ago wood was processed chemically: For example it was common to plunge wood intended for boat constructions in water for a long time, sometimes centuries (Colbert in France).

Maybe it was a littoral combat ship?

> the vision behind the mammoth enterprise is “a world of exchange, rather than a world of conflict.” An inconceivable world, by the standards of Western imperialism, which takes the stage a century later.

I have a lot of skepticism about this story. For one, the whole idea of a man with no naval or ocean experience being put in change of shipbuilding for the largest navy ever assembled consisting of the biggest ships ever assembled. It makes no sense whatsoever

But secondly, "western imperialists" of the time would have happily told you of how their fleets sailed the seas to create a "world of exchange". East india trading company? the spice islands? the whole idea was establishing trade networks. Turns out that is pretty brutal when it gets to extremes.

More likely this is a game of chinese whispers stemming from what probably was a magnificent voyage of a rather more modest fleet consisting of rather more modest ships (eight masts, really?), similar to those understaken by roman traders to what they called golden cathay (the malaysian peninsula).

You can read a more interesting comparison of accounts here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_treasure_ship

Something like the seafaring tradition and expertise to create even a tiny fraction of what is claimed here simply cannot be removed from history as thoughroughly as people are claiming it to have been

My favourite Zheng He myth involves the discovery of a gigantic Chinese ship in the sand dunes around the southern coast of Australia, near Adelaide [1].

Apparently, the early settlers were astonished to see this giant Chinese ship in the dunes, slowly eroding away .. and it was apparently regularly visited by adventurers during the early years of the state, only to drift into memory as the sands shifted and it could no longer be found.

I sure hope we find it one day - what a treat it would be to discover that the Chinese had an adventure down there ..

[1] - https://oztreasure.weebly.com/ancient-chinese-megaships.html

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