To understand his appeal, it is worth comparing his work with that of his senior contemporary, Shen Zhou. Shen's mountains soar, his trees tower; the very air in his works seems to vibrate visibly with cosmic power. Human works and lives are reduced to specks in all this immensity. His most famous work, painted in 1487, now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei and known as Rainy Thoughts, Rainy Thoughts, recalls the tastes and circ.u.mstances revealed in the rain-induced mystical experience with which this chapter began. He realized that experience is incomplete until transformed, by some unseen power, into part of oneself. Until then, the bell and drum may as well be mute and the beauties of the landscape invisible. Sounds and vision die on the air. But when they register in the human mind, memory and art perpetuate them. The painter called this trans.m.u.ting power "will." recalls the tastes and circ.u.mstances revealed in the rain-induced mystical experience with which this chapter began. He realized that experience is incomplete until transformed, by some unseen power, into part of oneself. Until then, the bell and drum may as well be mute and the beauties of the landscape invisible. Sounds and vision die on the air. But when they register in the human mind, memory and art perpetuate them. The painter called this trans.m.u.ting power "will."

"Sounds are cut off, colours obliterated; but my will, absorbing these, endures. What is the so-called will? Is it inside me, after all, or outside? Does it exist in external things or does it come into being because of those things?" 15 15 In the calm of his vigil, in mystical interpenetration with the rest of nature, when his being engaged and fused with the stimuli around him, he sensed the answer.

"How great is the power of sitting up at night! One should purify one's heart and sit alone, by the light of a newly trimmed, bright candle. Through this practice one can pursue the principles that underlie events and things, and the subtlest workings of one's own mind.... Through this, we shall surely attain understanding." 16 16 On another occasion, he recorded "in a chance moment of exhilaration" a night spent in conversation with a friend on a wet night.

Doing a painting in the rain, I borrow its wet richness.Writing poems by candlelight, we pa.s.s the long night.Next morning, in sun, we open the gate; the spring freshness has spread.At the lakesh.o.r.e you leave me among the singing willows.17 The real subject is the rain-soaked world. The room where the artists sit draws the eye, because it glows with light, but its scale is insignificant and our view of it indistinct. The rain dominates the composition, seeping into the very paper on Shen Zhou's sopping brush, speckling the air with spongy dabs, dripping from the tall thickets and dense copses that overshadow the painter's flimsy house, blurring the dark mountains that glower in the background.

Wu Wei, by contrast, painted people not as fragments of a landscape or specks in an enveloping cosmos. In his work, humankind is nearly always dominant. Even when he located people in large-scale landscapes, he always made them bigger and more active than Shen Zhou's characteristic figures. When he painted scholars, he made them dominate the composition, as if mastering nature by the power of thought and the resources of knowledge. Typically, his sages are strongly delineated, while the sketchy trees and hills around them seem feeble by comparison.

Although Confucianism never monopolized Chinese values, it did dominate the culture of the late-fifteenth-century court and of the administrative elite throughout the empire. Part of the consensus was that the empire was already big enough for its own purposes. It comprised all that mattered under heaven. It could supply its own wants from its own resources. If the "barbarians" outside its frontiers realized the wisdom of acknowledging Chinese superiority, revering the emperor, paying tribute, and adopting Chinese ways, that was welcome, in the foreigners' own interests. But the best way to attract them was by example, not by war. The state should defend its frontiers but not waste blood and wealth to enlarge them.

Earlier in the century, when factional squabbles displaced the Confucians from power, China had looked briefly as though it might launch a major effort to found a seaborne empire, reaching out across the Indian Ocean. The Yongle emperor (r. 140224) aggressively sought contact with the world beyond the empire. He meddled in the politics of China's southern neighbors in Vietnam and enticed the j.a.panese to trade. The most spectacular manifestation of the new outward-looking policy was the career of the Muslim eunuch-admiral Zheng He. In 1405, he led the first of a series of naval expeditions, the purpose of which has been the subject of long and unresolved scholarly debate but which was intended in part, at least, to exert political power around the Indian Ocean's sh.o.r.es. He replaced unacceptable rulers in Java, Sumatra, and Sri Lanka, founded a puppet state on the commercially important Strait of Malacca, and gathered tribute from Bengal. He displayed Chinese power as far away as Jiddah, on the Red Sea coast of Arabia, and in major ports in East Africa as far south as the island of Zanzibar. "The countries beyond the horizon," he announced with some exaggeration, "and from the ends of the Earth, have become subjects." 18 18 He restocked the imperial zoo with giraffes, ostriches, zebras, and rhinoceroses-all hailed as beasts bringing good luck-and brought Chinese geographical knowledge up to date. He restocked the imperial zoo with giraffes, ostriches, zebras, and rhinoceroses-all hailed as beasts bringing good luck-and brought Chinese geographical knowledge up to date.

Can Zheng He's voyages be called an imperial venture? Their official purpose was to pursue a fugitive pretender to the Chinese throne-but that would not have required expeditions on so vast a scale to such distant places. The Chinese called the vessels "treasure ships" and emphasized what they called "tribute gathering." (In the more distant spots Zheng He's ships visited, what happened was more like an exchange.) Commercial objectives may have been involved. Almost all the places Zheng He visited had long been important in Chinese trade. In part, the voyages were scientific missions: Ma Huan, Zheng He's interpreter, called his own book on the subject The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Sh.o.r.es, The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Sh.o.r.es, and improved maps and data on the plants, animals, and peoples of the regions visited were among the expeditions' fruits. But flag showing is always, to some extent, about power or, at least, prestige. And the aggressive intervention Zheng He made in some places, together with the tone of his commemorative inscriptions, demonstrates that the extension or reinforcement of China's image and influence was part of the project. and improved maps and data on the plants, animals, and peoples of the regions visited were among the expeditions' fruits. But flag showing is always, to some extent, about power or, at least, prestige. And the aggressive intervention Zheng He made in some places, together with the tone of his commemorative inscriptions, demonstrates that the extension or reinforcement of China's image and influence was part of the project.

One of the star charts Ma Huan composed en route with Zheng He between the Persian Gulf and Calicut.

Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan: Ying-yai Sheng-lan: " "The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Sh.o.r.es," ed. J. V. G. Mills (Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society, 1970). Courtesy of The Hakluyt Society. ed. J. V. G. Mills (Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society, 1970). Courtesy of The Hakluyt Society.

It is hard to see how else the huge investment the state made in his enterprise could have been justified. Zheng He's expeditions were on a crushing scale. His ships were much bigger than anything European navies could float at the time. The first expedition was said to comprise 62 junks of the largest dimensions ever built, 225 support vessels, and 27,780 men. The vessels-to judge from a recently discovered rudder post-justified the awed terms of contemporary a.s.sessments, displacing, perhaps, over three thousand tons; this was ten times the size of the largest ships afloat in Europe at the time. The seventh voyage-probably the longest in reach-sailed 12,618 miles. The voyages lasted on average over two years each. Some silly claims have been made for Zheng He's voyages. Ships of his fleet did not sail beyond the limits of the Indian Ocean-much less discover America or Antarctica.

His achievements, however, clearly demonstrated China's potential to become the center of a maritime empire of enormous reach. Strictly speaking, these were not route-finding voyages. As we have seen, the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, across maritime Asia, and into East Africa had been familiar to Chinese merchants for centuries. In the early thirteenth century, Zhao Rugwa provided a practical handbook for commercial travelers in Southeast Asia and India. There were certainly opportunities to increase commercial openings by backing initiatives with force. The trades of the region were highly lucrative, including spices, fragrant hardwoods, valuable medicinal drugs, and exotic animal products. The motives for dispatching the "treasure ships," however, transcended commerce. Zheng He was engaged on what would now be called flag-waving missions, impressing the ports he visited with Chinese power and stimulating the awe of the emperor's home const.i.tuency with exotica that the Chinese cla.s.sified as the tribute of remote peoples.19 The official pretext for his commission-which few believed, then or now-was to search for a fugitive ex-emperor who was supposed to be in hiding abroad. Strategic considerations were clearly involved. Zheng He intervened actively in the politics of some ports in Southeast Asia that were important for China's trade and security. A potentially hostile empire had recently arisen in central Asia under the Turkic chief Timur, usually known in the West as Tamerlane or Tamberlaine; apprehension may have sent the Chinese sniffing for allies and intelligence around the edges of the new menace. Whatever the motives of the expeditions, part of the effect was to consolidate Chinese knowledge of the routes Zheng He took, and to compile practical maps and sailing directions for them. The official pretext for his commission-which few believed, then or now-was to search for a fugitive ex-emperor who was supposed to be in hiding abroad. Strategic considerations were clearly involved. Zheng He intervened actively in the politics of some ports in Southeast Asia that were important for China's trade and security. A potentially hostile empire had recently arisen in central Asia under the Turkic chief Timur, usually known in the West as Tamerlane or Tamberlaine; apprehension may have sent the Chinese sniffing for allies and intelligence around the edges of the new menace. Whatever the motives of the expeditions, part of the effect was to consolidate Chinese knowledge of the routes Zheng He took, and to compile practical maps and sailing directions for them.

The admiral was a Muslim eunuch of Mongol ancestry. Every feature of his background marked him as an outsider to the Confucian scholar-elites that dominated Chinese political life. When the emperor appointed him to lead the first oceangoing task force in 1403, it was a triumph for four linked factions at court, whose interests clashed with Confucian values. First, there was the commercial lobby, which wanted to mobilize naval support for Chinese traders in the Indian Ocean. Alongside the merchants, an imperialist lobby wanted to renew the program of imperial aggression espoused by the previous dynasty but opposed by Confucians, who theorized that the empire should expand, if at all, by peacefully attracting "barbarians" into its...o...b..t. Then there was the always-powerful Buddhist lobby, which wanted to keep state funds out of skeptical or anticlerical Confucian hands by diverting them to other projects, and which perhaps sensed opportunities for spreading the faith under the official aegis of imperial expansion.

The voyages did display China's potential as the launching bay of a seaborne empire: the capacity and productivity of her shipyards; her ability to mount expeditions of crushing strength and dispatch them over vast distances. Zheng He's encounters with opponents unequivocally demonstrated Chinese superiority. On the first expedition, he encountered a Chinese pirate chief who had set up a bandit state of his own in the sometime capital of Srivijaya in Sumatra. The pirates were slaughtered and their king sent to China for execution. On the third voyage, the Sinhalese king of Sri Lanka tried to lure Zheng He into a trap and seize the fleet. The Chinese dispersed his forces, captured his capital, deported him to China, and installed a pretender in his place. On the fourth expedition, a Sumatran chief who refused to cooperate in the exchange of gifts for tribute was overwhelmed, abducted, and, eventually, put to death.

Of all Zheng He's acts of political intervention, perhaps the most significant-in terms of long-term consequences-was his attempt to set up a Chinese puppet kingdom to control the trade of the Strait of Malacca, the vital bottleneck in the normal route between China and India. He chose to elevate Paramesvara, a bandit chief who had been driven from his own kingdom and had established a stronghold in the swamps of what is now known as Melaka, on the Malayan coast. In 1409, Zheng He conferred the seal and robes of kingship upon him. Paramesvara traveled to China to pay tribute in person and established a client relationship with the emperor; Chinese patronage turned his modest stronghold into a great and rich emporium.

Zheng He's own perception of his role seems to have combined an imperial impulse with the peaceful inspiration of commerce and scholarship. A stela he erected in 1432 began in a jingoistic vein: "In the unifying of the seas and continents the Ming Dynasty even goes beyond the Han and the Tang.... The countries beyond the horizon and from the ends of the earth have become subjects." That was an exaggeration, but he added, more plausibly, in deference to traders and geographers, "However far they may be, their distances and the routes may be calculated." 20 20 An "overall survey of the ocean's sh.o.r.es" was one of the fruits of the voyages. Copies of the charts survive thanks to the fact that they were reproduced in a printed work of 1621. Like European charts of the same period, they are diagrams of sailing directions rather than attempts at scale mapping. Tracks annotated with compa.s.s bearings show the routes between major ports and represent in visual form the sailing directions Zheng He recorded, all of which have the form "Follow such-and-such a bearing for such-and-such a number of watches." Each port is marked with its lat.i.tude according to the elevation of the Pole Star above the horizon, which Zheng He verified by means of "guiding star-boards"-ebony strips of various breadths held at a fixed distance from the observer's face to fill the s.p.a.ce exactly between the star and the horizon. An "overall survey of the ocean's sh.o.r.es" was one of the fruits of the voyages. Copies of the charts survive thanks to the fact that they were reproduced in a printed work of 1621. Like European charts of the same period, they are diagrams of sailing directions rather than attempts at scale mapping. Tracks annotated with compa.s.s bearings show the routes between major ports and represent in visual form the sailing directions Zheng He recorded, all of which have the form "Follow such-and-such a bearing for such-and-such a number of watches." Each port is marked with its lat.i.tude according to the elevation of the Pole Star above the horizon, which Zheng He verified by means of "guiding star-boards"-ebony strips of various breadths held at a fixed distance from the observer's face to fill the s.p.a.ce exactly between the star and the horizon.

But the Chinese naval effort could not last. Historians have debated why it was abandoned. Part of the answer, at least, is clear. The scholar-elites hated overseas adventures and the factions that favored them so much that, when they recaptured power, the mandarins destroyed almost all Zheng He's records in an attempt to obliterate his memory. Moreover, China's land frontiers became insecure as Mongol power revived. China needed to turn away from the sea and toward the new threat. The state never resumed overseas expansion. The growth of trade and of Chinese colonization in Southeast Asia was left to merchants and migrants. China, the empire best equipped for maritime imperialism, opted out. Consequently, lesser powers, including those of Europe, were able to exploit opportunities in seas that Chinese power vacated. It became possible for the Ryukyu Islands to be unified as a thriving emporium for the trade of China and j.a.pan with Southeast Asia. Sho Shin ruled the islands from 1477. He disarmed the warlords, sent bureaucrats to China for education in Confucian principles, and imposed internal peace.

In many ways, it was to the credit of Chinese decision makers that they pulled back from involvement in costly adventures far from home. Most powers that have undertaken such expeditions and attempted to impose their rule on distant countries have had cause to regret it. Confucian values, as we have seen, included giving priority to good government at home. "Barbarians" would submit to Chinese rule if and when they saw the benefits. Attempting to beat or coax them into submission was a waste of resources. By consolidating their landward empire, and refraining from seaborne imperialism, China's rulers ensured the longevity of their state. All the maritime empires founded in the world in the last five hundred years have crumbled. China is still here.

Ch'oe Pu's diary reflects the successes and limitations of Chinese Confucians' "soft power," as modern political theory would call it. Ch'oe Pu was aware of similar struggles and exchanges of prejudice between Confucians and their Buddhist rivals in Korea. He was such a pious Confucian, so respectful of the rites for the dead, that he refused to doff mourning, even when it might have exempted him from peril of his life, as when his companions were afraid of slaughter-either at the hands of brigands unintimidated by the sight of Ch'oe Pu's official uniform, or by Chinese peasants who mistook the Koreans for j.a.panese pirates. He declined to pray at a river shrine, which he regarded as superst.i.tious, despite the advisability of deferring to local customs. His contempt for Buddhism was excoriating. He denounced the futility of monks' prayers and rejoiced at the news of secularizations of monasteries because "the abolished temples become people's houses, the destroyed Buddhas become vessels, and the heads that once were bald are now hairy and fill the army's ranks." 21 21 He spoke to his Chinese hosts in terms that were calculated to flatter, but which also reflected two long-standing prejudices among Korea's elite: willingness to defer to China, and anxiety to imitate the Chinese. "In heaven," he admitted, there are not two suns. How under the same heaven can there be two emperors? My king's one purpose is to serve your country devotedly.22...Though my Korea is beyond the sea, its clothing and culture being the same as China's, it cannot be considered a foreign country. That is especially so now, with Great Ming's unification...under one roof. All under Heaven are my brothers; how can we discriminate among people because of distance? That is particularly true of my country, which respectfully serves the celestial court and pays tribute without fail. The Emperor, for his part, treats us punctiliously and tends us benevolently. The feeling of security he imparts is perfect.23 Ch'oe Pu learned to make a water wheel he saw in China because "it will be useful to Koreans for all ages to come." But when interrogators asked for military intelligence, he was evasive. When they asked the distance to Korea, he exaggerated. When officials asked him how Korea had managed to repel earlier Chinese attempts at conquest, he sidestepped the question and emphasized his country's strength.24 In his day, Korea was experiencing a Confucian revival parallel to China's-only more fragile. After a spell, in the previous reign, of royal dependence on Buddhist advisers and lavish patronage of Buddhist temples, Ch'oe's royal master, Sng-jong, who came to the throne in 1470, restored Confucianism, much as the Hongxi emperor did in China. Yet when Chinese dignitaries visited Korea, it struck them as an exotic and barbarous land, more notable for its differences from China than for the continuities Koreans strove to contrive. In 1487 an amba.s.sador arrived in Korea from the court of the new emperor of China. "The ministers," he reported back, "with pins in their hair, stand like ibises in attendance, while old and young gather on the hills to see.... The stone lions bask in the sun that rises from the sea. In front of the Kw.a.n.g-wha Gate they sit east and west, high as the towers, wonderfully hammered out." 25 25 He watched acrobats masked as lions and elephants in a palace painted red, with green gla.s.s windows, in the audience chamber. He watched acrobats masked as lions and elephants in a palace painted red, with green gla.s.s windows, in the audience chamber.26 The level of mealtime hospitality impressed him: five layers of honeyed bread, honey and flour cakes piled a foot high, rice soup, pickled relish, soy, rice wine superior in aroma and flavor to Chinese millet wine, beef, mutton, pork, walnuts, dates, mutton sausages, fish, and lotus roots to sweeten the breath. The level of mealtime hospitality impressed him: five layers of honeyed bread, honey and flour cakes piled a foot high, rice soup, pickled relish, soy, rice wine superior in aroma and flavor to Chinese millet wine, beef, mutton, pork, walnuts, dates, mutton sausages, fish, and lotus roots to sweeten the breath.27 He lectured the Koreans on Confucianism, in a way one suspects must have annoyed his hosts: "We proclaim the ceremonies of the Book of Spring and Autumn which says, 'The various states must first see to the rect.i.tude of the individual man.'" 28 28 In the long run, the lecture was to little avail. Chong-jik, the minister who put the policy of reviving the ceremonies into effect in Korea, died in 1492. After the king's death in 1494, his successor reversed the policy, beheaded Chong-jik's exhumed body, and scourged and exiled other leading Confucians, including Ch'oe Pu. In the long run, the lecture was to little avail. Chong-jik, the minister who put the policy of reviving the ceremonies into effect in Korea, died in 1492. After the king's death in 1494, his successor reversed the policy, beheaded Chong-jik's exhumed body, and scourged and exiled other leading Confucians, including Ch'oe Pu.

j.a.pan-the other country Columbus hoped to open trade with-was in no condition to contemplate taking the initiative in reaching out to the rest of the world. Ch'oe Pu, who so admired China, had less respect for j.a.pan. The riches of j.a.pan, he thought, would seem to a Korean like "ice to a summer bug." 29 29 But the country's problems were not fundamentally economic. j.a.panese rice could be harvested two or three times a year. Large amounts of copper, swords, sulfur, and sappanwood were exported to China. j.a.pan used Chinese coins, minted, for reasons no one has ever fully been able to explain, from copper produced in j.a.pan. The size and distribution of cities-concentrated, as usual in j.a.panese history, in the teeming heartland of southern Honshu and northern Kyushu-suggest that rural production was high and the systems of commerce and communications could dispense large amounts of food efficiently. Kyoto had reputedly two hundred thousand inhabitants before ruinous civil war broke out in the late 1460s. Tennoji in Kawachi province and Hakata in northern Kyushu had over thirty thousand people. More than twenty other towns had more than ten thousand. But the country's problems were not fundamentally economic. j.a.panese rice could be harvested two or three times a year. Large amounts of copper, swords, sulfur, and sappanwood were exported to China. j.a.pan used Chinese coins, minted, for reasons no one has ever fully been able to explain, from copper produced in j.a.pan. The size and distribution of cities-concentrated, as usual in j.a.panese history, in the teeming heartland of southern Honshu and northern Kyushu-suggest that rural production was high and the systems of commerce and communications could dispense large amounts of food efficiently. Kyoto had reputedly two hundred thousand inhabitants before ruinous civil war broke out in the late 1460s. Tennoji in Kawachi province and Hakata in northern Kyushu had over thirty thousand people. More than twenty other towns had more than ten thousand.

j.a.pan's problems were political. Though j.a.panese statesmen regarded China as their model, in practice the country was very differently managed. The emperor was a sacral, secluded figure, spared the vulgarities of politics by hereditary vicegerents known as shoguns. Control of Kyoto ensured fabulous revenues for the shoguns' government. They could afford to neglect the rest of the country. Provincial power was delegated to or usurped by the warlords as the price of peace. But peace in the hands of a warrior caste is always precarious. Trying to forget "the trials of this world," the poet Shinkei described the effects: "Even within the powerful clans selfish quarrels broke out between lord and retainer and among the rank and file, in which men of various stations fell in great numbers. And though they battled day and night, pitting their might against each other in their various territories, nowhere was the outcome ever decisive." 30 30 While squabbles of the aristocracy overspilled into violence, members of the military cla.s.s known as samurai made common cause with peasants oppressed by the warlords' need of money. Together they formed masterless leagues of self-defense that erupted in rebellion. They were, according to the poet-priest Ikkyu, who was a propagandist for the shogunate, "demons with red faces, their hot blood aroused,...turning the whole city into a den of thieves and striking fear in the people as they endlessly looted for treasures. And thus it came about that the people grew weary, the capital fell into ruin, and of the myriad ways of civilized men nothing remained." 31 31 From the late 1430s, the eastern provinces were steeped in constant warfare: "As the months stretched into years, myriads perished, their bodies torn by the sword as men fell upon each other in their madness, and still the strife showed no signs of letting up." A reforming shogun's attempts to rea.s.sert central authority ended in his a.s.sa.s.sination in 1441. Fifteen years of effective interregnum followed, while his successors were minors. When the shogun Yoshimasa reached maturity, he struggled to recoup power. In 1482, after the failure of all his efforts, he wrote that the daimyo, or warlords, "do as they please and do not follow orders. That means there can be no government." From the late 1430s, the eastern provinces were steeped in constant warfare: "As the months stretched into years, myriads perished, their bodies torn by the sword as men fell upon each other in their madness, and still the strife showed no signs of letting up." A reforming shogun's attempts to rea.s.sert central authority ended in his a.s.sa.s.sination in 1441. Fifteen years of effective interregnum followed, while his successors were minors. When the shogun Yoshimasa reached maturity, he struggled to recoup power. In 1482, after the failure of all his efforts, he wrote that the daimyo, or warlords, "do as they please and do not follow orders. That means there can be no government." 32 32 Meanwhile, in 1461 drought struck when not a single tuft of gra.s.s grew upon the fields across the land. From the capital and the villages, thousands of starving people, both high and low, wandered out to beg on the wayside, or just sat there till they crumpled over and died. It is impossible to say how many myriads perished in just a single day. The world had turned into a h.e.l.l of hungry ghosts before my eyes.33 In 1467 the two most powerful warlords came to blows, ostensibly over the succession to the shogunate, and were forced to flee when their armies ravaged the capital. "All, high and low, were thrown into utter confusion and scattered in the four directions, their flight swifter than flowers in a windstorm, red leaves beneath the tree-withering blast. Within the capital, it had become a veritable h.e.l.l." The poet Ichijo Kaneyoshi fled devastation so total that "only layers of cloud cover the remains," while bandits scattered the contents of his library-"the dwellings of hundreds of bookworms...that had been pa.s.sed down for over ten generations." 34 34 The following ten years were the most destructive in j.a.pan's long history of civil wars. The following ten years were the most destructive in j.a.pan's long history of civil wars.

"How terrible it is," wrote the poet Shinkei, "to have been born in the last days of such an utterly degenerate age." The calamities seemed to him "to presage the world's destruction." 35 35 Moralists blamed the indifference and self-indulgence of the ruling cla.s.ses, or the aloof lifestyle of the shogun, or the supposed influence of women at his court, or the corruption of his ministers. Moralists blamed the indifference and self-indulgence of the ruling cla.s.ses, or the aloof lifestyle of the shogun, or the supposed influence of women at his court, or the corruption of his ministers.

Yet wars, though they warp morals and wreck lives, can stimulate art. A renaissance was under way,36 with painters and poets who looked back half a millennium for their models and perhaps for escape. In the longueurs of war, fighters competed to write Chinese verses. The shogun Yoshimasa dabbled while j.a.pan burned. His character has puzzled every historian who tried to tackle it fairly. He treated the events of his day as if they were none of his responsibility. In the earliest years of the war, his own poetry expressed optimism amounting to insouciance: with painters and poets who looked back half a millennium for their models and perhaps for escape. In the longueurs of war, fighters competed to write Chinese verses. The shogun Yoshimasa dabbled while j.a.pan burned. His character has puzzled every historian who tried to tackle it fairly. He treated the events of his day as if they were none of his responsibility. In the earliest years of the war, his own poetry expressed optimism amounting to insouciance: Forlorn though the hope,Still I believe that somehowPeace will be restored.Although it is so confused,I don't despair of the world.37 Pessimism followed, amounting to despair, but deeply dyed with egotism.

"What a sad world it is!"Everyone says the same, butI'm the only one,Unable to control it,Whose grief keeps on growing.38 His life seems a series of evasions. He had an impressive array of virtues: in selecting artists he showed unerring judgment. In organizing poetry compet.i.tions he displayed unstinting industry. In identifying the problems of government he showed considerable sagacity. But he turned away from every disagreeable task: curbing his wife's avarice, reprimanding his son's prodigality, punishing the warlords' presumptions. He simply ignored the wars that broke out around him, withdrawing first into a circle of artistic mutual admiration in the capital, then resigning government responsibilities altogether in his country retreat before taking the final step: ordination as a Zen monk.

His profligacy probably helped cause the dissolution of the state by ratcheting up taxation, immiserating peasants, and leaving the central government bereft of an armed force. But at least it can be said to his credit that much of his spending was on the arts. While in power, he was a compulsive builder and redecorator of palaces. When he retired from public life, his hillside villa became like the country retreats of the Medici-a center where artists and literati gathered to perform plays, coin poems, practice the tea ceremony, blend perfumes, paint, and converse. Sometimes, warlords took time out from strife or state building on their own account in nearby provinces to join the soirees. Yoshimasa built a supposedly silver-foil-clad pavilion on the grounds, decorated with "rare plants and curious rocks," 39 39 begun in 1482 and completed three years after his death, in 1493. To meet the costs, the government requisitioned labor from the dwindling number of loyal landowners in the provinces. In retirement, Yoshimasa boosted his income by engaging in trade in his own right, sending horses, swords, sulfur, screens, and fans to China and getting cash and books in return. begun in 1482 and completed three years after his death, in 1493. To meet the costs, the government requisitioned labor from the dwindling number of loyal landowners in the provinces. In retirement, Yoshimasa boosted his income by engaging in trade in his own right, sending horses, swords, sulfur, screens, and fans to China and getting cash and books in return.40 This shows both that a merchant life was no derogation, even for a former shogun, and that the troubles did not interrupt the trade. This shows both that a merchant life was no derogation, even for a former shogun, and that the troubles did not interrupt the trade.

In some ways, the arts of the time seem strangely indifferent to the wars. Kano Masan.o.bu painted Chinese rivers and Buddhist worthies on the walls in styles derived from Chinese models. The critics and painters Shinkei Geiami and his son Soami coaxed great work from the brushes of pupils, such as the dynamic Kenko Shokei. But art was ultimately inseparable from the politics of the wars, because warlords paid for so much of it, and the shogun's patronage was by no means disinterested.

One suspects that Yoshimasa employed artists because, at least in part, they were cheaper than warriors and more effective as mediators of propaganda. Patronage of Noh theater, for instance, was traditional in the shogunal house, exhibiting heroic themes and aligning the shoguns with exemplars from a sometimes mythic past; it was while watching a play that Yoshimasa's father had been a.s.sa.s.sinated. Because Yoshimasa had to maintain links around the kingdom, he commanded a brisk trade in portraits for distribution to provincial shrines, where they could focus loyalties, like fragments or relics of himself.41 But Yoshimasa elevated art to a new rank as the j.a.panese equivalent of the "rites and music" Confucius had prescribed as essential to the health of the Chinese state. But Yoshimasa elevated art to a new rank as the j.a.panese equivalent of the "rites and music" Confucius had prescribed as essential to the health of the Chinese state.42 Not everyone succ.u.mbed to Yoshimasa's patronage. The painter of landscape in ink Toyo Sesshu visited China in 1467, after years of copying Chinese paintings. He served only provincial houses and declined to paint for Yoshimasa with a characteristically Chinese excuse: it was not right for a mere priest to paint in a "golden palace." 43 43 Such dissent or fastidiousness was rare. Yoshimasa's taste inspired swathes of the elite and of merchants who sought to spend their way to status. Provincial chieftains imitated his practice, inviting poets, painters, and scholars to elevate their own courts with learning and art. A once-popular theory about the origins of the Italian Renaissance ascribed investment in culture to the mood of hard times: when wars curtail opportunities to make money from trade, capitalists sink their money into works of art. Something of the sort seems to have happened in j.a.pan in the long years of civil war from the late 1460s. The fear-often realized-that frequent burnings in the capital would destroy valuable libraries inspired a feverish enthusiasm for copying ma.n.u.scripts. The flight of sages and artists from the capital helped spread metropolitan tastes around the country. Warlords competed for the services of poets and painters. Such dissent or fastidiousness was rare. Yoshimasa's taste inspired swathes of the elite and of merchants who sought to spend their way to status. Provincial chieftains imitated his practice, inviting poets, painters, and scholars to elevate their own courts with learning and art. A once-popular theory about the origins of the Italian Renaissance ascribed investment in culture to the mood of hard times: when wars curtail opportunities to make money from trade, capitalists sink their money into works of art. Something of the sort seems to have happened in j.a.pan in the long years of civil war from the late 1460s. The fear-often realized-that frequent burnings in the capital would destroy valuable libraries inspired a feverish enthusiasm for copying ma.n.u.scripts. The flight of sages and artists from the capital helped spread metropolitan tastes around the country. Warlords competed for the services of poets and painters.44 Yamaguchi, for instance, became a "little Kyoto," graced by the presence of famous artists. Yamaguchi, for instance, became a "little Kyoto," graced by the presence of famous artists.

Shinkei's wanderings are a case in point. In 1468 he left the capital for the east, to use his prestige as a Buddhist sage in the interests of one of the contending parties in the civil wars. He spent most of the next four years responding to invitations from n.o.bles to conduct poetical soirees in their castles and camps, endeavoring, he said, "to soften the hearts of warriors and rude folk and teach the way of human sensibility for all the distant ages." 45 45 Spring afflicted him: "Even the flowers are thickets of upturned blades." Spring afflicted him: "Even the flowers are thickets of upturned blades." 46 46

Tranquillity, sorrow, and reflection in the midst of civil wars: Sogi, composing verses with fellow literati by a colleague's grave under the full moon.

Nishikawa Suken.o.bu, Ehon Yamato Hiji Ehon Yamato Hiji (10 vols.; Osaka, 1742). (10 vols.; Osaka, 1742).

The adventures of another renowned poet exemplify the predicament of artists in a time of civil war. Sogi, an equally famous poet, usually traveled between provincial courts in response to invitations from aspiring patrons. In 1492, however, he stayed in the capital, educating aristocrats on the cla.s.sics of the Heian era of nearly half a millennium before. He was seventy-three years old, and his taste for traveling was waning. In the summer of that year, however, he made an excursion into the countryside to visit Yukawa Masaharu, a minor warlord with literary ambitions. The sequence of poems he wrote for this patron begins with a prayer for the endurance of the house, likening Masaharu's offspring to a stand of young pines: "[Y]et still more tall may they grow." But "the law," he also wrote, "is not what it was." 47 47 Piety was past. Piety was past.

Who will hear it?The temple bell from the hills,Off in the distance.

Despite Sogi's prayers for him to be spared in the battle he had to face, Masaharu backed the wrong side in the conflict. Within a year of Sogi's visit, his fortunes were in ruins. He disappeared from records after 1493.

Amazingly, this renaissance flourished in conditions of insecurity that might have paralyzed the city of Kyoto, where there were never enough loyal soldiers to keep order among the rival gangs who infested the city and the rival armies of warlords who often invested it. After the warlords' armies withdrew from the wreckage in 1477, marauders took over. Full-scale warfare continued in the east of the country.

As war intensified, j.a.pan dissolved into warring states. A self-made, self-appointed leader who came to be known as Hoso Soun demonstrated the opportunities. Having made his reputation in the service of other warlords, he struck out on his own, attracting followers by his prowess. In 1492 he conquered the peninsula of Izu and turned it into a base from which he proposed to extend his rule over the entire country. In 1494 he secured control of the peninsula by capturing the fortress of Odiwara, which commanded the approach to Izu, by posing as the leader of a party of deer hunters. He was never strong enough to get much farther than the neighboring province of Sagami, but his career was typical of the era, in which scores of new warlords burst onto the scene, established new dynasties, and set up what were in effect small independent states. At the same time, peasant communities organized their own armed forces, sometimes in collaboration with warlords.

One of the earliest editions of Columbus's first report shows the oriental merchants he expected to find trading with the natives of Hispaniola.

De Insulis Nuper in Mari Indico Repertis (Basle, 1494). (Basle, 1494).

Though China withdrew from imperial ambitions, and j.a.pan, crumbling into political ineffectiveness, had not yet embarked on them, the underlying strength of those countries' economies remained robust, and the vibrancy and dynamism of cultural life were spectacular.

Elsewhere, in widely separated parts of the world, to which we must now turn, expansion unrolled like springs uncoiling. An age of expansion really did begin, but the phenomenon was of an expanding world, not, as some historians say, of European expansion. The world did not simply wait pa.s.sively for European outreach to transform it as if touched by a magic wand. Other societies were already working magic of their own, turning states into empires and cultures into civilizations. Some of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding societies of the fifteenth century were in the Americas, southwest and northern Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, in terms of territorial expansion and military effectiveness against opponents, some African and American empires outcla.s.sed any state in western Europe.

The Indian Ocean, which China forbore to control-"the seas of milk and b.u.t.ter," as ancient Indian legends called the seas that lapped maritime Asia-linked the world's richest economies and carried the world's richest commerce. It const.i.tuted a self-contained zone, united by monsoonal winds and isolated from the rest of the world by zones of storms and untraversable distances. For the future of the history of the planet, the big question was who-if anyone-would control the routes of commerce now that the Chinese had withdrawn. In the 1490s, that issue was unresolved. But the Indian Ocean was also an arena of intense, trans.m.u.tative cultural exchange, with consequences that the world is still experiencing, and to which we must now turn.

Chapter 9.

"The Seas of Milk and b.u.t.ter"

The Indian Ocean Rim January 19: Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami dies at Herat.

Conventional historiography suffers from too much hot air and not enough wind. For the whole of the age of sail-that is, almost the whole of the recorded past-winds and currents set the limits of what was possible in long-range communications and cultural exchange. Most would-be explorers have preferred to sail into the wind, presumably because, whether or not they made any discoveries, they wanted to get home. Phoenicians and Greeks, for instance-dwellers at the eastern end of the Mediterranean-explored the length of that sea, working against the prevailing wind. In the Pacific, Polynesians colonized the archipelagoes of the South Seas, from Fiji to Easter Island, by the same method.

Generally, however, fixed wind systems inhibit exploration. Where winds are constant, there is no incentive to try to exploit them as causeways to new worlds. Either they blow into one's face, in which case seafarers will never get far under sail, or they sing at one's back-in which case they will prevent venturers from ever returning home. Monsoon systems, by contrast, where prevailing winds are seasonal, encourage long-range seafaring and speculative voyages, because navigators know that the wind, wherever it bears them, will eventually turn and take them home.

The world map of the Nuremberg Chronicle ill.u.s.trates the suspicion, derived from Ptolemy, that the Indian Ocean was landlocked.

Nuremberg Chronicle.

It depresses me to think of my own ancestors, in my family's homeland in northwestern Spain, staring out unenterprisingly at the Atlantic for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and never troubling to go far out to sea-dabbling, at most, in fishery and coastal cabotage. But the winds pinioned them, like b.u.t.terflies in a collector's case. They could scarcely have imagined what it feels like, sensing the wind, year in, year out, alternately in one's face and at one's back. That is what happens on the sh.o.r.es of maritime Asia, where the monsoon dominates the environment. Above the equator, northeasterlies prevail in winter. When winter ends, the direction of the winds is reversed. For most of the rest of the year they blow steadily from the south and west, sucked in toward the Asian landma.s.s as air warms and rises over the continent.

By timing voyages to take advantage of the predictable changes in the direction of the wind, navigators could set sail, confident of a fair wind out and a fair wind home. In the Indian Ocean, moreover, compared with other navigable seas, the reliability of the monsoon season offered the advantage of a speedy pa.s.sage in both directions. To judge from such ancient and medieval records as survive, a trans-Mediterranean journey from east to west, against the wind, would take fifty to seventy days. With the monsoon, a ship could cross the entire Indian Ocean, between Palembang in Sumatra and the Persian Gulf, in less time. Three to four weeks in either direction sufficed to get between India and a Persian Gulf port.

In 1417 a Persian amba.s.sador heading for India did it in even less time. Abd er-Razzaq was bound for the southern Indian realm of Vijayanagar. There were too many hostile states in the way for him to go by land. His ship sailed late, in the terrifying, tempestuous spell of weather toward the end of summer, when the caustic heat of the Asian interior drags the ocean air inward with ferocious urgency. The merchants who were to have accompanied the amba.s.sador abandoned the voyage, crying "with one voice that the time for navigation was past, and that everyone who put to sea at this season was alone responsible for his death." Fright and seasickness incapacitated Abd er-Razzaq for three days. "My heart was crushed like gla.s.s," he complained, "and my soul became weary of life." But his sufferings were rewarded. His ship reached Calicut, the famed pepper emporium on the Malabar coast, after only eighteen days' sailing from Ormuz.1 The Indian Ocean has many hazards. Storms rend it, especially in the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the deadly belt of habitually bad weather that stretches across the ocean below about ten degrees south. The ancient tales of Sinbad are full of shipwrecks. But the predictability of a homebound wind made this the world's most benign environment for long-range voyaging for centuries-perhaps millennia-before the continuous history of Atlantic or Pacific crossings began. The monsoon liberated navigators in the Indian Ocean and made maritime Asia the home of the world's richest economies and most spectacular states. That is what attracted Europeans-Asia's poor neighbors-eastward, and why Columbus and so many of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors sought a navigable route to what they called the Indies.

In the fifteenth century, the biggest single source of influence for change in the region was the growing global demand for, and therefore supply of, spices and aromatics-especially pepper. No one has ever satisfactorily explained the reasons for this increase. China dominated the market and accounted for well over half the global consumption, but Europe, Persia, and the Ottoman world were all absorbing ever greater amounts. Population growth contributed-but the increase in demand for spices seems greatly to have exceeded it. As we saw in chapter 1, the idea that cooks used spices to mask the flavor of bad meat is nonsense. Produce was far fresher in the medieval world, on average, than in modern urbanized and industrialized societies, and reliable preserving methods were available for what was not consumed fresh. Changing taste has been alleged, but there is no evidence of that: it was the abiding taste for powerful flavors-a taste now being revived as Mexican, Indian, and Szechuan cuisines go global-that made spices desirable. The spice boom was part of an ill-understood upturn in economic conditions across Eurasia. In China, especially, increased prosperity made expensive condiments more widely accessible as the turbulence that brought the Ming to power subsided and the empire settled down to a long period of relative peace and internal stability.

In partial consequence, spice production expanded into new areas. Pepper, traditionally produced on India's Malabar coast, and cinnamon, once largely confined to Sri Lanka, spread around Southeast Asia. Pepper became a major product of Malaya and Sumatra in the fifteenth century. Camphor, sappanwood and sandalwood, benzoin and cloves all overspilled their traditional places of supply. Nonetheless, enough local specialization remained within the region to ensure huge profits for traders and shippers; and the main markets outside Southeast Asia continued to grow.

For that brief spell early in the fifteenth century, in the reign of the Yongle emperor, when Chinese navies patrolled the Indian ocean, it looked as if China might try to control trade and even production in spices by force. The emperor exhibited an impressive appet.i.te for conquest. Perhaps because he was a usurper with a lot to prove, he was willing to pay almost any price for glory. From the time he seized the throne in 1402 until his death twenty-two years later, he waged almost incessant war on China's borders, especially on the Mongol and Annamese fronts. He scattered at least seventy-two missions to every accessible land beyond China's borders. He sent silver to the shogun in j.a.pan (who already had plenty of silver), and statues of Buddha and gifts of gems and silks to Tibet and Nepal. He exchanged ill-tempered emba.s.sies with Muslim potentates in central Asia. He invested kings in Korea, Melaka, Borneo, Sulu, Sumatra, and Ceylon. These far-flung contacts probably cost more in gifts than they raised in what the Chinese called "tribute": live okapis from Bengal, white elephants from Cambodia, horses and concubines from Korea, turtles and white monkeys from Siam, paintings from Afghanistan, sulfur and spears and samurai armor from j.a.pan. But they were magnificent occasions of display, which gave Yongle prestige in his own court and perhaps some sense of security.2 The grandest and most expensive of the missions went by sea. Between 1405 and 1433 seven formidable flag-waving expeditions ranged the Indian Ocean under Admiral Zheng He. As we have seen, the scale of his efforts was ma.s.sive, but their cultural consequences were, in many ways, more pervasive than their political impact. The voyages lasted, on average, two years each. They visited at least thirty-two countries around the rim of the ocean. The first three voyages, between 1405 and 1411, went only as far as the Malabar coast, the princ.i.p.al source of the world's pepper supply, with excursions along the coasts of Siam, Malaya, Java, Sumatra, and Sri Lanka. On the fourth voyage, from 1413 to 1415, ships visited the Maldives, Ormuz, and Jiddah, and collected envoys from nineteen countries.

Even more than the arrival of the amba.s.sadors, the inclusion of a giraffe among the tribute Zheng He gathered caused a sensation when the fleet returned home. No one in China had ever seen such a creature. Zheng He acquired his in Bengal, where it had arrived as a curiosity for a princely collection as a result of trading links across the Indian Ocean. Chinese courtiers instantly identified the creature as divine in origin. According to an eyewitness, it had "the body of a deer and the tail of an ox and a fleshy boneless horn, with luminous spots like a red or purple mist. It walks in stately fashion and in its every motion it observes a rhythm." Carried away by confusion with the mythical qilin qilin or unicorn, the same observer declared, "Its harmonious voice sounds like a bell or musical tube." or unicorn, the same observer declared, "Its harmonious voice sounds like a bell or musical tube."

The giraffe brought a.s.surances of divine benevolence. Shen Du, an artist who made a living drawing from life, wrote verses to describe the giraffe's reception at court: The ministers and the people all gathered to gaze at it and their joy knows no end. I, your servant, have heard that when a sage possesses the virtue of the utmost benevolence, so that he illuminates the darkest places, then a qilin appears. This shows that your Majesty's virtue equals that of heaven. Its merciful blessings have spread far and wide, so that its harmonious vapours have emanated a ch'ilin, as an endless blessing to the state for myriad years.3 Accompanying the visiting envoys home on a fifth voyage, which lasted from 1416 to 1419, Zheng He collected a prodigious array of exotic beasts for the imperial menagerie: lions, leopards, camels, ostriches, zebras, rhinoceroses, antelopes, and giraffes, as well as a mysterious beast, the Touou-yu Touou-yu. Drawings made this last creature resemble a white tiger with black spots, while written accounts describe a "righteous beast" who would not tread on growing gra.s.s, was strictly vegetarian, and appeared "only under a prince of perfect benevolence and sincerity." There were also many "strange birds." An inscription recorded: "All of them craned their necks and looked on with pleasure, stamping their feet, scared and startled." That was a description not of the birds but of the enraptured courtiers. Truly, it seemed to Shen Du, "all the creatures that spell good fortune arrive." 4 4 In 1421, a sixth voyage departed with the reconnaissance of the east coast of Africa as its main objective, visiting, among other destinations, Mogadishu, Mombasa, Malindi, Zanzibar, and Kilwa. After an interval, probably caused by changes in the balance of court factions after the death of the Yongle emperor in 1424, the seventh voyage, from 1431 to 1433, renewed contacts with the Arabian and African states Zheng He had already visited. In 1421, a sixth voyage departed with the reconnaissance of the east coast of Africa as its main objective, visiting, among other destinations, Mogadishu, Mombasa, Malindi, Zanzibar, and Kilwa. After an interval, probably caused by changes in the balance of court factions after the death of the Yongle emperor in 1424, the seventh voyage, from 1431 to 1433, renewed contacts with the Arabian and African states Zheng He had already visited.5 Mutual astonishment was the result of contacts on a previously unimagined scale. In the preface to his own book about the voyages, Ma Huan, an interpreter aboard Zheng He's fleet, recalled that as a young man, when he had contemplated the seasons, climates, landscapes, and people of distant lands, he had asked himself in great surprise, "How can such dissimilarities exist in the world?" 6 6 His own travels with the eunuch-admiral convinced him that the reality was even stranger. The arrival of Chinese junks at Middle Eastern ports with cargoes of precious exotica caused a sensation. A chronicler at the Egyptian court described the excitement provoked by news of the arrival of the junks off Aden and of the Chinese fleet's intention to reach the nearest permitted anchorage to Mecca. His own travels with the eunuch-admiral convinced him that the reality was even stranger. The arrival of Chinese junks at Middle Eastern ports with cargoes of precious exotica caused a sensation. A chronicler at the Egyptian court described the excitement provoked by news of the arrival of the junks off Aden and of the Chinese fleet's intention to reach the nearest permitted anchorage to Mecca.

After that, there were no more such voyages. Part, at least, of the context of the decision to abort Zheng He's missions is clear. The examination system and the gradual discontinuation of other forms of recruitment for public service had serious implications. Scholars and gentlemen reestablished their monopoly of government, with their indifference toward expansion and their contempt for trade. In the 1420s and 1430s the balance of power at court shifted in the bureaucrats' favor, away from the Buddhists, eunuchs, Muslims, and merchants who had supported Zheng He. When the Hongxi emperor ascended the throne in 1424, one of his first acts was to cancel Zheng He's next voyage. He restored Confucian officeholders, whom his predecessor had dismissed, and curtailed the power of other factions. In 1429 the shipbuilding budget was cut almost to extinction. China's land frontiers were becoming insecure as Mongol power revived. China needed to turn away from the sea and toward the new threat.7 The consequences for the history of the world were profound. Chinese overseas expansion was confined to unofficial migration and, in large part, to clandestine trade, with little or no imperial encouragement or protection. This did not stifle Chinese colonization or commerce. On the contrary, China remained the world's most dynamic trading economy and the world's most prolific source of overseas settlers. Officially, "not a plank floated" overseas from China. In practice, prohibitions had only a modest effect. From the fifteenth century onward, Chinese colonists in Southeast Asia made vital contributions to the economies of every place they settled; their remittances home played a big part in the enrichment of China. The tonnage of shipping frequenting Chinese ports in the same period probably equaled or exceeded that of the rest of the world put together. But, except in respect of islands close to China, the state's hostility to maritime expansion never abated for as long as the empire lasted. China never built up the sort of wide-ranging global empire that Atlantic seaboard nations acquired. An observer of the world in the fifteenth century would surely have forecast that the Chinese would precede all other peoples in the discovery of world-girdling, transoceanic routes and the inauguration of far-flung seaborne imperialism. Yet nothing of the sort materialized, and the field remained open for the far less promising explorers of Europe to open up the ways around the world.

Of course, the destiny of the world was not determined by a single decision made in China. China's renunciation of maritime imperialism belongs in a vast context of influences that help to explain the long-term advantages of Atlantic-side European peoples in the global "s.p.a.ce race." These influences can be cla.s.sified as partly environmental and partly economic. The limits of Zheng He's navigations are a clue to the environmental influences beyond the reach of the monsoons. The Indian Ocean is hard to get out of. Even ships that safely make it through the belt of storms, bound toward the Atlantic around southern Africa, must negotiate lee sh.o.r.es in the region of what is now KwaZulu-Natal, which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, became a notorious graveyard for ships that ventured there. This was probably the location of the place called Ha-pu-erh on the maps generated by the Zheng He voyages, beyond which, according to the annotations, the ships did not proceed, owing to the ferocity of the storms. On its eastern flank, maritime Asia is hemmed by the typhoon-racked seas of j.a.pan and the vastness of the Pacific.

To undertake voyages into such hostile seas, Indian Ocean navigators would need a big incentive. The Indian Ocean was an arena of such intense commercial activity, and so much wealth, that it would have been pointless for indigenous peoples to look for markets or suppliers elsewhere. When merchants from northern or central Asia or Europe or the African interior reached the ocean, they came as supplicants, generally despised for their poverty, and found it hard to sell the products of their homelands.

Chinese disengagement from the wider world was not the result of any deficiency of technology or curiosity. It would have been perfectly possible for Chinese ships to visit Europe or the Americas, had they so wished. Indeed, Chinese explorers probably did get around the Cape of Good Hope, sailing from east to west, at intervals during the Middle Ages. A Chinese map of the thirteenth century depicts Africa in roughly its true shape. A Venetian mapmaker of the midfifteenth century reported a sighting of a Chinese or, perhaps, Javanese junk off the Southwest African coast.8 But there was no point in pursuing such initiatives: they led to regions that produced nothing the Chinese wanted. Although the evidence that Chinese vessels ever crossed the Pacific to America is, at best, equivocal, it is perfectly possible that they did so. Again, however, it would have been folly to pursue such voyages or attempt systematic contacts across the ocean. No people lived there with whom the Chinese could possibly wish to do business. But there was no point in pursuing such initiatives: they led to regions that produced nothing the Chinese wanted. Although the evidence that Chinese vessels ever crossed the Pacific to America is, at best, equivocal, it is perfectly possible that they did so. Again, however, it would have been folly to pursue such voyages or attempt systematic contacts across the ocean. No people lived there with whom the Chinese could possibly wish to do business.

To a lesser-but still sufficient-extent, the same considerations applied to other maritime peoples of the Indian Ocean and East and Southeast Asia. The Arabs, the Swahili merchant communities, Persians, Indians, Javanese and other island peoples of the region, and the j.a.panese all had the technology required to explore the world, but plenty of commercial opportunities in their home ocean kept them fully occupied. Indeed, their problem was, if anything, shortage of shipping in relation to the scale of demand for interregional trade. That was why, in the long run, they generally welcomed interlopers from Europe in the sixteenth century, who were truculent, demanding, barbaric, and often violent, but who added to the shipping stock of the ocean and, therefore, contributed to the general increase of wealth. Paradoxically, therefore, poverty favored Europeans, compelled to look elsewhere because of the dearth of economic opportunities at home.

The Indian Ocean was by no means unknown to Europeans. The widespread a.s.sumption that Vasco da Gama was the first to penetrate deep inside it when he rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 is a vulgar error. Italian merchants often plied their trade there during the late Middle Ages. Typically, they traveled across the Ottoman and Persian empires, in the rare interstices of war and religious hostility. Or else, even more commonly, they undertook a long and arduous journey upriver along the Nile from Alexandria, and overland by camel caravan from the first or second cataract to the Red Sea coast, where they awaited the turn of the monsoon before shipping for Aden or Socotra. It was inadvisable to attempt to join the Red Sea farther north because of the formidable hazards to navigation.

Most of the Western venturers who worked in the Indian Ocean are known only from stray references in the archives. Merchants rarely wrote up their experiences. But two circ.u.mstantial accounts survive from the fifteenth century: the first by Niccol Conti, who had been as far east as Java, and had returned to Italy by 1444; the second by his fellow Florentine Girolamo di Santo Stefano, who made an equally long trading voyage in the 1490s. Conti knew something of the Near East as a result of working as a merchant in Damascus, and therefore chose to travel overland via Persia to the Gulf, where he took ship for Cambay in the Bay of Bengal. Santo Stefano used the other main route. In company with a business partner, Girolamo Adorno, he traveled up the Nile and joined a caravan bound for the Red Sea. He crossed the ocean from M