A note on some coins struck for use in Tarim, Southern Arabia. Il
Geoff Wade, in this 2005 article published in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, offers a revisionist reassessment of the early fifteenth-century Zheng He voyages, arguing that they were not benign “voyages of friendship” but instruments of Ming maritime proto-colonialism designed to impose a pax Ming across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. By situating the voyages alongside the Yong-le emperor’s simultaneous land-based conquests of Đai Viet and the Yun-nan Tai polities, Wade recasts the eunuch-led armadas as the maritime prong of a coherent imperial expansion strategy.
Summary
Wade’s central argument is that the Zheng He voyages cannot be understood in isolation from the broader military and administrative project of the Yong-le emperor (r. 1403–24). The article examines three parallel spheres of Ming expansion: the successful colonization of the Tai polities in Yun-nan, the unsuccessful invasion and occupation of Đai Viet (1406–1428), and the maritime missions to the Western Ocean. Each is shown to share common features—military force, the imposition of Chinese administrative structures, economic extraction, and the deployment of eunuch agents as imperial representatives—thereby constituting variants of colonial practice.
The author draws heavily on the Ming shi-lu (Veritable Records of the Ming) to document the scale and military character of the voyages, supplementing this with the Wu-bei-zhi military treatise for cartographic evidence of Ming depots at Malacca and Samudera, and with later Chinese texts such as the Dong-xi-yang kao (1618) and Luo Mao-deng’s novel (1597) for additional evidence of violence. Wade also engages a substantial body of Western scholarship on colonialism—drawing on Armitage, Osterhammel, Emerson, Doyle, and Pearson—to justify the application of the term “proto-colonialism” to the Ming maritime enterprise, distinguishing it from the later, more formal territorial colonialism of the European powers.
A significant portion of the article is devoted to specific incidents of violence and coercion: the attack on Old Port in Sumatra (1407), the killing of Chinese troops in Java and the subsequent demand for compensation, the threat against Burma (1409), the invasion of Sri Lanka and capture of its king (1411), and the capture of Su-gan-la of Samudera (1415). Together these episodes are presented as evidence that the fleets functioned as gunboat diplomacy forces whose primary purpose was to compel submission and secure control over strategic ports and shipping lanes.
Key Findings
- The Ming mobilized approximately 800,000 troops for the 1406 invasion of Đai Viet, including 95,000 from southern provinces, 75,000 from Yun-nan, Gui-zhou, and Si-chuan, and 30,000 “native troops” from Guang-xi (p. 42).
- Shipbuilding for the maritime missions was massive: 137 ocean-going ships ordered in 1403, approximately 400 more from various military units the same year, 1,180 ordered in 1405, and 48 “treasure-ships” (bao-chuan) assigned to the Ministry of Works in 1408 (pp. 44–45).
- A typical large mission comprised 50–250 ships and between 27,000 and 30,000 personnel, of whom 26,800 out of 27,400 were rank-and-file military, sailors, and clerks; a 1427 reference cites “10,000 crack troops who had formerly been sent to the Western Ocean” (p. 45).
- At Old Port, Sumatra (1407), the Ming reported 5,000 persons killed, 10 ships burnt, and 7 captured; the polity was subsequently reorganized as a “pacification superintendency” with a likely Ming-appointed ruler, Shi Jin-qing (p. 47).
- Following the killing of 170 Chinese troops in Java (1407), the Ming demanded 60,000 liang of gold in compensation from the Western king, explicitly threatening military punishment “as in Annam” (p. 48).
- By 1408, the Ming had established 472 military and civilian offices in occupied Đai Viet (Jiao-zhi), three maritime trade supervisorates, and had deported 7,600 tradesmen and artisans to Nanjing (p. 43).
Conclusion
Wade concludes that the Zheng He voyages constituted a form of maritime proto-colonialism in which a dominant power used military coercion to control strategic port-nodes and shipping networks across the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, extracting political submission and economic tribute without the full territorial administration that characterized later European colonialism. The article’s broader historiographical claim is that the study of colonialism in Southeast Asia must extend its temporal boundaries backward to encompass the expansionist actions of successive Chinese imperial states, not merely the post-fifteenth-century European presence.
Context
- Primary sources: Ming shi-lu (Veritable Records of the Ming, photolithographic edition, Academia Sinica, 1963–1968), Wu-bei-zhi (seventeenth-century military treatise containing fifteenth-century charts), Dong-xi-yang kao (1618), and Luo Mao-deng’s Sanbao taijian xiyangji tongsu yanyi (1597).
- Historiographical contribution: The article challenges the dominant “voyages of friendship” narrative prevalent in Chinese popular and academic discourse, and introduces the analytical framework of “maritime proto-colonialism” by drawing on Western colonial theory (Armitage, Osterhammel, Emerson, Pearson) to reframe Ming maritime expansion within comparative imperial history.