Yongle Emperor - Diplomatic Missions and Exploration of The World

Diplomatic Missions and Exploration of The World

As part of his desire to expand Chinese influence throughout the known world, Emperor Yongle sponsored the massive and long term Zheng He expeditions. While Chinese boats continued traveling to Japan, Ryukyu, and many location in South-East Asia both before and after the Yongle era, Zheng He's expeditions were China's only major sea-going explorations of the world (although the Chinese may have been sailing to Arabia, East Africa, and Egypt since the Tang Dynasty, from AD 618–907 or earlier). The first expedition was launched in 1405 (18 years before Henry the Navigator began Portugal's voyages of discovery). The expeditions were under the command of eunuch Zheng He and his associates (Wang Jinghong, Hong Bao, etc.). Seven expeditions were launched between 1405 and 1433, reaching major trade centers of Asia (as far as Tenavarai (Dondra Head), Hormuz and Aden) and north-eastern Africa (Malindi). Some of the boats used were apparently the largest sail-powered wooden boats in human history (National Geographic, May 2004).

The Chinese expeditions were a remarkable technical and logistical achievement. Zhu Di's successors, the Hongxi Emperor and the Xuande Emperor, felt that the costly expeditions were harmful to the Chinese state. The Hongxi Emperor ended further expeditions and the descendants of the Xuande Emperor suppressed much of the information about the Zheng He voyages.

In 1411, a smaller fleet, built in Jilin and commanded by another eunuch Yishiha, who was a Jurchen, sailed down the Sungari and Amur Rivers. The expedition established a Nurgan Regional Military Commission in the region, headquartered at the place the Chinese called Telin (特林) (now the village of Tyr, Russia). The local Nivkh or Tungusic chiefs were granted ranks in the imperial administration. Yishiha's expeditions returned to the lower Amur several more times during the reigns of Yongle and Xuande, the last one visiting the region in the 1430s.

After the death of Timur, who intended to invade China, the relations between the Yongle Emperor's China and Shakhrukh's state in Persia and Transoxania state considerably improved, and the countries exchanged large official delegations on a number of occasions. Both the Chinese envoy to Samarkand and Herat, Chen Cheng, and his opposite party, Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqah left detailed accounts of their visits to each other's country.

One of his wives was a Jurchen princess, which resulted in many of the eunuchs serving him being of Jurchen origin, notably Yishiha.