Explorers & Admirals

The usual story of the age of exploration begins in Europe in the 1490s, with Columbus and da Gama. This shelf starts somewhere else.

Zheng He sailed out of China in July 1405 with hundreds of ships and almost 28,000 men, nearly 90 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic with three small vessels. He had begun life as Ma He, a Muslim boy from Yunnan, captured when the Ming conquered his homeland and castrated for service in a prince’s household. Over seven voyages he linked China to India, Arabia and the Swahili coast of East Africa, and his ships carried envoys, and even giraffes, back to the Ming court.

Then the court stopped the voyages. China had reached the edge of naval dominance, and walked away. Where historians still disagree, about the size of the ships or how and where he died, the dispatch says so.