When China Ruled The Sea Essays - Treasure Voyages, Encyclopedists

When China Ruled The Sea Book Review For When China Ruled The Seas Introduction When China Ruled The Seas, is a book that provides the reader with many historical facts and ideas about China from as early as The Yi People, in 4,000 B.C., to a temple to Zheng He, that was built in 1795. Although the novel has many points in history, one would agree that it mostly concentrated on the events around the 14th century, to the late 15th century. It is obvious to the reader that China became a world power house due to their trading abilities not amongst themselves, but amongst other empires across the seas. It was definitely not easy for the Chinese to form a powerful trading empire like they did, simply because of the fact that the change in emperors also caused many changes in ideas and theory. A couple of emperors that believed in Confuciuss philosophies of isolation messed up the strong Chinese trading structure that emperors such as Zhu Di built up. Some may even say due to those emperors that disagreed with benefits of trade, China began to look a bit weak, and le ss prestigious than what it should have been, which caused Europe to rise to dominance. The book also helps us put together the fact that China was really the most powerful empire much before any European empire which really is important for one to understand. Overall China had an extremely powerful trading empire and they raised the bar for future empires to come. Discussion Before we can understand how China became less prestigious from lack of trade, Levathes in the first few chapters explains to us how China became a world strength through trade. The book starts off with explaining to us how early Chinese seafarers were really advanced in their forms of traveling. The book states that, The seamanship of the early southeast Asians was so remarkable that they were able to cross the six-thousand-mile expanse of the Indian Ocean to settle Madagascar off the East African coast. (Levathes 25) Later on the same page Levathes, states that they also, crossed the Pacific, landing in Central and South America. It is extremely important that as readers we understand that Asia has sailed all over the world far before any Europeans. It is also important that we get that this is one huge leap in globalization for China. Zhu Yuanzhang was the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he ruled until his death in 1398. After his death his grandson Zhu Yunwen, took the crown. Zhu Yuanzhang had 26 sons, but he left behind rules that didnt allow any of his sons to take the crown, so his grandson took the throne. This didnt sit well with Zhu Di, (a son of Zhu Yuanzhang) so as a result Zuh Di, when given the chance took arms against Zhu Yunwen and led the rebellion to take the throne that he believed was rightfully his. Zhu Di taking the crown turned out to be good news for China because Zhu Di was all about trade. One year after he took the throne, he began working on making trade-ships, warships and many other vessels, he wanted to raise the bar for trading in China, because it was drained for resources due to the long civil war (Levathes 74). Zhu Di put together the Treasure Fleet, this was extremely big for the Chinese in many ways and was the start of China becoming a world power house through trade. It also was another big leap towards globalization. One may find it extremely impressive how the Chinese built these ships in the treasure fleet. On page 77 of Levathes When China Ruled The Seas. Levathes touches on the topic of how they would build the bulkheads on the ship and how theyd take their time making sure it was stronger than a rock. This idea of how the Chinese were putting together a fleet of treasure ships may help one to understand that they werent to be taken lightly. They understood the needed resources, specifically from foreign land. To help one understand how serious the Chinese were about building their trading ships I would like to use some