Page 265 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

The final exception to the loss of navigational
information from the 15th century differs in many ways
from the previous two. This is Zhang Xie’s 張燮 Dongxi yang
kao 東西洋考 (Study of the Eastern and Western Seas) completed
in 1617, the ninth chapter of which is devoted to navigational
information. Zhang produced the book in response to a
request for information on maritime matters from the
magistrate of Haicheng 海澄 county, who had jurisdiction
over Moon Harbour (Yuegang 月港), the port in Zhangzhou
漳州 prefecture from which merchants were setting forth in
ever greater numbers through the Wanli era (1573–1620).
That a local official in this period should want this
information signals a significant reversal in the vector of
maritime knowledge back from the private sector to the
state sector, where it was no longer regarded as contraband.
Zhang’s book was not published at the time, but it was not
embargoed and circulated well enough to have survived
until it was published in a mid-19th-century collectanea.
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Dongxi yang kao postdates the Laud rutter. Like the Laud
editor, Zhang has heavily edited and reorganised the
information he had drawn from pilots’ rutters rather than
simply reproduce a primary document from the 15th
century. In fact, Zhang is not much interested in what
happened in the 15th century at all, but instead restricts the
material he includes to that which is of relevance to the
present. He divides his route data into the standard late
Ming categories of ‘water routes within the harbour’
(meaning the coastal zone off Zhangzhou and Quanzhou
泉州), ‘Western Ocean compass routes’ (the network of
routes running southwards down the coast of continental
Southeast Asia) and ‘Eastern Ocean compass routes’ (the
network of routes running eastwards out to the Pescadores Plate 29.3 The Selden map of China, c. 1608. Watercolour and ink
and the Philippines and down to Borneo). Both the eastern on paper, height 160cm, width 100cm. The Bodleian Libraries, The
and western route networks end at points beyond which University of Oxford, MS. Selden supra 105
Chinese junks did not sail. The Western Ocean routes stop
at Aceh at the northern end of Sumatra, as that marked the He had no monopoly on these routes; he simply travelled in
westernmost port at which Chinese vessels called. That the same sea lanes that everyone else used. What for the
Zheng He and company went beyond Aceh is of no account Ming court was diplomatic knowledge was for mariners
to Zhang Xie. He is curious as to how contemporary practical knowledge. Still, that portion of navigational
information is overlaid on earlier knowledge, and in suitable knowledge that by the late Ming had no practical
scholarly fashion tracks some of that knowledge back to application was preserved. Conspicuous in this regard are
sources from the Song and before, but for him history is the instructions for sailing across the Indian Ocean. This
past. The traces of Zheng He’s voyages in Dongxi yang kao are was a traverse that Chinese ships made in the 15th century
thus rather faint, nothing more than curious footnotes that but not in the 16th, when the ingress of armed Portuguese
help construct the story of the state of play of Ming maritime vessels into the region discouraged the Chinese from sailing
networks as of 1617. beyond the Straits of Melaka. The editors of the Laud rutter
Stepping back from Zhang Xie, we can observe that and Wubei zhi nonetheless both elected to include
knowledge of the Zheng He voyages survived in private information about sailing routes across the Indian Ocean,
commercial circles not because late Ming captains were even though no one was using this knowledge in the late
intent on pursuing the political or geostrategic purposes that Ming – which is why Zhang Xie left it out. The fact that
struck fear into imperial hearts. (Bear in mind that the these routes may have been moribund for a century did not
expeditions were initiated because the Yongle emperor, dissuade the other two. Nor, as we are about to see, did it
facing a severe legitimacy deficit as a usurper and for discourage the creator of a fourth late Ming document of
nepoticide, hoped that the presentation of tribute by foreign Chinese maritime lore, the Selden map (Pl. 29.3).
rulers would demonstrate to a domestic audience that he The Selden map is the first Chinese map since the Yuan
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enjoyed the mandate of Heaven). Ming merchants in fact dynasty to situate China in relation to the world beyond its
had no interest in such matters. If information about the shores in a way that takes account of the actual distances
routes Zheng followed was important to them, it was separating any one place on the map from any other,
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because these were simply the routes that every navigator particularly maritime sites outside the realm. Probably
sailing out of Ming coastal waters took. Memories of Zheng drawn about 1608 by a Chinese cartographer working in the

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