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Notes -
Good post.
I was sort of thinking of people like Henry the Navigator and Leonardo da Vinci. European sovereigns would fund all kinds of technology to get ahead - they wanted to make money, thrash their enemies, obtain land. Zheng He is the obvious counterexample yet his voyages seem more political to me. They sailed around the Indian ocean showing the flag and scaring the hell out of the natives, brought back some animals but nobody was terribly interested in profit, conquest or expansion. It was more like the moon landings, a cool way to show off Chinese power rather than achieve anything substantive. Of course, they had other problems to deal with on the steppe front.
Likewise, I recall some of China's tributaries eagerly wanting to have more tribute missions because they'd actually get more in gifts than they 'paid' in gifts. It wasn't even an extractive scheme (though there were all kinds of gradations in the tributary system). They were interested in maintaining social order internationally and domestically, there were huge redistribution systems to take money from the rich agricultural regions to fund nomad defense in the harsh interior.
A better parallel may be the Song dynasty from 970-1279, then; quite a lot of innovation happened during that time, and had a serious threat in the Liao, then the Jin.
Even the Ming were happy to get their hands on superior European designs, though, after they started lagging behind - the idea of the Chinese being unaware that the frontiers of technology were passing them by isn’t really true, at least for the elite.
Surprisingly, there are examples of “military conquest” during the treasure cruises. Off the top of my head, the voyages deposed a Sinhalese king and a Samuderan usurper. Of course, while they then installed someone favourable to the Chinese, the treasure cruises largely then fucked off and left the territories alone. On the whole I think your point is well made, however - only to add that they were thought as useful to signal that China was returning to form after a century of Mongol rule, and once the voyages had made their point the balance of utility of the voyages shifted pretty dramatically for the court (new emperor being against it also did not help).
The sea ban and deconstruction of the treasure ships also meant that China went from being (iirc) the greatest naval power in the world to being almost entirely land-bound in its aspirations. A lot of shipbuilding knowledge was lost in the 15th century in China. While it might’ve made sense at the time, it was also an enormous self-own in the long run.
That might be another sort of thing to look at as for why China didn’t manage to stay ahead.
Indeed!
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