On This Day in History: July 11

Ming Treasure Fleet

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It takes a lot of balls to build a giant fleet and set out to conquer your corner of the world. Except the guys in charge of the Ming Treasure fleet didn’t have balls. They were eunuchs. 

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 11, 1405--

They didn’t have dicks either. Chinese eunuchs had the entire business cut off. Removal of male fun stuff in China goes back four millennia, playing an important societal role in palace operations. The rationality for it was that these dudes couldn’t have children, so they could be given positions of power as high-ranking civil servants, but wouldn’t be tempted to seize total power and start their own dynasties. I guess that makes sense. But still, my legs are crossed right now.

Anyway, on July 11, 1405, the first of the Ming dynasty treasure voyages was ordered. The Admiral in charge was the dickless Zheng He. That’s not a metaphor. He was powerful, intelligent, and trusted in the Chinese court, and he was also a eunuch. The fleet he led put Columbus to shame. The first expedition contained 317 ships, 60 of which were massive treasure ships that dwarfed anything in Europe. The ships were heavily militarized and contained tens of thousands of men. Not just soldiers and sailors, but repair crews, medical personnel, astronomers, diplomats, and scholars.

And they did a lot of conquering. There were seven such voyages over the next three decades. The initial voyage traveled to South Asia and reached as far as the southwest coast of India. Later voyages traveled to Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, and even reached as far as East Africa. They showed up in all these places and said hey motherfuckers, you see these big ass ships and all these warriors we got? This is how shit gon’ be. You’re gonna pay us, and in exchange we’ll tell you what to do. It’s called suzerainty. 

The regions became interconnected politically and economically, and the spice flowed. And other treasure shit. I just wanted to make a Dune reference. The expeditions were so successful and profitable that the power of the eunuchs grew, and of course when one group gets powerful other groups look at them with envy and say fuck those guys who aren’t able to fuck. Well, there are multiple ways of fucking, but you know what I mean. 

The emperor that ordered the first voyages died and the eunuchs began to fall out of favor and the civil government gained the upper hand. It was proclaimed that these voyages were an extravagance that the eunuchs used to enrich themselves and that was pretty much a wrap on the largest navy in history. 

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