Emperor Xuande

Emperor Xuande was the Ming ruler who, after his predecessor Hongxi ended the court’s large-scale overseas missions, initially allowed Zheng He one final expedition in 1433. The voyage was a brief reprieve: after it, overseas trade was banned and, by 1436, construction of seagoing ships was illegal. In the book’s account, this reversal formed part of China’s withdrawal from the commercial transformation then reshaping the Atlantic world and helped close off a critical juncture for economic development.

A Final Expedition

The policy began under Emperor Xuande’s predecessor. Emperor Yongle had sponsored Zheng He’s extraordinary voyages across Southeast and South Asia, Arabia, and Africa. The first fleet alone included 27,800 men and 62 large treasure ships, accompanied by 190 smaller vessels assigned to carry freshwater, supplies, and troops. After the sixth mission, in 1422, Emperor Yongle temporarily halted the expeditions. Hongxi, who ruled from 1424 to 1425, made the suspension permanent.

Hongxi’s premature death brought Emperor Xuande to the throne. He initially permitted Zheng He to undertake one more mission, which sailed in 1433. That decision briefly reopened a route the court had been closing, but the expedition did not become the start of a sustained maritime policy. Afterward, overseas trade was banned; by 1436, even building seagoing ships had been made illegal.

A State-Controlled Maritime Policy

The expeditions belonged to a system in which overseas exchange was controlled by the state. Under Emperor Hongwu, who founded the Ming dynasty in 1368 and ruled for thirty years, foreign trade was allowed only when organized by the government and conducted as tribute rather than commercial activity. Hongwu feared that overseas trade could destabilize the political and social order: he executed hundreds of people accused of turning tribute missions into commercial ventures, prohibited private individuals from trading with foreigners, and barred Chinese subjects from sailing overseas. No oceangoing tribute missions were permitted between 1377 and 1397.

Emperor Yongle’s large-scale missions therefore represented a dramatic state-sponsored reopening, not a transfer of maritime commerce to private merchants. Emperor Xuande’s single authorized voyage likewise remained an act of imperial permission. Its termination, followed by the ban on overseas trade and shipbuilding, underscored how decisively the court could restrict commercial activity when it judged it politically risky.

The Reversal and Its Significance

The book sets this retreat against the expansion of Atlantic commerce after 1600. English colonization and overseas trading ventures helped produce a wealthy class of merchants with few ties to the Crown; in England, those traders challenged royal control and contributed to conflicts that eventually restricted royal prerogatives. China followed a different course: the state’s control of overseas trade prevented the same kind of independent commercial group from arising through that channel.

The maritime bans are presented as part of a broader pattern of extractive institutions that suppressed activities considered destabilizing. Their consequence was not simply the loss of individual voyages. China turned inward just as international trade and the discovery of the Americas were transforming institutions elsewhere. The trade prohibition was not lifted until 1567, and the book describes that retreat as a lost opportunity to engage with a critical global turning point. Emperor Xuande’s final authorization stands at the hinge of this account: one last expedition, followed by a prohibition that made the opening temporary.