In 1405, Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, sent a delegation of Zheng He to the Western Ocean, and hundreds of large ships sailed in the southern waters of the world, wearing the glory of the empire and making the most of the limelight.
But with the end of Zheng He's visit to the West, the huge feudal empire also unconsciously declined, and for more than five hundred years, this ancient land continued to fade.
Zheng He's fleet of ships in the West
The glory of the Empire
More than 600 years ago, under the rule of Zhu Di, the Ming Dynasty's politics, economy, military and industry, etc., all led the world by absolute superiority, including shipbuilding technology.
Not only that, Zhu Di also actively expanded his territory, and the empire was unprecedentedly large.
Yongle Emperor Zhu Di
At this time, Yongle The Great, who was sitting on the world's largest power, had a plan to send envoys to the West, and the purpose was also very clear: to show the world, wherever the ships of the Ming Dynasty went, there was the grace and blessing of the Son of Heaven.
Although it is later said that Zhu Di had a secret motive to find the missing Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao, it could not hide his proud political ambitions.
And Zheng He did not live up to the expectations of the Yongle Emperor, seven times before and after visiting the West, traveling more than 300,000 miles, visiting more than 30 countries and regions, its scale, footprints, and number of travelers, can be called a major feat in the world at that time.
On the way to the West for the seventh time, Zheng He died of illness in Guli (present-day southwestErn India), and plans to visit the West began to come to an end.
Zheng He like
Expansion of the West
After Zheng He's death, Portugal, a country unknown to the Ming Dynasty at the time, sent a fleet to Guli, the place where Zheng He died of illness.
But this fleet was different from Zheng He's fleet, and the fleet that symbolized Daming brought peace and respect everywhere it went, and it was also friendly and reciprocal in terms of interests.
However, the Portuguese fleet, after boarding Guri, quietly stretched out its claws and forcibly occupied Guri by force.
This was the beginning of the Portuguese invasion, and it was also the beginning of the maritime hegemony of the Western countries for more than five hundred years.
The barbaric expansion of the maritime states
Since then, the Western countries have used barbaric means to create maritime powers in the southern waters of the world, such as Britain, Spain, and finally the United States.
The decline of the empire
On the other side, the ancient feudal empire is quietly declining. This decline comes from the rise of the outside world, but also because of its own consumption.
The Ming Empire built a fleet unparalleled in the world, but it also greatly depleted its own national strength.
And the loss of these national strengths has not been converted into a matching value in the southern countries and regions of the world, but only for the Ming royal family to bring back some rare treasures for the imperial family to play, which is really a kind of squandering.
A giraffe that is regarded by the royal family as a unicorn
Not only that, at the same time that Zheng He went to the West, the Ming Empire was strictly controlling shipping, and the Imperial fleet at this time could be said to be fighting with the people for profits, which not only deprived the coastal people of their living space, but also destroyed the freedom of the prosperous maritime market.
This practice is a heavy blow to itself, and the act of closing the country to the outside world has continued in the following hundreds of years.
Five hundred years of missed
In the more than five hundred years of turmoil, the Western countries expanded rapidly, completed the primitive accumulation of capital in a short period of time, and laid an important foundation for the birth of future empires.
Although this accumulation of capital is based on barbaric killing, on colonization and slavery, the good civilization we possess will not allow us to commit these barbaric acts.
But our closed-minded naïve ideas have led us to withdraw voluntarily from the tide of the world. Then our land began to be ruthlessly colonized and divided.
The great powers divided China
The progress of civilization requires momentum, and exchange is the source of this momentum, which we had for a short time but missed, but we must not communicate with the Western powers in general by force and barbarism, and the benefits are very rich but not eternal.
And now the decline of Western powers is telling the world this truth.