MICHAEL WOOD ON…

EPIC MEDIEVAL CHINESE VOYAGES

Why Elon Musk should take a lesson from Confucius WATCHING THE NEWS ON ELON MUSK'S SPACEX project to make humanity a “multi-planetary species” beginning with a colony on Mars, I found myself reflecting on an earlier moment in history. Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese sent seven great missions to south-east Asia and across the Indian Ocean, visiting the Persian Gulf, India and east Africa. The first fleet alone comprised many dozens of ships and more than 27,000 men. Admiral Zheng He's fleets included the biggest wooden vessels yet built, dwarfing the tiny ships that later carried Columbus and Magellan. Modern theories that such Ming ‘treasure ships’ could have exceeded 400 feet (122 metres) in length, however, are now rejected by experts; the size of wooden ships was always limited…

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Bbc History (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025

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