An admiral of the Ming Dynasty in China, Zheng he captained seven voyages to the Indian Ocean starting from 1405 at the request of Emperor Yongle. Zheng He’s expeditions also aimed to expand the Ming Empire’s influence overseas and establish an alternative trade route in place of the Silk road, which fell under the control of Tamerlane. Commanding a fleetof some 300 ships, a size unrivalled until World War I, the admiral exacted tribute from local rulers along the Southern Pacific coast and the Indian Ocean. Zheng He brought exotic gifts like giraffes back to the imperial court, and erected monuments in places as far as Malaysia, Sri Lanka, East Timor, and Madagascar. There is hot debate about whether the flotilla reached the New World before Europeans. Sadly the cost of the expeditions was prohibitive and stopped when Yongle died.
The tragedy of human intellectual curiosity which is still promoted today, is that inquiry for its own sake is not encouraged because ideas must make money. It should be noted that science might be 1400 years further advanced today if China had followed its star and not been hampered by power politics, or even if the Ionian philosophers had been the beginnings of scientific inquiry preceding the Renaissance by over 2000 years. We would do well to remember that electricity was discovered as a power-source by a scientist doing blue-skies research because it interested him, and not because he was looking to turn a dollar.
Our futures reside in the hands of men and women’s imaginations, not in what banks are prepared to fund.