Nothing could be further from the truth than the current frantic media blitz heralding China's "new incursions" into Africa. China's presence in Africa has lasted centuries and several ancient dynasties. Curtis Abraham follows China's historical and imperial past in Africa, examining how it continues to influence today's connection.
As discussed in other pieces in the cover story of this issue. Africa's largest trading partner is currently China. China, on the other hand, has a lengthy history in Africa.
In reality, experts have made amazing field and archival discoveries revealing China's early involvement in the African continent in the last ten years. These new results sparked an international symposium, "Exploring China's Ancient Links to Africa World Conference," which took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in October.
Aksum University in Ethiopia was a co-sponsor of the conference. Experts from Africa, China, the United States, and Australia convened to explore and debate new archaeological and historical evidence of China's old cultural and economic ties to Africa.
Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator who opened up East Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries, is celebrated as the first international trader in Western history books. He arrived in 1498 on an expedition to establish a sea route to Asia, and his journey, as we all know, ushered in more than 450 years of European naval dominance. But, despite mounting evidence, Zheng He, a eunuch administrator and diplomat during Imperial China's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) arrived on the East African coast several decades before Vasco da Gama.
Zheng He's marine journeys lasted from 1405 until 1433, and it is reported that in 1418, he led a massive fleet of 62 ships across the Indian Ocean ("Western Ocean"), ferrying 37,000 soldiers.
According to Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak, the Yongle Emperor commissioned these expeditions, the late eminent Dutch sinologist. Author of China's Discovery of Africa, because he was motivated by "the real need of overseas products felt particularly at Court, and the desire to increase his prestige and reestablish the Chinese Empire's overseas renown."
Unfortunately, most official records of Zheng He's travels were destroyed (due to the Emperor's court officials' jealousy of the eunuch clique to which Zheng He belonged). As a result, Ma Huan, a Muslim interpreter, and Fei Hsin, a member of the scholar class who served as a junior officer on some of Zheng He's trips, provide the majority of today's understanding of Zheng He's expedition.
According to surviving documents in China's imperial archives, Zheng He paid a visit to the Sultan of Malindi, the most powerful coastal ruler of the time, in present-day eastern Kenya (this encounter is thought to have taken place at Mambrui, a small village just north of Malindi on Kenya's north coast, because the town was near a river mouth). When one of Zheng He's ships sank en way to China, it is said to have been a giraffe, a present to the Chinese Emperor. Nobody knows for sure where the ship went down, but some experts believe it was off the coast of Malindi or near the island of Lamu. Nobody knows whether the sinking ship was part of Zheng He's fleet.
Emperor's emissaries
In 2010, a collaborative team of Kenyan and Chinese maritime archaeologists set out to determine whether or not the shipwreck belonged to Zheng He's fleet. They uncovered a 15th-century Chinese "Yongle Tongbao" coin, a little disk of copper or brass and silver with a square hole in the center, at Mambrui hamlet, north of Malindi on Kenya's north coast, later that year during the dig. Experts believe that such coins were only carried by Emperor's envoys, adding to the evidence of Zheng He's presence in East Africa.
However, archival and archaeological evidence suggests that the Chinese may have been on the African continent hundreds of years before Zheng He. Chinese explorations of the African Red Sea coast, East Africa, and its Indian Ocean islands need seaworthy vessels. Archaeological evidence suggests that Chinese seafaring technology was extremely advanced throughout the Qin and Han eras (the central rudder was invented around this time). Guangzhou, the headquarters and largest metropolis of Guangdong province on the Pearl River, roughly 120 kilometers north-northwest of Hong Kong and north-northeast of Macau, discovered a large-scale shipping industrial archaeological site in 1974. The Quanzhou ship, which had segmented hulls and could hold over one hundred tons of cargo, was equipped with a nautical compass by the Song Dynasty.
The Ching-Hsing Chi ("Record of Travels") and Yu-Yung Tsa –Tsu ("Assorted Dishes from Yu-yang") are the primary sources of Chinese information about East Africa during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Most of the material was recorded in the Chu-fan-Chih ("Gazetteer of Foreigners") and Ling-wai Taita ("Information from Beyond the Mountains") during the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). In Wu-Pei-Chih ("Notes on Military Preparedness"), Hsing-ch'a Sheng-lan ("Triumphant Vision of the Starry Raft"), and Ming Shih ("History of the Ming Dynasty"), the account of the Ming (1368-1644) naval voyage into the Western Indian Ocean is recorded.
Historians and archaeologists disagree on when China first made contact with Africa, although scholars believe that 138-126 BC (before the Qin Dynasty in 221-206 BC) is the historical starting point of Sino-African relations, according to Li Anshan, author of a History of Overseas Chinese in Africa.
According to Li Anshan, there were almost no allusions to Africa in Chinese historical sources from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) through the Sui Dynasty (581-618). Nonetheless, as evidenced by foreign historical documents, some private encounters were taking place. These documents show that Chinese commercial ships were involved in the Indian Ocean trade activity centered on Sri Lanka.
The 1st century AD Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, one of the few ancient Greek sources on the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf, provides more evidence for the exceptional early interaction with Africa. Private interactions between China and Africa appear to have coexisted with a modest number of official contacts even at this early stage. Cultural and commodity contacts between China and Egypt were documented in imperial papers throughout the Han Dynasty. In his 1953 book, History of East and West Traffic, Taiwanese scholar Fang Hao claimed, "That was when the Chinese learned of Alexandria of Egypt (Li Xuan) and dispatched an embassy there."
Zhang Qian was the envoy in question. During the Han Dynasty in the 2nd century BC, Zhang served as a sort of roaming ambassador for imperial China. His missions introduced China to various kingdoms and products from an area of the world that was previously unknown to them.
The Silk Road
During this time, the Silk Road was founded. This commerce and cultural exchange route linked China to the rest of the world, and it was named after the lucrative Chinese silk trade that took place along it.
The archaeological record appears to provide some evidence for these early Han China-Africa commercial ties. Austrian scientists discovered remains of silk fabric in the hairs of a female body from the twenty-first Egyptian dynasty (1070-954 BC) in 1993 while investigating the hairs of a female corpse from the twenty-first Egyptian dynasty (1070-954 BC). China was the only silk producer at the time. This indicates that Chinese goods were already in Egypt.
Zhang Xiang, an author who has written about ancient Sino-African relations, has also pointed out that the "Dou Le" kingdom referenced in the classical Chinese work Hou Han Shu Xi Yu Zhuan was the famous Adulis harbor in ancient Aksum, Ethiopia. Its ambassador landed in Luo Yang in 100 AD, marking a significant turning point in Sino-African relations.
Knowledge of Africa shifted from indirect to direct during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). There are three Tang Dynasty historical documents that specifically mention Africa. Du Huan's Jing Xing Ji ("Record of My Travels") is one of them. According to Li Anshan, Du went on a westward crusade with Gao Xiangzhi, the West Conquering Officer. Du was conquered by the "Dashi" in 751, following the unsuccessful Battle of Dallas River (Arabs). Du went home by sea en route to Guangzhou in 762, more than ten years later, and wrote Jing Xing Ji. Unfortunately, the book has vanished. The Border Defense part of the Tong Dian, however, has preserved nearly 1,500 words of the book, which also mentions the "Molin Kingdom, where Du encountered black people," whose terrain was brutally barren of trees and grass and grew few grains and little rice. The people, according to Du, worshiped deities.
Years later, Wolbert Smidt inferred that Molin was located in the harsh desert lowlands of modern-day Eritrea after conducting a thorough investigation. And that Laobosa, which Du mentions visiting south of Molin, is the first time Ethiopia is mentioned in an early Chinese source. Du would have set sail from the ancient port of Adulis, the Aksumite Kingdom's seaport.
Another Tang Dynasty source, Duan Chengshi's You Yang Za Zu, contains a paragraph apparently mentioning another African country, the Boboli Kingdom. People ate meat but not grains in this area. They drew blood from their cows' jugulars and mixed it with milk for drinking, a procedure that is still used by pastoralists in the Horn of Africa today. According to Duan, their land had never been conquered, and they fought with ivory shields and wildebeest horns. Most experts believe the Boboli Kingdom was located in modern-day Berbera, Somaliland's Somali province, according to Li Anshan.
Official and private ties between Africa and China expanded throughout the Song Dynasty (960-1279), as evidenced not only by archival documents and books from the time period but also by past and recent archaeological findings.
It is impossible to determine what Africans thought of these early Chinese explorers in the absence of any recorded or oral history. Chinese opinions against Africans, on the other hand, are well-known. The dynastic Chinese held discriminatory preconceptions about black Africans, which have unfortunately persisted through the decades. They considered Africans as lacking in "moral virtue," which they (the Chinese) thought they had in abundance. According to archival archives and archaeological finds, however, governmental and informal ties between Africa and China flourished during this period.
Professor Felix Chami of Dar Es Salaam University in Tanzania (who was a keynote speaker at the Exploring China's Ancient Links to Africa conference in Addis Ababa) and Professor Marco Vigano of Addis Ababa University, for example, discovered and identified Chinese coins dating back to the Song Dynasty in 2005 and 2011. Professor Vigano's discovery was made in the rugged Ethiopian interior, in the ruins of the medieval village of Harla, near Dire Dawa. Dr. Chami's Chinese coin, which was originally erroneously dated to the 15th century and not given any special attention, was discovered in the Kuumbi Cave in Zanzibar. All three Song coins are from inside China, from Kaifeng, the northern Song capital, and they show that Chinese trade was potentially more widespread than previously imagined.
There were various marine routes connecting China and Africa by the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). China to North Africa was one of them, involving travel from China via India, then Aden, and lastly Egypt. The China to East Africa route included travel from China via the Maldives and then to East Africa. Then there were the two branches of the China-Madagascar route. There was also a route that connected China with the Malaba Coast and then Madagascar.
These well-traveled pathways made it easier for China and Africa to communicate both officially and privately. This had a lot to do with the Zhao Song Period's concentration on international trade, as well as the Yuan emperors' public policy to promote overseas trade. In addition, the Yuan Dynasty's Zhu Siben created a map of the African continent at the time. The continent of Southern Africa had previously been marked on the map.
Returning to the beginning
The Somali region was a common port of call for Chinese traders and diplomats during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) when Egypt and Ethiopia were often visited by Chinese merchants and officials.
Archaeological records of trade contacts between Ancient China and the Somali region, according to Dr. Sada Mire, Director of Antiquities in Somaliland, date back to the middle of the first millennium AD and continue to the current day. Dr. Mire's own excavation in the area has shown the nature of the connection between early Islamic kingdoms in the Horn of Africa and Chinese trade along the Silk Route.
Trade with ancient Somali coastal communities is also mentioned in Chinese historical documents and chronicles (including modern-day Mogadishu and Berbera). Incense from the Somali Red Sea coast was traded, and it was utilized in Chinese courts and temples. However, commerce activities aided not just the movement of products but also the transmission of ideas and cultures.
China-Africa connections had come full circle by the time of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Official interactions had diminished, but personal relationships had survived. Indirect trade took over from direct trade. For exposure to Africa, the Chinese had to rely on the release of various books about African adventures and history. However, after European nations intervened in Africa in the 19th century, direct diplomatic contacts between African countries and China were resumed.
China's current connections with Africa may have ramifications well beyond the two continents. In Arnhem Land, Australia, Dr. Ian MacIntosh of Indiana University, who organized the Exploring China's Ancient Links to Africa conference, uncovered roughly century-old African coins. The five copper coins, which are thought to be from Tanzania's Sultanate of Kilwa, are well before any known European voyages of discovery in the Pacific. Even more, questions have been raised concerning China's early exploration of Africa as a result of this fact.
China's relationship with Africa has been ongoing for quite some time.
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