China’s Eunuchs or Spain’s Kings?

Between 1405 and 1433, Ming emperor Zhu Di despatched Admiral Zheng He on seven naval expeditions with the largest ships then known to mankind. These ranged far and wide and brought back treasure, strange animals and knowledge of the world’s peripheries to the Middle Kingdom. But Chinese court politics, a twisted battle between palace eunuchs and court mandarins, discontinued these voyages and, by 1525, destroyed all ocean-going ships.

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