How "necessary" was Columbus?

[Sleel]

@The Flying Dutchman

O don’t buy this. The reason Columbus was able to sail west was for the prospect of financial gain for Isabel,Spain, himself and his crew. Discussion as to the feasibility of the endeavour was intense.

The Chinese on the other hand had no reason to sail far to the north or straight across the Pacific. What for ? To draw a map ?

Long after Europeans circumnavigated the globe and spread their knowledge of the globe worldwide, Cook or anyone else never saw any evidence of the Chinese on the west coast of the Americas well into the 18th century, before the construction of railroads.

Yes, from what I understand, the Chinese expeditions were in part to refine the maps they had. Exploratory efforts were withdrawn because of internal conflicts, as I said before. The records were suppressed, the fleet was disbanded, and the faction in charge after the changeover decreed that no more expeditions were to be sent. It stuck because, unlike Europe, China’s vast territory, resources, and population were under central control. A similar circumstance in Europe would have been if no one else had ever gone west, even when Columbus came back and reported on what he’d found, because the Pope said not to go.

We weren’t talking about what did happen, we were talking about what could have happened. If it had not been for the wrong faction losing, the Chinese could have found the Americas first. If the Europeans had concentrated on the Oriental trade routes for another century, it could have changed the balance of politics and the Chinese could have started sending out expeditions again, before the Europeans started going west in any numbers.

What did happen wasn’t necessarily fated. There are always little turning points in history where things could have changed quite dramatically if the timing were a bit different. Also, nothing happens in a vacuum. Things happening literally on the other side of the world can have profound effects on places that don’t even have any direct contact with those involved. A slightly longer period of European explorers concentrating on Oriental trade could have affected politics all across the area and given the Chinese both the incentive and the time to find North America first.

Like I said before, they probably wouldn’t even have known it for decades or even a century, until the people with access to information from both Chinese and European explorers were able to compare notes, or until land explorations brought them into contact.

Japan had maintained intermittent trade with the Chinese, so at least Japan was out west. It wouldn’t have taken much to follow the line of islands looping from Japan north northwest across to Alaska. That wasn’t the way the Chinese did go, but they had a very brief time of exploration and fewer stories of cool stuff out there over the horizon to intrigue them than the European powers did. Fifty or a hundred years could have made a big difference in how things turned out.

The Chinese could have gotten another fleet together and come into contact with Japan during the Sengoku Jidai, when things were unsettled and the political situation was fluid. Their influence would have changed the course of several conflicts, possibly leading to a faster unification or a longer period without central rule, and in either case, there would have been a much better chance of the development of trade than happened under Oda Nobunaga or the later Tokugawa Shogunate. It could also have brought them into contact with Europeans in a different way as the Portuguese began arms trade with Japan around this time.

After firearms were introduced, Japan refined them, and their designs were superior to the European ones for quite a long time. Japan could have started exporting arms to China, which would also have changed China’s history, making the internal situation more chaotic and leading to more importance being placed on trade to the west.

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

@RedFury

In Spanish folklore it is said that Columbus was the first man to make…an egg stand on its end. (“Colón fué el primer hombre que puso un huevo de pie”)

I’ve also heard this story in French. “C’est comme l’oeuf de Colomb” (“It’s like Columbus’s egg”) means that something was very easy to do, but the hard part was thinking of it. Like sailing west to discover another land, or making a hard-boiled egg stand on its end by smashing said end on the table.

[Little_Nemo]

But China had no such program. There was no desire to set up trading posts or colonies in faraway barbarian lands, the Zheng Ho voyages weren’t trading voyages but national prestige voyages, like the moon landings.

I once read an apt comment to the effect that the reason the Chinese never got serious about exploration was because everyone else was trying to find a way to get to China and they were already there.

[Lemur866]

Yes, China could have discovered the Americas pretty easily by the northern route…but they never sailed north. There were no trading fleets heading north that would go further and further and eventually find themselves in Alaska and Canada. Because the Chinese thought Kamchatka and such were worthless. The Chinese weren’t searching out new trade routes. The Europeans were searching for ways to trade with wealthy China and India, wealthy China saw no need to trade with Europe.

Notice that when Columbus “discovered America” he didn’t give a crap about what he actually discovered. A bunch of primitive islands didn’t interest him, he wanted “the riches of the orient”. It was only when the conquistadores discovered that there were easily conquered gold-rich empires in the Americas that anyone cared. And for the next hundred years or so nobody cared about anything in the Americas except the gold…gold that could be traded for the riches of the orient.

Yes, eventually the sugar plantations in the Carribean became extremely valuable, eventually people started colonizing the Americas for religious reasons, eventually people moved there simply to live…whether as yeoman farmers or “gentlemen” overseeing plantations. But the land itself didn’t interest those early explorers, and it wouldn’t have interested Chinese, Turkish, Indian, Arab, or Japanese explorers either.

If China was going to reach the Americas through Alaska, they would first have to have shown some interest into expanding into what’s now the Russian Far East. But they never did, despite being much closer than the Grand Duchy of Muscovy was. And the Russians themselves kept going across the Bering Straits to colonize Alaska, just like we imagine the Chinese doing. So why couldn’t China? Only in a history where China ended up colonizing the Russian Far East can we imagine a history where China reached the Americas through Alaska. And since in our history China never had the slightest interest in colonizing the Russian Far East, we’d have to postulate some significant change to make them want to do so. The news of the discovery of the Americas reached the whole world, but it only set off a land grab among European powers. China could easily have played catch-up…if only it was in the colonizing business.

So China never colonized the Americas, not because they didn’t know the Americas existed, but because they never colonized anything. Even when they learned the Americas existed they never tried to colonize the Americas, even in the 1500s when they were much wealthier and more technologically advanced than any European country or combination of countries. Spain was conquering Mexico, Peru, the Carribean, the Phillipines, and such. China had known of the Phillipines for thousands of years, why didn’t they conquer the Phillipines? They could have done so much more easily than the Spanish who were literally on the other side of the planet.

[Pleonast]

Is it really true China never colonized? In the present day, there are Chinese enclaves all over the Pacific Rim. How old are these?

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

@Pleonast

Is it really true China never colonized? In the present day, there are Chinese enclaves all over the Pacific Rim. How old are these?

Those ain’t colonies, they’re people who left China during the various periods of civil unrest/war/invasion/purges/whatever 1850-1970s.