The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (W W Norton & Company; 1998)

EASTWARD HO! 97

ceeded returns. These voyages reeked of extravagance. Whereas the

first profits (the first whiff of pepper) and the promise of even greater

ones to come were a powerful incentive to Western venturers, in China

the pecuniary calculus said no. This reconsideration, in its way, was very

much like that currently faced in the United States by such projects as

the supercollider and the space station.

The vulnerability of the program—here today, gone tomorrow—

was reinforced by its official character. In Europe, the opportunity of

private initiative that characterized even such royal projects as the

search for a sea route to the Indies was a source of participatory fund­

ing and an assurance of rationality. Nothing like this in China, where

the Confucian state abhorred mercantile success. The opening to the

sea, moreover, entailed huge outlays for defense against piracy: the

more active the ships, the greater the temptation to corsairs.* For the

Chinese government, then, the traders were free riders, getting rich at

imperial expense.

Hence the decision to turn from the sea. In 1477, a powerful eu­

nuch named Wang Zhi, head of the secret police, asked for the logs of

the great voyages by way of renewing interest in naval expeditions. In

response, the vice-president of the Ministry of War confiscated the

documents and either hid or burned them. Challenged on this myste­

rious disappearance, he denounced the records as "deceitful exagger­

ations of bizarre things far removed from the testimony of people's eyes

and ears"—so, unbelievable. As for the things the treasure ships

brought home, "betel, bamboo staves, grape-wine, pomegranates and

ostrich eggs and suchlike odd things," they obviously did nothing for

China. These voyages to the West Ocean had wasted "myriads of

money and grain," to say nothing of "myriads" of lives. And that was

that.

The question remains: Suppose the Chinese had not given up on trade
and exploration, suppose the Portuguese had arrived in the Indian
Ocean to find these huge Chinese ships ruling the seas? Or even more,
suppose the Chinese had not stopped somewhere around the Mozam­
bique channel but had gone around the Cape into the Atlantic, thereby
opening maritime links to West Africa and Europe? Those are the kinds
of counterfactual that have come to fascinate historians and econo-

• The Yellow and South China seas have always been a notorious nursery of pirates.
  Witness the terrible fate of many of the so-called boat people fleeing Vietnam in re­
  cent years.