"Taking the Maldives as a case, angle, and approach, this book examines China's maritime activities in the Indian Ocean, in addition to Sino-Indian Ocean interactions during the period of 1200-1620. Firmly based on textual sources (Chinese, Maldivian, and other non-Chinese sources), cartographic works (both Chinese and Jesuit), and archaeological findings (mainly shipwrecks), this book illustrates how the Maldives, a small Indian Ocean archipelago far away from the Celestial Dynasty, shaped Chinese empire-building from the Neolithic period to the seventeenth century. It also analyzes the Chinese conceptualization of this Indian Ocean sultanate by highlighting China's maritime explorations and knowledge production, throwing fresh light on maritime China, maritime Asia, and the Indian Ocean world. "Discovered" and named by the Chinese at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Maldives would be soon forgotten in the Chinese world by the end of the sixteenth century after the Chinese state suddenly retreated from the Indian Ocean and began to focus on Nanyang (lit. "South Ocean," roughly covering the area known now as Southeast Asia). Adopting a trans-regional and interdisciplinary approach, this book contributes to the history of the Maldives (and thus of the Indian Ocean), maritime China (and thus maritime Asia), and Sino-Indian Ocean interactions"--
Chinese traders and explorers first visited the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, in the early fourteenth century. The traveler Wang Dayuan “discovered” the island sultanate for the Chinese world, and merchants increasingly dealt in Maldivian goods such as coconuts, cowrie shells, and ambergris. Zheng He’s fifteenth-century voyages ventured to the islands, by then a trading hub, and brought their envoys to Beijing. But the Maldives faded from Chinese records by the end of the sixteenth century, after the Ming state suddenly retreated from the Indian Ocean and shifted focus to Southeast Asia.
Discovered but Forgotten is a pioneering examination of China’s relations with the Maldives and Sino-Indian Ocean interactions, offering new ways to understand Chinese maritime exploration and the global history of the Indian Ocean. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including written records, Chinese and Jesuit maps, and archaeological analysis of shipwrecks—Bin Yang provides a comprehensive account of Chinese links to the Maldives and the Indian Ocean world from ancient times through the late Ming era. He scrutinizes Chinese understandings of the islands, emphasizing both seafaring material culture and textual knowledge production. Yang reconsiders the works of travelers such as Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta in light of Chinese explorations, and he opens a window onto a colorful world of intriguing commodities, port marriages, and voyages across the vast waters of maritime Asia. Transregional and interdisciplinary, Discovered but Forgotten reveals how a remote archipelago shaped the vast Chinese empire.
Discovered but Forgotten is a pioneering examination of China’s relations with the Maldives and Sino-Indian Ocean interactions, offering new ways to understand Chinese maritime exploration and the global history of the Indian Ocean.
