中图分类法:	K248.105 版次：
著者:	Levathes, Louise,
题名:	When China ruled the seas : [ the treasure fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 /] / ,
其它题名:	Treasure fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433
出版发行:	出版地： New York : 出版社： Oxford University Press, 出版日期： 1996.
载体形态:	252 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
内容提要:	"A hundred years before Columbus and his fellow Europeans began making their way to the New World, fleets of giant Chinese junks commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He and filled with the empire's finest porcelains, lacquerware, and silk ventured to the edge of the world's 'four corners'. Seven epic expeditions brought China's 'treasure ships' across the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, from Taiwan to the spice islands of Indonesia and the Malabar coast of India, on to the rich ports of the Persian Gulf and down the African coast, China's El Dorado, and perhap even to Australia, three hundred years before Captain Cook's landing. It was a time of exploration and expansion, but it ended in a retrenchment so complete that less than a century later it was a crime to go to sea in a multi-masted ship. In When China Ruled the Seas, Louise Levathes takes a fascinating and unprecedented look at this dynamic period in China's enigmatic history, focusing on China's rise as a naval power that briefly brought half the world within its grasp and its precipitous plunge into isolation under less adventurous emperors at the end of the fifteenth century. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, official Ming histories, and African, Arab, and Indian sources, many translated for the first time, Levathes brings readers inside China's most illustrious scienfitic and technological era. She sheds new light on the historical and cultural context in which this great civilization thrived as well as the perception of China by other contemporary cultures. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, When China Ruled the Seas is the fullest picture yet of the early Ming dynasty - the last flowering of Chinese culture before the Manchu invasion"--Back cover.
主题词:	Explorers China