Why did the Europeans continue maritime exploration when the Chinese deliberately abandoned it?
2 Answers
The Chinese Mandarins curtailed China's brief period of maritime exploration because it was expensive, yielded little and threatened social order. The European maritime powers were eager for trade.
Explanation:
You may want to read Victor Davis Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" -- for more on some of the fundamental cultural differences between different civilizations and how they manifest in policy, practice, and warfare.
China has essentially always been about central control and social order, primarily to ensure the stability and political unity that keeps the risk of massive flooding and invasions at bay. The maritime explorations of Zheng He in the 1430s were impressive accomplishments, but they were meant to overawe other kingdoms with the might and wealth of China. They proved expensive, yielded little in new revenue to China, and were bringing in new ideas (usually most unwelcome in Chinese history) and were disrupting social order.
The other point is that China had just spent a considerable fortune on a new internal canal system that could enhance internal trade and reduce the danger of major famines. The canal system needed a lot of sailors, and to the Mandarinate, the answer was obvious.
Europe was always politically fragmented, with every country looking for advantage and new trade opportunities. With the Turkish Empire levying extremely heavy taxes on East-West trade, Portugal in particular decided to find a new route to Asia. Merchants soon followed the mariners, yielding new products and revenues to the Portugese Crown. Their success soon meant that Spain, France, England and the Dutch -- Europe's main Atlantic nations -- soon strove to follow the Portuguese example.
Partly the idea of cultural and racial superiority
Explanation:
The Chinese referred to themselves as the middle kingdom. The Chinese viewed their culture and civilization as halfway between the spiritual world of the deified ancestors ( theirs of course) and the human world. As such Chinese culture and civilization was superior to all other people and cultures.
The Ming dynasty after the results of the maritime explorations decried that the rest of the world had nothing of value to offer the Chinese. ( Indeed most of what the rest of world had to offer was viewed as harmful to Chinese culture.) China for most of its history had been isolated and isolationist. The Hymalana , The Gobi desert, the Ocean, the jungles of Burma, and Vietnam isolated the Culture of China from the rest of the world.
Only during the time of the Mongal rule had the isolation of the Chinese culture been disrupted. This brought wealth through the silk road and greater contact with the west, The wealth was welcome but the contact with the west and being ruled by the barbarians from the north was not. Isolationist policy were preferred by the Chinese rulers.
The view of the Chinese culture as superior, the physical isolation and preference for isolationism made the Chinese restrict trade and expansion by the Ocean.
