Talk:1434

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China

"The recoil from such guns was so powerful that only heavy ships could sustain it without shaking apart. The Chinese might have matched European ships in this respect, but for reasons domestic to imperial politics, the Chinese government prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships after 1434, and made private Chinese oceanic enterprise illegal. Operating as pirates systematically handicapped Chinese (and Japanese) sailors thereafter and deprived them of any chance or arming their vessels with heavy guns like those European traders carried routinely."

- William McNeill, ‘The Changing Shape of World History’

What politics is he talking about? 81.68.255.36 (talk) 20:59, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Portuguese slaves

The article included an unsourced statement that the first Portuguese shipment of African slaves was brought to Lisbon in this year, but I think this arose simply out of a confusion with this being the date of Gil Eanes' rounding of Cape Bojador. This voyage is often treated as the beginning of Portuguese exploration in Africa that would lead to an extensive trade in black slaves, but this particular expedition returned without any slaves (or any recorded booty of any kind, except for some flowers picked to symbolise the achievement). The first few Portuguese voyages down the west African coast failed to yield any captives. They were landing on the coast of the Sahara and struggled to find people in the sparsely populated desert. It wasn't until the 1440s that these explorations led to any people being captured and brought back to Portugal as slaves.

Of course, if "African" slaves includes the Muslim inhabitants of northern Africa, then they had been arriving to Portugal for decades already but, either way, this event doesn't belong in 1434. Kaficek (talk) 11:05, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]