Zheng He led between 1405 and 1433 seven large-scale naval expeditions across the Indian Ocean, reaching Arabia, East Africa, and the Persian Gulf with fleets of up to 300 ships. His largest ships — the so-called "treasure ships" — exceeded in size any contemporary European vessel. These expeditions did not generate the cartographic tradition that would come to dominate modernity: the Ming court halted the voyages and destroyed much of the records. Their presence in this corpus is an essential counterpoint to the idea that advanced oceanic navigation was an exclusivity of the European Atlantic.