who led chinas naval exploration during the age of exploration
Zheng He Zheng He (Chinese: 鄭和; 1371–1433 or 1435) was a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and enslaved[2] court eunuch during China's early Ming dynasty. He was originally born as Ma He in a Muslim family, later adopted the conferred surname Zheng from Emperor Yongle.[3] Zheng commanded expeditionary voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433. His larger ships stretched 120 meters or more in length. These carried hundreds of sailors on four tiers of decks.[4]
Empire In the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire to be the largest contiguous empire in the world. However, within two generations, the empire was separated into four discrete khanates under Genghis Khan's grandsons. One of them, Kublai Khan, conquered China and established the Yuan Dynasty with the imperial capital at Beijing. One family ruled the whole Eurasian land mass from the Pacific to the Adriatic and Baltic Seas. The emergence of the Pax Mongolica had significantly eased trade and commerce across Asia.[25][26]
My Ántonia
Francis Drake Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540 – 28 January 1596[3]) was an English sea captain, privateer, slave trader, naval officer and explorer of the Elizabethan era. Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580, and was the first to complete the voyage as captain while leading the expedition throughout the entire circumnavigation. With his incursion into the Pacific Ocean, he claimed what is now California for the English and inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish on the western coast of the Americas,[4] an area that had previously been largely unexplored by western shipping.[5]