Alt.history - What trade could Europe and China have in the middle ages?

[SolemnGolem]

My current campaign, set in early Gothic European-style fantasy, is dealing with the repercussions of a Chinese-style "treasure fleet" (called the Hua) that landed about 50 years ago.

The treasure fleet made contact with the local Prince (Fürst) and traded some goods. They executed some sort of long-ranging contract, and then departed peaceably. Fifty years later, the Treasure Fleet's second generation of Hua has returned to check up on the Fürstentum's progress.

My meta-question is: what sort of development or result or trade goods are they likely to want from the Fürstenum?

(Whatever it is, they're not likely to get it. Their gifts of gunpowder, moveable print type, silk, and printed money caused a popular insurrection led by collegiate types and the clergy, and mostly supported by the peasantry. Although the rebellion succeeded in toppling the Fürst, the local barons were able to subdue the uprising and now rule over an insular society where gunpowder especially is tightly controlled.)

The PCs have dealt with the revelation of this secret history and its repercussions (rival barons trying out the forbidden "foreign technology" etc.). But they've also wondered what the Hua get out of the deal, which I haven't really thought about yet.

Any ideas?

[TheRedArmy]

Gold and Silver are always an option, if its more plentiful in Europe than China.

You mentioned fantasy. Do the Europeans have access to some kind of magic that the Hua lack? Perhaps some books made with the new movable print type. Would.explain the absence - we'll give you fifty years to write up your magical knowledge in 500 or so books for our eunuchs, nobility, emperor and his advisors, and we'll give you these gifts in exchange.

Trade goods. Do the Europeans have access to some good(s) that would be an equal trade?

What is the Hua's situation? Are they at war? Perhaps they came looking for technology or allies. These Hua have gunpowder? Do they have steel? Steel weapons might prove a massive advantage. European armor was superior to Chinese armor - is the same true here? Plate will protect you from most weapons.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Well, what China imported (indirectly) from Europe during the actual Middle Ages included:

• Wool and woolen textiles.
• Glass. Up until the 6th century, blown glass was a strictly European/Near Eastern thing.
• Purple silk. Murex dye, apparently, went really well with animal-based fibers. The Chinese didn't have it; the Mediterranean did.
• Anything with an interesting design. For a variety of reasons, which boil down to fashion and avoiding sumptuary laws, the Chinese imported things like Western brocades.

If the ships are big enough, cavalry horses might go over well. China was an enthusiastic importer of horses, and the bigger the better.

[Flyndaran]

Sailing directly from Europe to China would take an incredibly long time around the tip of Africa, wouldn't it?
That precludes all otherwise profitable bulk items.

[jason taylor]

Any of the same stuff they had in real life. The only difference would be lack of several middlemen.

Walrus tusks, furs, and such and such.

Slaves

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

...

Slaves

Slaves are just people, and there would be loads more much closer to China.

[martin_rook]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Slaves are just people, and there would be loads more much closer to China.

Sure, but depending on the culture, it might not be okay to enslave the people nearby, who are pretty similar (culturally, racially, or whatever) to yours. But slaves from some far-off (and no doubt, barbaric) land might be acceptable.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Walrus tusks, furs, and such and such.

Slaves

How different is walrus ivory from elephant ivory? I've assume it's fairly hard to tell the difference, but I don't actually know, and I'd like to. If it's pretty similar, then the Chinese already have plenty of ivory from Indian elephants.

Slaves are expensive to move long distance, because food is non-abundant in a medieval economy (although perhaps at medieval tech levels food could be semi-abundant in China due to rice farming techniques). Unless they have some magical hibernation trick (actually used in a John Christopher alt history novel, about Chinese exploring the Americas, via self-hypnosis induced hibernation), only truly exceptional slaves are worth moving huge distances.

Although for sexual purposes exoticness does have a high value in itself. I could see pretty young women (and a few young men) being transported to China, and pretty Chinese transported back the other way. But other than that, you'd need slaves with exceptional skills, and those are rare.

[Koshka]

Ambergris might be an option -- there are sperm whales in the Pacific, but at least in the modern day there's more in the Atlantic.

[SolemnGolem]

Originally Posted by TheRedArmy

You mentioned fantasy. Do the Europeans have access to some kind of magic that the Hua lack? Perhaps some books made with the new movable print type.

Possibly. I haven't fleshed out all the magical aspects of the campaign world yet, but I will need to do that eventually. The Big Bad of the European domain is a lich masquerading as a living king, and his Evil Plot is to gather one master practitioner of every magical art in the realms to split the dimensions, and so certainly the Hua interest him, because their omission from his project could mean an unrepresented magical art. (So far my theoretical "flavors" of magical arts that the Hua use would be Fengshui style geomancy, yin-yang internal/external chi-based arts, and Celestial divine favor which is partially represented by the Dragon as interlocutor between the gods and men. If you can suggest any further ones, I'd be happy to hear them!)

Originally Posted by TheRedArmy

What is the Hua's situation? Are they at war? Perhaps they came looking for technology or allies. These Hua have gunpowder? Do they have steel? Steel weapons might prove a massive advantage. European armor was superior to Chinese armor - is the same true here? Plate will protect you from most weapons.

This can be left wide open. I'm happy to have a situation where the Hua are squabbling over a vacant or weak Imperial seat, with several kingdoms observing surface courtesies to peace, but jockeying for power behind the scenes. The merchants who came over to the West would already be considered fairly low-ranking folk in the Hua bureaucracy, so it's entirely possible that they're also willing to break various other taboos, including studying foreign academic/religious texts, copying foreign tech, and intermarrying with foreign folks.

One possibility is that the Hua society is extremely rigid and circumscribed, and the chaos and volatility of the European-style countries is a powerful contrast: revolutions in thought and deed lead to change and suffering, but also to advances and further knowledge.

Another possibility is that this could be a revamp of the "ageing Emperor seeks immortality elixir" trope, from Earth's Qin dynasty. This could lead to very interesting interactions if you consider the European leader has already found a (partial) solution on his own through lichdom. If an undead king comes up against an undead emperor, who wins? That sort of thing.

But this is probably hijacking my own thread, so I move quickly on to the issue of the goods themselves...