Indian Ocean Trade : Gathering Resources

[RogueTraderEnthusiast]

It has been mentioned a few times recently that the Romans did have a bit of a nightmare with Gold loss in the Indian Ocean.

However, other than that detail, not a lot more is shared, so I was wondering what information people had access to on the topic and what they felt the most important parts were?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_trade Obligatory Wiki Link so we can at least see what is there

 

[Krishna123]

My understanding is that it was simular to the situation that UK had with China, in that we wanted to buy their stuff but they did not want anything we had to sell apart from Silver/Gold so we sold them Opium instead. The closest Romans got to having something that the east would pay for was glass work. As this does not travel well a bit of a non starter. I did have an idea of the Greek and Roman factories in India (to provide goods to Rome etc) could be operated alongside glass factories with a simular set up to OTL Venice where certain secrets are highly policed to prevent the locals copying it. So shipments to Rome would already be paid for with Indian produced Roman glass, this would also stimulate the advancement of the glass industry in Rome if people saw big money in it?

 

[RogueTraderEnthusiast]

@Krishna123 Well, the Romans kept Greek Fire a secret - so maybe.

I wasn't focusing so much on what could the Romans do, but more what the various major trade routes, major goods, etc were. The most obvious route is the imports via the Red Sea - but besides roughly knowing that there was trade from Africa to India to Indonesia to China, I don't know much about each route. (Although, speaking of which, I think the Cinnamon route wasn't the same as everything else).