It's common knowledge that Eastern silks and spices were valuable commodities in Rome, but what goods came from Europe that were in high demand amongst the Chinese and Indians and other east Asian cultures?
Oh cool! This is a fun question I'd like to chime in on regarding foreign trade in Tibet. Yes, I know you wrote "China and India" and no, I'm not implying Tibet was a part of China --that question is often addressed here and you can plenty of in-depth answers to their complicated relationship using the search bar. BUT! Tibet is right in between those two and Tibetan trade isn't something I get to talk about often. So with that disclaimer:
Tibet wanted European precious stones and minerals. Coral, amber, conches, turquoise, lapis lazuli, pearls, and refined gold and silver. A simple Google search for “Tibetan jewelry” will yield myriad results like this, and you can see the prominence of such precious stones. But despite being so ingrained with the image of the culture—from earrings to massive adornments in temples—most was imported from European shores (particularly the Mediterranean, though the highest quality amber came from the Baltic shores). These stones originated in places like Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Barbary Coast of Algeria before eventually making their way to Ladakh, Lhasa, and Xining. This trade in precious stones is believed to date all the way back to the first century. These stones were not only used in jewelry and adornment but in the actual construction of religious idols. This latter aspect apparently made some Christian traders uneasy: at least one instance of Armenian traders with an order for amber large enough to make “form of a monster, [with] six horns, four ears, four arms, and six fingers on each hand” was recorded with distaste by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a French Christian merchant and traveler. His use of the term “monster” is evidence of his disquiet. He also found it objectionable that these Christian Armenians were so willing to supply material for foreign idols. These Armenian traders, by the way, were placing the order in modern-day Gdansk (in Poland).
As well as the stones themselves, certain practices associated with them also found their way to Tibet. For instance, in many places in Europe, large, in-tact branches of coral (extremely rare) were set aside as gifts to the king and high nobility. The Jesuit Ippolito Desideri (I’ve written about him before here) observed in 1720 that these branches of were also used as gifts or offerings in Tibet to prominent lamas or particular idols in much the same way they were given to European nobility. Neat!
Another interesting fact about Tibetan trade was that, despite being an exporter of gold and silver, it was an importer of silver currency. This is due to an interaction between culture and geopolitics. The Malla kings of Nepal, because of several invasions in the mid-seventeenth century, were able to secure treaty rights to be Tibet’s mint. (The Newars, of whom the Malla kings came from, are a distinctive Nepali ethnic group long-associated with the Kathmandu Valley, and even after the Gorkha conquests in the eighteenth century were able to retain positions of power due to their administrative skills). Tibet exported silver ingots for minting, as well as purchasing additional silver with gold, and imported the printed currency pieces. Prior to this exchange, Tibet eschewed the use of metal currency and was instead a barter economy. Culturally, the Tibetans refrained from making metal currency themselves due to religious reason. When the Mallas secured the right to provide metal currency, this provided a way around the religious imposition against such practice and allowed Tibet increased access to the changing regional economy (the Newars were, in turn, converted to the use of metal currency by the Mogul emperor of India about a century before).
Sources:
Luce Bulnois, “Gold, Wool, and Musk: Trade in Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Tibetan History Reader (Gray Tuttle & Kurtis R. Schaeffer, eds.): 2013.
David Snellgrove & Hugh Richardson, "A Cultural History of Tibet." 1967.
Bullion.
Gold and silver especially were in high demand. China was constantly in need of precious metals to use in the minting of coins to fuel their massive economy, and Europe took advantage of this, especially once the silver mine in Potosi got rolling.
Some historians have made the argument that it was China's thirst for precious metals that drove the early modern economy -- nearly half of the world's silver production between 1500 and 1800 flowed directly into Chinese mints.
Source:
Pomeranz and Topik, The World that Trade Created
hi! there's room for more input on this, but fyi, there have been a few related posts, so you may be interested in previous responses
For Roman era here are few paragraphs from How Rome Fell (2009) by Adrian Goldsworthy:
The most spectacular trade links were with India and China. From the Red Sea ports of Egypt large numbers of merchant ships left in July of each year, catching the monsoon winds that would carry them directly to reach India. Their cargoes included wine, glassware, metals and coin, textiles and frankincense from Arabia. (pg 48 - 49)
and
Traders also trekked over vast distances to carry goods overland along the famous Silk Road. Silk was much in demand in the empire and seems to have been available in great quantities. ... There were workshops in Syria that wove silk more finely than anything the Chinese themselves could produce, and this semi-transparent gauze was reexported back eastwards in considerable quantities. (pg 49)
