India and China produced just about everything locally that the West could export, and without having to ship it halfway around the world.  Generally, they also produced higher quality manufactured goods, up until the Industrial Revolution.  They also had botanical products that didn&#x27;t grow in Europe, or were state secrets (like serriculture), which were desirable.  Until the BEIC hooked a sizable part of southern China on opium, about the only reliable trade good was cold, hard cash.<p>It&#x27;s kind of hilarious to read through the annals of the British East India Company[1], for example.  On their initial expeditions, they loaded ships full of wool, English broadcloth, leather, and other kinds of trade goods that they might shuttle around the Baltic Sea trade.  When they got to Malabar or Indonesia, they realized these trade goods were basically worthless - on a couple of expeditions they were lucky enough to capture Spanish or Portuguese ships loaded with Indian cotton goods that it turned out could be traded for peppercorns or nutmegs, on others they had to use what little gold and silver they were allowed to ship.<p>The silk, ceramic and tea trade to China vacuumed up a huge percentage of the output of the Spanish New World silver and gold mines.  So much Peruvian silver came into Ming and Qing China that it wrecked the conversion rates between gold, silver and cash currency, and much of the mercantilist economic studies of the period were focused on finding ways to get the balance of trade to result in specie coming into, e.g England, rather than going out.<p>I enjoy that Pliny quote, because it highlights the same problems of international trade in the Roman Republic that the various East India companies experienced.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;annalshonorable03brucgoog" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;annalshonorable03brucgoog</a>