Where the trading partners of ancient rome making significant profits off their business with the city
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The trade routes to India and China were quite significant. A lot of the profit would end up with all of the merchants and with the states that they had to pass through.
What about with the rest of the trading partners like spain, france, North Africa etc.
Are you talking about before or after those regions were added to the empire?
Not really my area of interest but unless someone on this forums with expertise feels like responding there are some good online resources such as this:
https://www.ancient.eu/article/638/trade-in-the-roman-world/
https://www.ancient.eu/article/638/trade-in-the-roman-world/
It is hard to make sense of your question.
Firstly, what specifically do you mean by "trading partner"? The way it's used today is in terms of countries (political units). But given that Roman provinces are part of the Roman empire, then it is the same country. Are you asking about inter-provincial trade? Or trade outside the empire? Or does your term "trading partner" actually mean private businesses rather than provinces or regions?
Secondly, "profits" is an accounting concept pertaining to a business entity. An individual merchant or company makes "profit". A region doesn't. It does get a myriad of benefits ("gains from trade"), but the concept of "profits" doesn't apply to regions.
Thirdly, what do you mean by "with Rome". Rome the city? Rome the government? Rome the empire as a whole? Private merchants trade with each other all the time, within and without. Are you asking about the profits from all business activity inside the Roman empire? All commercial activity outside? Or are you asking about merchants trading with the imperial government (procurement)?
In the times of the Roman Empire the city of rome itself imported items from all over the world (specifically France spain, the middle east, north africa, as well as China and india) i'm asking did those places make enough money from the city of rome to consider the city and important trade partner
Your question is still a bit ambiguous.
Of course, merchants who traded with the city made plenty of money. If they didn't, they wouldn't have bothered.
Are you asking if the volume of trade with Rome significant out of its total foreign trade, total commerce, or simply significant enough to have impact on regional economies?
Because the first problem you run into is that international commerce itself is a very small fraction of economic activity in this era. Economies are mostly agrarian and local. Trade is important only for a handful of cities.
Now, trade does have secondary effects, in that in the hinterland "basin" of commercial cities, you will find the pull of specialization in agriculture for trade. That is, farms which produced everything for local consumption before, now focus on only producing wine, or only producing grain, confident they can sell their surpluses abroad. This does have a significant productivity impact. And this specialization is more profound the closer you are in the orbit of a population center.
Rome at its height was a city of over one million, arguably the largest city of the time (bar possibly one or two in China). Thus it is a major consumer center that exerts a profound demand over a large area. The hinterlands of Rome itself have no hope of supplying provisions for a city of that size. So, yes, Rome did pull in commodities from all around Mediterranean basin, helping pull up other cities into existence to serve it. And those cities would themselves have transformed their agrarian hinterlands into specialized farms to service not only them, but also exports to Rome. The proportion I am not sure.
But here I'm talking about trade of mundane, bulky provisions - grain, wine, olive oil, wool, etc. And yes, regional provinces around the Mediterranean were transformed as a result.
If you're asking about international trade (that is, outside the empire to, say, Baltics, Arabia, India, Southeast Asia etc.), it is a whole other matter. The proportion of this kind of trade is much, much smaller. Because long-distance trade of this kind is much costlier and riskier, only very high-value goods are worth transporting. That means, expensive luxuries like gems, sugar, spices and silks, which the populace cannot afford and is sold only to rich elite clientele. So population size itself isn't as much a factor. But, even so, the city of Rome is still significant - in the sense of having lots of extremely rich consumers who can afford these foreign luxuries. So, yes, Rome will have an impact far abroad. But as a proportion of total trade, it is obviously going to be much, much smaller than, say, wine or olive oil.
Does it have an impact locally abroad? I assume it did have some impact on spice-producing places like, say, Kerala or Ceylon. And maybe a sufficiently significant impact to encourage more Kerala farmers to replace rice plantations with pepper plantations. After all, the port cities of Kerala relied entirely on foreign trade. But I am assuming the proportion actually going to Rome is going to be small, relative to what they are selling to, say, closer Indian and Persian elites.
I'm sorry you're question is too long and hard to to follow, i'm asking did the merchants of the countries rome traded with (France, spain, North africa, middle east, china and india) make enough wealth from the city of rome to consider them important people to do business with?
With taxes from the empire being disproportionally distributed in the city of Rome, I would expect the citizens as a group to have unusually much cash on hand for importing goods.
Private merchants always make enough money. Otherwise they'd become farmers. Or pirates.
I am not sure merchants even existed in many of these places before trade with Rome developed. If you're agrarian and local, you don't really need a merchant class.
Trade creates merchants.
Trade with Rome created a lot of merchants. Not sure what other comparably large markets, at that time, could have sustained a large class of merchants. Athens, Carthage and Alexandria had their moments as big consumer centers, but in size, Rome eventually eclipsed them all.
P.S. - merchants are not necessarily of the nationality of the country they are conducting trade in. Indeed, they are very frequently all foreigners, e.g. Phoenicians, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, etc. interfacing between two other countries, or even carrying all internal trade inside the country. That historically has tended to be the case before the modern era.
Ok I think I understand countries as a whole didNT prosper from trade it was more local than that
The reason i'm asking these questions is because I'm trying to find out if rome is the biblical whore of babylon
How much of the following was being bought by the city of ancient rome:
gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, ivory, bronze, iron and marble ,cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, wine and olive oil, fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.
gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, ivory, bronze, iron and marble ,cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, wine and olive oil, fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.
How would you go about weighing the arguments in favor or against? What makes a city a "whore of Babylon"?