Was there any dedicated merchant civilization which still

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Israel

Ancient Israel

The Himyars
So pretty much every Jewish civilization.

>dedicated merchant civilization
you mean like they got +2 gold to trading posts?

what the fuck kind of question is this, generally speaking most powerful empires were only able to maintain and expand their power through control (and taxation of) trade routes. For example the deep decline of the western roman empire, while the east was able to maintain far more power was due largely to the fact that eastern Mediterranean trade was extremely lucrative, and the west had nothing to make up for that loss. Similarly the discovery of the new world and new routes to the orient led to a decline of venice and the arabs who then controlled the eastern med trade routes.

U$Rael.

Venice.

Knights Templar

>>1878921
The Myceneans

oh also your question is a difficult one since most civilizations that were focused on building a trading empire had very powerful navies but not particularly impressive armies, since to control maritime trade routes you need a strong navy to fight piracy, protect your trade routes from the navies of rival powers should it come to war, and to blockade the ports of your rivals, again should it come to war. The nations that followed this path were Portugal, The Netherlands, Britain, Genoa and Venice. Their philosophy was that the largest empires are not necessarily the most powerful, and sought to take overseas territory strategically to best control trade routes as they did not really have the population for large scale overseas conquest.

This strategy however did leave them vulnerable at home, as all of those nations save Britain were invaded and conquered by their much larger neighbors leading to a huge decline in power.

>>1878921
The Hanseatic league.

>>1878921
Carthage.

The United States of America

>>1878921
USA

>>1879067
>>1879401
WE

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The Dutch VOC/WIC

venice

>>1878921

The British Empire

Chola Empire

Venice

Carthage

Minoans

>>1878921
Trade based countries are actually even more dependent upon military might than others. They need a way to keep their trade protected and prevent their neighbours from just shutting up the gates or tax trade beyond profitability.

>>1878921
This really depends on what you really mean by 'strong', I think. Large? Well-trained? Battle-tested? Disproportionate in these regards to its neighbors?

Moreover, for many historical civilizations to which trade was the central pillar of society, a 'strong' standing army or a martial culture would be a) redundant, given that diplomatic interests could often be enforced through aggressive trade manipulation, and b) possibly detrimental to the economy, as (disproportionately) large militaries can often lead to panic, and subsequently constrict trade.