Factory (trading post)
The origin of the word factory is from Latin factorium 'place of doers, makers' (Portuguese: feitoria; Dutch: factorij; French: factorerie, comptoir).
A factory could serve simultaneously as market, warehouse, customs, defense and support to navigation and exploration, headquarters or de facto government of local communities.
The factories were established from 1356 onwards in the main trading centers, usually ports or central hubs that have prospered under the influence of the Hanseatic League and its guilds and kontors.
Between the 15th and 16th centuries, a chain of about 50 Portuguese forts either housed or protected feitorias along the coasts of West and East Africa, the Indian Ocean, China, Japan, and South America.
The main factories of the Portuguese East Indies, were in Goa, Malacca, Ormuz, Ternate, Macao, and the richest possession of Bassein that went on to become the financial centre of India as Bombay (Mumbai).
They allowed Portugal to dominate trade in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, establishing a vast empire with scarce human and territorial resources.
They went on to establish in conquered Portuguese feitorias and further enclaves, as they explored the coasts of Africa, Arabia, India, and South East Asia in search of the source of the lucrative spice trade.
Usually these factories had larger warehouses to fit the products resulting from the increasing agricultural development of colonies, which were boosted in the New World by the Atlantic slave trade.
Some Dutch factories were located in Cape Town in modern-day South Africa, Mocha in Yemen, Calicut and the Coromandel Coast in southern India, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Ambon in Indonesia, Fort Zeelandia in Taiwan, Canton in southern China, Dejima island in Japan (the only legal point of trade between Japan and the outside world during the Edo Period), and Fort Orange in modern-day Upstate New York in the United States.
It was headquarters of the company for a long time, and was once the de facto government in Rupert's Land and other parts of North America, prior to establishment of permanently-governed settled colonies.
After the treaty, the Hudson Bay Company rebuilt York Factory as a brick star fort at the mouth of the nearby Hayes River, its present location.
The factories were part of the United States' continuation of a process originally used by the French and then by the Spanish, to officially license the fur trade in Upper Louisiana.
Legislation was often passed calling for military garrisons at the fort, but their major purpose was a trading post, obtaining furs as cheaply as possible and transporting them to cities where they could be processed and turned into useful or luxurious items for sale at a profit.
