Factory (trading post) in the context of "Welser"

Sakoku (Japanese: 鎖国; IPA: [sa̠ko̞kɯ̟]; lit. 'chained country') was the isolationist foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate under which, during the Edo period (from 1603 to 1868), relations and trade between Japan and other countries were severely limited, and almost all foreign nationals were banned from entering Japan, while common Japanese people were kept from leaving the country. The policy was enacted by the shogunate government (bakufu) under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633 to 1639.

Japan was not completely isolated under the sakoku policy. Sakoku was a system in which strict regulations were placed on commerce and foreign relations by the shogunate and certain feudal domains (han). There was extensive trade with China through the port of Nagasaki, in the far west of Japan, with a residential area for the Chinese. The policy stated that the only European influence permitted was the Dutch factory at Dejima in Nagasaki. Western scientific, technical and medical innovations flowed into Japan through Rangaku ("Dutch learning").

Colonialism is the practice of extending and maintaining political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a territory and its people by another people in pursuit of interests defined in an often distant metropole, who also claim superiority. While frequently an imperialist project, colonialism functions through differentiating between the targeted land and people, and that of the colonizers (a critical component of colonization). Rather than annexation, this typically culminates in organizing the colonized into colonies separate to the colonizers' metropole. Colonialism sometimes deepens by developing settler colonialism, whereby settlers from one or multiple colonizing metropoles occupy a territory with the intention of partially or completely supplanting the existing indigenous peoples, possibly amounting to genocide.

Colonialism monopolizes power by understanding conquered land and people to be inferior, based on beliefs of entitlement and superiority, justified with beliefs of having a civilizing mission to cultivate land and life, historically often rooted in the belief of a Christian mission. These beliefs and the actual colonization establish a so-called coloniality, which keeps the colonized socio-economically othered and subaltern through modern biopolitics of sexuality, gender, race, disability and class, among others, resulting in intersectional violence and discrimination.

The Portuguese Empire was a colonial empire that existed between 1415 and 1999. In conjunction with the Spanish Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It achieved a global scale, controlling vast portions of the Americas, Africa and various islands in Asia and Oceania. It was one of the most powerful empires of the early modern period, while at its greatest extent in 1820, covering 5.5 million square km (2.1 million square miles), making it among the largest empires in history. Composed of colonies, factories, and later overseas territories, it was the longest-lived colonial empire in history, from the conquest of Ceuta in North Africa in 1415 to the handover of Macau to China in 1999.

The power and influence of the Kingdom of Portugal would eventually expand across the globe. In the wake of the Reconquista, Portuguese sailors began exploring the coast of Africa and the Atlantic archipelagos in 1418–1419, using recent developments in navigation, cartography, and maritime technology such as the caravel, with the aim of finding a sea route to the source of the lucrative spice trade. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral, while on a voyage to India, reached what would later be Brazil.

The English overseas possessions, sometimes referred to as the English Empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonized, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England before 1707. (In 1707 the Acts of Union made England part of the Kingdom of Great Britain. See British Empire.)

The first English overseas settlements were established in Ireland. Although there were English voyages of exploration during the reign of Henry VII of England, and further settlement in Ireland and attempts at North American settlement during the reign of his granddaughter Elizabeth I, not until the succession in 1603 of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England (ruling as James I) were permanent overseas settlements established in North America, first at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) and then the West Indies, all in areas claimed by Spain. In Asia, trading posts called "factories" in the East Indies, such as Bantam, and in the Indian subcontinent, beginning with Surat. In 1639, a series of English fortresses on the Indian coast was initiated with Fort St George. In 1661, the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Braganza brought him as part of her dowry new possessions which until then had been Portuguese, including Tangier in North Africa and Bombay in India.

A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory in European and colonial contexts, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded.

Typically a trading post allows people from one geographic area to exchange for goods produced in another area. Usually money is not used. The barter that occurs often includes an aspect of haggling. In some examples, local inhabitants can use a trading post to exchange what they have (such as locally-harvested furs) for goods they wish to acquire (such as manufactured trade goods imported from industrialized places).

An emporium refers to a trading post, factory, or market of classical antiquity, derived from ἐμπόριον empórion, which becomes emporium in Latin. The plural is emporia in both languages, although in Greek the plural undergoes a semantic shift towards 'merchandise'. Emporium is a term that has also been used to describe the centres of heightened trade during the Early Middle Ages.

Emporia varied greatly in their level of activity. Some seem to have functioned much like the permanent European trading colonies in China, India and Japan in the early modern period or those of the mediaeval Italian maritime republics in the Levant. Others were probably annual events for a few days or weeks like the medieval Champagne fairs or modern trade fairs.

New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam, pronounced [ˌniu.ɑmstərˈdɑm]) was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading factory gave rise to the settlement around Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River (Hudson River). In 1624, it became a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic and was designated as the capital of the province in 1625. New Amsterdam became a city when it received municipal rights on February 2, 1653.

By 1655, the population of New Netherland had grown to over 2,000 people, with a 1,500 majority residing in the city of New Amsterdam. By 1664, the population of New Netherland had risen to almost 9,000 people, 2,500 of whom lived in New Amsterdam, 1,000 lived near Fort Orange, and the remainder in other towns and villages.

The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies (Dutch: Nederlands(ch)-Indië; Indonesian: Hindia Belanda), was a Dutch colony with territory mostly comprising the modern state of Indonesia, which declared independence on 17 August 1945. Following the Indonesian War of Independence, Indonesia and the Netherlands made peace in 1949. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, the Dutch ceded the governorate of Dutch Malacca to Britain, leading to its eventual incorporation into Malacca (state) of modern Malaysia.

The Dutch East Indies was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Dutch government in 1800. During the 19th century, the Dutch fought many wars against indigenous rulers and peoples, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Dutch rule reached its greatest territorial extent in the early 20th century with the occupation of Western New Guinea. The Dutch East Indies was one of the most valuable colonies under European rule, though its profits depended on exploitative labor.