WHAT WAS THE COLOMBIAN FACTORY? - HISTORY - 2025

The Colombian factory was a way of exchanging goods between the Spanish Crown and its colonies on the new continent. It began as a commercial exchange whose name comes from Columbus or Colón.

Columbus was the Genoese navigator who, looking for the shortest route to reach India, came across the lands of what was then called the American continent.

The main reason Europe was interested in the new lands was purely economic.

For this reason, Columbus dedicated himself to obtaining gold from his arrival. The first islands to which the explorers arrived were Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Cuba and Jamaica.

The villagers were friendly people and welcomed the explorers. Despite this, they did not tolerate the abuse or mistreatment of the newcomers, responding violently to them to defend their lands and their lives.

First period of the Columbian factory

At first the Spanish offered the Taínos European artifacts and objects and exchanged them for gold.

This lasted as long as the natives were willing to barter and they enjoyed obtaining objects that were exotic and unknown to them. Furthermore, gold had no special value for the aborigines.

Immediately they began to take the natives to Europe deceived and they profited from their sale as slaves in Europe.

All this happened during the first year after the arrival to the new lands, between the years 1493 and 1494.

Taino subjugation

When the exchange no longer worked, the way the Spanish found to get gold was to subjugate the indigenous population.

They had to force the native population to pay tribute. Gold stocks were small and insufficient for the invaders.

Therefore, to get the indigenous people to pay tribute with the metal, they had to organize a military structure that would contribute to the objective.

Creation of the military structure

Between the years 1496 and 1497 Bartolomé, Columbus's brother, was in charge of the colonizing company.

In order to get more resources, fortresses were built in the interior of the island with the forts Santo Tomás, Magdalena, Esperanza, Bonao and Concepción.

When each of these forts was founded, it immediately began to subdue the Taino population.

Second period of the Columbian factory

Every Indian over the age of 14 was obliged to award a bell full of gold or an arroba of cotton.

It was the first form of slavery imposed on the aborigines. It was an instrument that destroyed the physical and moral integrity of the original inhabitants because there was never the amount of gold that the Spanish believed.

Causes of failure

Forced labor, abuse, mistreatment and diseases brought from Europe, caused the number of Tainos to decrease from several hundred thousand in 1492, to only five hundred people by 1548.

In addition, due to the abuses, individual and mass suicides, insurrections, flight to the mountains and resistance to work to feed the Spanish occurred.

For these reasons the colonizers established other tax collection systems, such as the repartimiento and the encomienda.

References

1. R Cassa (1992) The Indians of the Antilles. Ed. Mapfre. Quito, Ecuador.
2. JP de Tudela (1954) The Columbian negotiation of the Indies. Magazine of the Indies. Search.proquest.com
3. JP de Tudela (1960) The armed forces of the Indies and the origins of politics. Bulletin of the Chilean Academy of History. search.proquest.com
4. Editor (2015) The Colombian factory. 12/21/2017. Dominican Rincon. rincondominicano.com