Industria Británica en Uruguay - Ciudad de Conchillas (Colonia)

The town of Conchillas is located in the western part of the department of Colonia, next to the stream of the same name, 7 km from Route 21 and the Rio de la Plata, 50 km from the departmental capital, Colonia del Sacramento, and 40 km from the city of Carmelo. If anything characterized this town like few others, it was that it was born entirely as a British factory. The town was simply a necessity to power the relentless mining machinery that would be installed there. These characteristics would mark it for life, so much so that, for the most part, it's a place that gives the impression that the hands of time stopped 70 years ago. However, the limited activity it may have today stands in stark contrast to its past years. Like so many other places in the department of Colonia, it was the site of large and thriving ventures, which, for various reasons, gradually slaked its seemingly insatiable hunger for production as the world shifted toward new forms of exploitation. Conchillas is in Uruguay, but its existence is inextricably linked to two other homelands, one distant, the other not so distant: Great Britain and the Argentine Republic. In the last two decades of the 19th century, the considerable increase in trade in Buenos Aires, denote the lack of said city, not being prepared with a high-performance port, facing the demand that was coming, that is why in 1880, the then Government of Buenos Aires, decided to build a Stone Port on the coasts of Buenos Aires, to replace a previous wooden one, thus seeking to compete in the fierce battle for dominance exercised by ports closer to the Pacific such as the Port of Rio de Janeiro, but more dangerously due to its proximity ... the Port of Montevideo, since Brazil in those years did not have an overseas port in the southern part of its region, so the main obstacle was then Montevideo and its port, which was in a superior strategic position to the detriment of Buenos Aires.