The First Capitalist Nation

Abstract

This chapter traces the long-drawn-out development of capitalism in England, employing the conception of capitalism as a socio-economic system that goes back to Karl Marx and Max Weber. It argues that over the long period, two central factors drove the process: population growth and international/intercontinental trade. From 1086 to 1660, population growth and the wool trade (raw wool and woollen textile production for export to Europe and for the domestic market) were at the centre of the process. From 1660 to 1850, the process shifted decisively to the Atlantic world, partly, because mercantilist policies closed much of the European markets to English manufactures. England’s counties that dominated production for export to the rapidly growing Atlantic markets—Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the West Midlands—launched the Industrial Revolution and industrial capitalism in England.