What factors influenced the rise of capitalism?

Answer 1

Before capitalism, the feudal system was the way of running things. this was where the majority of people were farmers (peasants) and were ruled by a heirachy of more skilled, wealthy and/or powerful men.

the agricultural revolution then occured, allowing single people to buy masses of land where previously, land had been cut up and given to each family in a small amount. this was the first form of enterprise. the land owners needed labour, capital and land in order to be able to produce their goods.

meanwhile, in the cities, factories had gone up and now, instead of materials being distributed to workers all over England, they all conjugated in the city to work. This was the rural-urban shift that turned most farmers into workers. due to this rise in city population and a high demand for work, cities developed way faster than before. this was due to machinary doing the work of a skilled craftsman (which were expensive to hire) and could operated by a cheap, unskilled worker.

all this productivity with the cities was called the industrial revolution because that was where the really large industries took off. However, these factories became privately owned and so due to some factories making the same product, competition arose.

Now, the reason it's capitalism is that it is a 'free-market' in that the government has little or no say in what can be brought in to the country to be bought and sold.

due to the high level in economic activity brought by the industrial revolution and the governments encouragement to let it happen created the first 'free market', which in turn gave way to a lot more private enterprises.

This became known as capitalism (possibly due to the resource: Capital, meaning the money used to buy whatever).

Capitalism was then tested in first world war where it proved effective in the manufacturing of tons of weapons and ammunition.