World of Industries

DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM


Capitalism developed stage by stage. It grew along with industrial revolution. The nobels and Feudal lords saved their surplus wealth in the form of money and precious metals. They advanced this money to kings and traders for the exploration of new places, conducting wars and foreign trade and collected "usury" interest.

Traders and companys took loans for conducting foreign trade with colonies in Asia and Africa. Huge profits were earned through colonial trade and exploration. It will be observed that exploitation of colonies like India has played an important part in the development of capitalism in Europe. With the decline of Feudalism certain changes took place in agriculture. The land owners began to enclose the lands by proper boundaries and fencing, unlike the system of keeping open fields of 15th century. Their rights on the land were established. They adopted new methods
of civilisation for earning more profits.

The enclosure movements and new methods of farming made it impossoble for the serfs, tenants and small land holders to live in the villages so they left the villages and migrated to towns and cities in search of employement.

This took place at the time, when the capitalist were establishing their factories in towns and cities. The landless people from villages came in handy for them as cheap labour. Availability of huge amounts of capital to world-wide markets and large number of emigrant labour and the new meachines discovered on account of Indistrial Revolution, were the main capitals for the rise of modern capitalism in Europe.

As the result of Indistrial Revolution the wealth of the nation was concentrated in the hands of few people. This led to Indistrial Capitalism. The owners of heavy industries, controled thousands of labour and had a grip over them. Independent crafts professional groups came to an end and social discrimination begam to appear. The gulf between capitalists and other people became deeper.