Short answers, pulled from the story.
The term "capitalism" in its modern sense emerged in the mid-19th century. Thinkers including Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon coined it to describe an economic and social order where capital is owned by some and not by those who labor. Karl Marx then gave the concept extensive treatment in Das Kapital, published in 1867.
The Black Death of 1348-1350 caused a sharp population crash that shattered the feudal manorial system. With fewer serfs available, surviving laborers could refuse harsher conditions, move to towns, buy land, or negotiate favorable rental contracts. This disruption broke the coercive power of the aristocracy and forced landlords to compete for tenants through market-based arrangements.
Enclosure was the process by which common land, previously held under the open field system with traditional peasant rights, was transferred to private ownership. It became widespread across the English agricultural landscape during the 16th century and created a landless working class dependent on wage labor. By the 19th century, unenclosed commons had largely retreated to rough pasture in mountainous areas.
The British East India Company, chartered in 1600, and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1602, were large state-chartered joint-stock trading companies that held monopolies granted by letters patent from their governments. Both possessed lawmaking, military, and treaty-making privileges. They represent the first moment when merchants pooled capital into shared enterprises and expected a financial return, establishing the organizational model that shaped capitalism's global expansion.
Starting in about 1760 in England, new manufacturing processes replaced hand production across multiple industries. Mechanized cotton spinning increased a worker's output by a factor of about 1,000, the power loom raised weaving output by a factor of over 40, and the cotton gin increased cotton-seed removal productivity by a factor of 50. The factory system, characterized by complex divisions of labor and routinized tasks, became the dominant mode of production.
In 1817, David Ricardo, James Mill, and Robert Torrens advanced the theory of comparative advantage in Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. The doctrine holds that when an inefficient producer sends the merchandise it produces best to a country able to produce it more efficiently, both countries benefit. This argument underpinned Britain's adoption of free trade by the mid-19th century and the repeal of the Corn Laws and Navigation Acts in the 1840s.