The Pursuit of Profit
18th February 2026
Author: Nicola Warwick
6 minute read
How we got here
​To understand today's challenges and what might come next, it's my view we're helped by knowing how we got here.
​
My first blog is a brisk walk through hundreds of years of economic history, focused on Britain, revealing cyclic economic system formation and downfall.
I've tried to balance being neither overly simplistic nor getting caught in complexity, presented in four distinct eras.
​Western economies are in the predicted advanced and last phase of the economic capitalist system.
​
For the vast majority of people, late stage capitalism has less-than-charming characteristics; extreme income inequality, intense corporate monopoly power, and the commodification of elements of life such as leisure, our attention, and personal data.​
Capitalism is 'an economic and political system in which property, business, and industry are controlled by private owners rather than by the state, with the purpose of making a profit.'
- Cambridge dictionary.
At Home & At Sea​​
In Britain, the scene was set for capitalism with the dramatic trio of mercantilism, colonialism and primitive accumulation.
​
Mercantilism. 'An economic practice by which governments used their economies to augment state power at the expense of other countries.'
- Britannica definition.
Success was measured simply, known as bullionism, it was a count of how much gold and silver a nation held. This model represented exporting more goods than were imported - a positive trade balance - together with protecting domestic industry and exploiting colonies for raw materials.​​
"We must always take heed that we buy no more from strangers than we sell them, for so should we impoverish ourselves and enrich them."
- Discourse of the Common Wealth of this Realm of England, 1549.
Europe at Sea
Spain and Portugal were leading Europe in global exploration and establishing trade routes as Elizabeth I came to the English throne. England joined them, a merchant fleet was well developed by the 1560s. Over time, tax, regulations, subsidies, and naval military force were used to protect control over trade routes and chartered companies that operated as extensions of the state.
Mercantilism relied on the sale of goods, and colonialism played a key role in both creating demand and supply - at scale. Overseas colonies were established through displacement and violence towards people, exploitation of raw materials, the slave trade. Colonies were developed to become new markets for manufactured goods.
​
The first British colonies were established in North America in the early 1600s, but they followed the model of settlements, known as 'plantations' that had been enforced in decades earlier in Ireland.
​
By the end of the 1600s, mercantilist corporations, often state-sponsored monopolies, began to exchange part ownership in their royal charters for investment from wealthy private citizens, grating shares of the company profit - the birth of the first corporate stock trade.
English Countryside
Along with the overseas trade and colonies, the English countryside provided roots for capitalism, developing slowly over hundreds of years.
​
After the fall of the Roman Empire, England's land was managed by the feudal system and monasteries. By the 1600s, the feudal system had been in a long decline and was in its late stages.​
England's feudal, communal, and self-sufficient rural systems were slowly being replaced as significant numbers of larger farms formed, absorbing smaller holdings.
This general pattern spanned the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, with parliamentary Enclosure Acts removing over a fifth of England from common land into private ownership.
These changes defined the replacement of medieval farming, resulted in agricultural efficiency away from subsistence. The displacement of rural people contributed to both the Industrial Revolution and immigration to colonies.
"The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose."
- Seventeenth century English rhyme addressing the Enclosures Act
Together with feudal land, monasteries were major land owners, innovating agriculture and running the tithing system. However, their significance to the rural economy was to end more suddenly.
​
The dissolution of the monasteries (1530s) under Henry VIII resulted in the expropriation of about one third of England's agricultural land, ownership was transformed, rapidly sold to individuals of the rising gentry.
A working class was established, people without property, without attachment to lord or land, forced to sell their labour for survival. Sometimes described as the 'original sin' of capitalism and coined Primitive Accumulation by Karl Marx, German philosopher, economist and sociologist.
​
Agrarian capitalism emerged, defined by land owners leasing farms to tenants who hired wage labourers. The system's focus was profit.
​
Together, mercantilism with colonialism and primitive accumulation replaced feudalism in Britain and later throughout Western Europe, setting the scene for revolution.
Capitalism & Industrial Revolution
In the 1600s, England passed the Acts of Trade and Navigation, laws designed to make American colonies dependent on finished goods manufactured in Britain, goods that were often made using raw materials from colonies.
​In these laws, the British demonstrated an utter lack of consideration for the colonists, enforcing trade restrictions and taxes needed to raise funds to reimburse the military cost of dominance in trade and of territory. Over decades, growing discontent led to riots, boycotts and ultimately the American Revolution with their Independence in 1781.
​
Workshop of the World
​
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the formal independence of the United States and the end of the Napoleonic wars in Europe combined with continued difficulties enforcing the laws that restricted trade; mercantilism faced decline.
Britain responded by fashioning itself into the 'workshop of the world' with mass industrialisation, adopting the rising classical economic theories advocating free trade.
​
With raw materials still trading and markets still importing its manufactured goods, mercantilist policies were left behind and trade was labelled as mutually beneficial.
A new type of capitalism had evolved - industrial capitalism. Steam and machine-driven factories replaced craftsmanship, factories that were owned privately and used wage labour. Competitive, profit-focused production emerged at scale, transformative not just to production methods, but also creating distinctions in social class, and driving economic growth and production-based wealth.
The capital investment required to own machinery resulted in the growth of the banking industry and large joint-stock companies to provide funding.
​
This Industrial Revolution (c. 1760 to 1840) marked the transition from mercantile capitalism into industrial capitalism.
Imperialism & Finance
Britain's strategy of pursuing overseas territory did not change with the independence of America. Queen Victoria's reign (1837 to 1901) saw Britain establish itself as the world's dominant global power with intense colonisation in Africa and India plus Asia.
With Queen Victoria now an Empress, this imperial era was motivated by the continuing need for raw materials, new markets, and the control of trade routes. Colonial expansion and increased trading posts continued until 1913, by which time Britain held an empire of trading posts and colonies comprising nearly quarter of the world's land mass.
As the industrial era progressed in became clear that rather than trade benefitting all, competition and state support meant one company would benefit rather than another. Capital became concentrated in the few largest and most successful corporations by the late 1800s and into the next century.
​
The blueprint for today's global enterprises
One such company had started with Queen Elizabeth I granting a royal charter on the final day of 1600 to create East India Company. By the time of Queen Victoria over two hundred years later, this company effectively governed the Indian subcontinent, controlling large parts of India, with a monopoly on trade, and its own substantial army. Whilst the company itself was brought into British government control in 1858 and eventually dissolved in 1874, it's size, structure, power and reach served as the blueprint for today's global enterprises.
Britain's position as leader in industry was flagging by the turn of the twentieth century. The liberated colonies now had their abundant raw materials and fuel at their own disposal and were able to out-compete the country that once presided over them. Other factors may have contributed, including British significant investment overseas rather than in domestic assets - attracted to the bonds of railroads and utilities in settlement areas - plus a perceived lack of innovation and complacency.
​
And then came two World Wars.
State Monopoly Capitalism
Unsurprisingly, World War I and II were defining, transformative events that fundamentally altered Britain's economic structure. Britain emerged debt-laden and requiring a new economic model to enable recovery.
Government intervention through monetary and fiscal policies was used to stabilise the economy, becoming highly regulated and signalling the start of the modern welfare state.
​
Industries that were previously free trade were brought into state control in a move toward a command-economy, including railways, coal mining, steel production and ship building.
​
The costs of maintaining the empire had become unsustainable, decolonisation followed and Britain's position of economic and trade dominance was replaced by it war-time creditor, the United States.​
As high inflation was used to reduce the value of wartime debt, Britain shifted focus with a long-term decline in heavy-industry and production. The 'workshop of the world' identity gave way to one based on service - becoming a centre for the financial market and banking.
Unsustainable and reaching crisis point
​
From the 1970s to day, we find ourselves in 'Late Capitalism', a prevailing sense of a system that is unsustainable and reaching a crisis point, with increasing costs, a reliance on debt, and general social discontent.
​
Multinational corporate dominance is reminiscent of state-sponsored royal chartered companies from history. The financial sector is growing relative to production with profit generated from financial investments rather than trading or manufacturing.​
The notion of financial profit excusing detrimental impact on people, the planet, and the quality of product is wearing thin. Leaders are refusing to look the other way and ignore the potential to do better.
That's how we got here, cycles of global and local economic systems declining and being replaced, in the pursuit of financial profit and individual or national superiority.
​
In my next blog we can explore the opportunity to conscientiously and realistically decide where to go from here, go to 'Permission to Change'.
​
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and where you are seeking change, go to Contact & Booking.