#because 1) they actually had nitrates to battle with: Spain from Peru and England from India. 2) Early colonialist empires.

[iamthepulta]

I work in resources and can help! The transition from Mercantilism to Capitalism varies around the world. Mercantilism came before it. It's similar to capitalism, but much more state-centric. Raw materials were brought cheaply from out of state, often colonies, and then more expensive finished products were manufactured and sold to increase the (what now would be) GDP of the nation.

In Mexico and the Andes, Spanish merchants would often abandon poorly made trade goods, like breeches, jewelry, silk stockings, on natives' doorsteps, and then take by force the 'payment' they were owed. Donkeys, mules, llamas, money, weaving, cloth- anything of value. Colonies were the cheapest way to do this, obviously, because you often taxed the raw material going out (a tenth of silver went to the crown) along with the cost of mercury to produce the silver. And then money was made selling back to the colony.

So, very similar to capitalism with a working merchant-class, but primarily focused on raw goods and "mass produced" items were still hand-made and local.

The switch to capitalism happens when private owners begin to take control of production and work management. We can see this in England in the early-1800s when individual estate owners began to exploit the coal on their property: much more focused on bank loans, investment from other private funds, and depended on technology detaching manpower as the limiting factor of production. If we think of nitrates and gunpowder detaching the amount of people you can kill from the amount of people on either side of the battle, technology did this for production.

When you can create an unlimited number of bedsheets with mechanical looms, you're only limited by raw materials (cotton) and the number of looms you have. Which is why we see an explosion of exploitation for both people and materials.

I guess the TL;DR answer to the question is Neither. Capitalism is a fundamental transition of a state so that their production is only limited by raw materials extracted, and demand for the product.

Thus, improvements in capitalism = improvements in the removal of manpower as the limiting factor of production = increases in the amount of resources necessary to produce one item.

Question, since my knowledge is a bit more shaky in this area:

Would the emergence of 'capitalism' be more of a French Revolution thing (with the transition from a feudalistic to capitalist society), or would it come a bit later with Marx's and Engels popularization of the revolutionary stages of history? Or is it a bit of both/neither?

I’m gonna be honest, my expertise is the Pueblo II-IV periods in 900–1450 CE US Southwest, with some experience in 1800s New England and the Bronze Age Aegean. The emergence of capitalism is not my forte; I was counting the beginning of capitalism from the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. I now recognize that that’s a much more complicated question than I gave it credit for!