The vast colonial empire guaranteed the nascent English industry the possibility of supplying raw materials at low cost, also ensuring it an outlet market for products. The huge wealth accumulated throughout western Europe thanks to trade with the colonies made credit structures progress. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, London became the center of European financial capital; and this favored the raising of the capital necessary to start the investments. In the countryside, agriculture had radically freed itself from the conditioning of feudal bonds, thanks to the process of enclosures, which led to the privatization of common lands, marking the end of the feudal village economy.
The transformation of agriculture was followed by the abandonment of the countryside by peasant masses, who, with the artisans, constituted cheap labor for the nascent industry. The rapid demographic increase, which has occurred since the early eighteenth century, widened the market for industry, making it available to an abundance of manpower, especially women and children.