<P> The collapse of the manorial system in England enlarged the class of tenant farmers with more freedom to market their goods and thus more incentive to invest in new technologies . Lords who did not want to rely on renters could buy out or evict tenant farmers, but then had to hire free labor to work their estates, giving them an incentive to invest in two very different kinds of commodity owners: those who had money, the means of production, and subsistence, who were eager to valorize the sum of value they had appropriated by buying the labor power of others; and the free workers, who sold their own labor power and, therefore, labor . The free workers were "free workers" in the double sense that they neither formed part of the means of production nor did they own the means of production that transformed land and even money into what we now call "capital". Marx labeled this period the "pre-history of capitalism". </P> <P> In effect, feudalism began to lay some of the foundations necessary for the development of mercantilism, a precursor of capitalism . Feudalism was mostly confined to Europe and lasted from the medieval period through the sixteenth century . Feudal manors were almost entirely self - sufficient, and therefore limited the role of the market . This stifled any incipient tendency towards capitalism . However, the relatively sudden emergence of new technologies and discoveries, particularly in agriculture and exploration, facilitated the growth of capitalism . The most important development at the end of feudalism was the emergence of what Robert Degan calls "the dichotomy between wage earners and capitalist merchants". The competitive nature meant there are always winners and losers, and this became clear as feudalism evolved into mercantilism, an economic system characterized by the private or corporate ownership of capital goods, investments determined by private decisions, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods determined mainly by competition in a free market . </P> <P> England in the 16th century was already a centralized state, in which much of the feudal order of Medieval Europe had been swept away . This centralization was strengthened by a good system of roads and a disproportionately large capital city, London . The capital acted as a central market hub for the entire country, creating a large internal market for goods, in contrast to the fragmented feudal holdings that prevailed in most parts of the Continent . The economic foundations of the agricultural system were also beginning to diverge substantially; the manorial system had broken down by this time, and land began to be concentrated in the hands of fewer landlords with increasingly large estates . The system put pressure on both the landlords and the tenants to increase agricultural productivity to create profit; the weakened coercive power of the aristocracy to extract peasant surpluses encouraged them to try out better methods, and the tenants also had an incentive to improve their methods, in order to succeed in an increasingly competitive labour market . Land rents had moved away from the previous stagnant system of custom and feudal obligation, and were becoming directly subject to economic market forces . </P> <P> An important aspect of this process of change was the enclosure of the common land previously held in the open field system where peasants had traditional rights, such as mowing meadows for hay and grazing livestock . Once enclosed, these uses of the land became restricted to the owner, and it ceased to be land for commons . The process of enclosure began to be a widespread feature of the English agricultural landscape during the 16th century . By the 19th century, unenclosed commons had become largely restricted to rough pasture in mountainous areas and to relatively small parts of the lowlands . </P>

Discuss the factors that led to the capitalist economic development in europe