• ogy@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      What an odd thing to say. Is that the bar you think we need to clear?

      • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        It was an honest question. I’m looking for a good faith answer. What sets the British empire apart from those that came before or after it?

        • Deme@sopuli.xyz
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          2 days ago

          Not too familiar with the roman systems, but here’s a relevant text from a wikipedia article on capitalism:

          The economic foundations of the feudal agricultural system began to shift substantially in 16th-century England as the manorial system had broken down and land began to become concentrated in the hands of fewer landlords with increasingly large estates. Instead of a serf-based system of labor, workers were increasingly employed as part of a broader and expanding money-based economy. The system put pressure on both landlords and tenants to increase the productivity of agriculture to make profit; the weakened coercive power of the aristocracy to extract peasant surpluses encouraged them to try better methods, and the tenants also had incentive to improve their methods in order to flourish in a competitive labor market. Terms of rent for land were becoming subject to economic market forces rather than to the previous stagnant system of custom and feudal obligation.