1. The eighteenth century, particularly after 1730, was a period of population growth, gently rising prices, and protoindustrialization.

2. Building upon conditions favorable to industrialization, England initiated a new economic order. New tools, machines, and sources of energy enormously increased the productivity of labor, particularly in cotton textiles.

3. Compared to England, the legal and social conditions in France and other continental countries were less conducive to economic development, and they experienced real but less dramatic growth.

4. New agricultural techniques and enclosures in Britain, and to a much lesser extent in certain areas of the continent, enabled the countryside to supply industrial towns with food and labor as well as capital and growing markets.

5. The conditions of peasants and serfs in Eastern Europe were worse than in Western Europe.

6. France and Britain became the dynamic maritime powers, competing and warring for lucrative colonies and trade.

7. The primary sources of their wealth and power were the slave plantations in the Caribbean, which were sustained by the "triangular trade" across the Atlantic.