Mercantilism
Mercantilism was characterized by strong societal control over most aspects of the economy, with the intent of avoiding disruptions to commerce. Guilds controlled individual industries and had a significant say in how society was run. The usury laws were relaxed, providing incentive for the wealthy to farm out their wealth for other's use. This freeing up of capital made it possible for those without a lot of wealth to attempt ventures to gain their own wealth. This was the birth of modern capitalism.
Birth of Capitalism
While suddenly capital was available for use, and the social, legal, and philosophical infrastructure of capitalism had begun to grow, the problem with debt or investment was that, in order to offset the risk of loss of wealth, the business venture had to return a higher amount than the original sum. Again, these were low-growth economies, so the only source of large amounts of new wealth was stealing it from others.
Neighbors put up too much of a fight because they had the same military technology, and the technological developments of the Renaissance now allowed ships to travel to the other ends of the world. And steal other people's stuff.
Let's be fair, when the other civilizations encountered were militarily too powerful, actual trade occurred, and this too generated extra value. But the real loot came by stealing people's stuff, and the European powers began using their superior military technology in the hands of the most psychotic individuals imaginable to start 500 years of global imperialism.
While fortunes were amassed by what our history records as brave explorers, but the surviving victims saw as mentally ill sea pirates with weapons from hell, another factor came into play in Great Britain: magnification of worker productivity by use of a powerful new energy source.
Energy poverty
Up until this period (late 1700s), the predominate sources of energy were animal power (human in the form of slaves, otherwise livestock), burning of biomass (largely wood), wind power, and water power. These are all solar, carbon-neutral, and sustainable). Some fossil fuels were used, sea and surface coal, some petroleum, but they weren't used a lot, other than coal for smelting. Coal fires were banned in many cities because of the dirty smoke, and most surface petroleum was pitch or tar, nasty stuff.
By the late 1700s, Britain was close to exhausting its supply of trees. Laws began to change to allow home coal fires to save the remaining stocks of wood for other purposes.
At this time, coal was either picked up off the beaches (sea coal from underwater seams), or dug from shallow pit mines. With the sudden increase in coal use, sea coal wasn't available in sufficient quantities, and shallow coals beds were quickly depleted. As seams were followed deeper into the earth, water tables were encountered, and further digging rendered impossible due to flooding.