Throwing all the small farmers off their land, making farming more efficient, producing a food surplus that could suppoet large towns, and resulting in starving peasants moving to these towns, where they provided very very cheap labour, which combined with steam engines used to power looms (initially invented to pump water out of coal mines), resulted in absolutely insane productivity in textile factories relative to all of history, with the cheap products then exported abroad, resulting in a huge capital surplus, which was then invested back into factories producing other goods, which were then exported, resulting in more capital accumulation, in the first example of export led development EVER. Every country that has developed since then has followed the same model. Colonialism was an outcome, not cause, of this rapid economic development No country has EVER developed via extraction from other countries ("colonialism"). Anyone that says otherwise is historically ignorant. UK being a small island actually helps as it could be easily defended, allowing for more freedom internally, as well as internal transport via canals, which was useful as supply chains complicated.