Mercantilism and the trade routes behind empire

The British Empire is interpreted here as a mercantilist project organized around obtaining goods and securing maritime trade routes. In that explanation, controlling territory and commerce was a way to control the balance of power, whereas investment belongs to the contrasting capitalist model. The argument gives economic motives primacy over other justifications for empire. It also challenges the idea that global trade is a recent development: maritime and river transport connected markets long before modern globalization, and those routes expanded over thousands of years.