Mercantilism, resource control, and imperial power

The discussion shifts from naval procurement to the economic ideas beneath state competition. Mercantilism is framed as a system centred on controlling resources, with that logic treated as a major driver of European imperial expansion. The speakers argue that later communist command economies inherited and intensified some of the same resource-control assumptions. This is an interpretive framework for why political systems that promise different ends can reproduce similar shortages and imperial pressures, rather than a complete history of mercantilism or communism.