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The history of capitalism is diverse and has many debated roots, but fully fledged capitalism is generally thought by scholars[specify][weasel words] to have emerged in Northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain and the Netherlands, in the 16th to 17th centuries.[citation needed] Over the following centuries, capital accumulated by a variety of methods, at a variety of scales, and associated with much variation in the concentration of wealth and economic power. Capitalism gradually became the dominant economic system throughout the world.[1][2][3] Much of the history of the past 500 years is concerned with the development of capitalism in its various forms.
^Rogers, Alisdair; Castree, Noel; Kitchin, Rob (2013). "capitalism". A Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-959986-8. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
^Calhoun, Craig (2002). "capitalism". Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-512371-5. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
^Scott, John; Marshall, Gordon (2005). "capitalism". Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-860986-5.