Frontiers were sites of freedom and control, individualism mixed with coercive violence.
This made possible rise of coercive plantation and mine systems. These brought resources and revenue to Europe, if not directly, then through involvement the Atlantic trades (that served the plantations).
Slave plantation as proto-industrial organization?
The American plantation system produced some of the main early modern bulk commodities:
Europeans also sold liquor to Africans to buy the slaves that worked the plantations.
With growing influence in India after the 1770s, the British East India Company also coerced Indian peasants to grow opium to sell in China in return for tea. By the 1830s, the silver flow was reversed out of China.
Why did drugs become important bulk trade?
In this lst capacity, it has been argued that stimulant drugs helped underwrite the creation of an industrial working class, because it helped supplement meagher diets and were much more appropriate than beer and gin as a midday workers' meal.