One of the principal variables affecting the emergence of post-feudal state forms and policies was quite clearly the activities and attitudes of landowners. Where landowners, or powerful sections of the landowning classes, sought to obstruct the development of fiscally secure centralised states, as in Spain and France, this undoubtedly produced obstacles to the development of capitalism. In England and Prussia on the other hand, the support for, or rapprochement between, landowners and the public claims of some kind of centralised state, exerted a more positive influence on the transition to capitalism. This effect seems to hold even if landowners' pro-capitalist practices were the unintended consequence of desires for the preservation of public order and the preservation of the landed estate as a local system of political power and status.