Dan: you may be confusing the East India Company (a private enterprise) with the British Empire. Britain nationalised the EIC in 1858, after the rebellion in India of 1857.

I've no doubt the Industrial Revolution could have started wherever the concept was imagined, like Sheffield; but (to gather momentum) coal, and coal in vast quantity, was necessary. I thought industrial coal use in the UK started in the 1720's, but I was wrong, it was much later.

The first iron ship was built at Birkenhead (opposite Liverpool, my home town) in 1829 by William Laird from a converted boiler. Big boats were required to carry big loads, as wooden ships couldn't cope.

According to wikipedia, there's been large scale coal mining in India since 1774, and steel production (of better quality than UK in 1700's) in India since 1600. The constraint isn't coal or ore or ability to produce, but perhaps transport. The nut & bolt wasn't standardised till 1851.

Yeah, I thought that initially - but mentioning the "Empire" on global forums usually results "interesting" comments - so I threw in the USA could speak French line instead (to be safe). You got me.

I thought coal was being used in quantity by UK from 1720, but it looks like I'm wrong. We took Canada from the French without the assistance of coal (to manufacture weapons etc). So perhaps the USA would have spoken English after all.

Difficult for me to accept that statement, as UK has been mining coal since Roman times. Charcoal was produced mainly for domestic cooking (and still is). I doubt the UK could produce enough charcoal, even with imported timber, to fuel the industrial revolution.

This is why the Tory MP's wet their pants with glee when covid struck, they'd hit pay-dirt #golddiggers

Makes you wonder if the UK would ever have had an industrial revolution if we had no coal. French would probably be the language of Les Provinces de L'Americas (USA).

She was selected over Rishi Sunak by 80% of Tory members because she promised them a £400 tax cut - and it worked! What she didn't tell these Tory pensioners was that their kids mortgage interest rates would triple (from 2% to 6%), and their grandkids would find property ownership unachievable.