You can look for M. Bairoch's research for instance ("Révolution Industrielle et Sous-Développement")

Some other put the "start" of industrialization way before, at the end of the Renaissance.

As I understand it, there was a progressive flow of industrialization that was clearly visible in Belgium/Netherland, and also started brewing in the other surrounding countries, but the "Industrial Revolution" term was coined by a British author for a specific point happening first in England, then in Belgium/France/the US etc. afterwards.

It kinda comes down to where you set the stake of what is meant by "industriailzed", a bit like where you set the beginning of the "space conquest" and thus decide who was first to reach the critical milestone.

Wait, Bairoch's Belgian, though.

By your earlier logic, he shouldn't be trusted with this claim any more than Wikipedia or Britannica should be trusted with the claim of British origins.

Seems like we'd need a non-British, non-Belgian source to make any definitive claim, right? /s

You are totally right, why should we trust him more than any other single author ? There’s no reason to trust blindly and anyone who cares should totally get as many other sources and evidences that they can afford to.

That’s a different argument, my friend, a different argument.

Everything I can find says that it (industrial revolution) spread from the UK to continental Europe, which a massively oversized chunk of industrial tech coming from the UK. I'm happy to have my mind changed but the general consensus is that it did start in the UK. The book you cite is in French and appears to have very little in the way of reviews or anything? One book against the consensus of the field is certainly not without precedent but it's kind of difficult to evaluate.

The “industrial revolution” term was spread from Engels’s book about England (“The Condition of the Working Class in England“). So basically, the definition of “Industrial Revolution” is bound to the phenomenon that started in England.

“industrialization” is another thing, and was a more progressive thing that was already prominent earlier than that. That book I cited is widely studied and reviewed…but you’ll have guessed, you’d need to step a bit away from caring about only the (First) Industrial Revolution. And it also mattered mostly to french/duch speaking regions, so again fewer english results is the norm.

Think of it like the ‘Space Race’, it’s a term that is bound to a specific stream of events that was started by the US. Another country starting to “race” to reach “space” won’t be about that specific stream of event.

That's probably fair, I wouldn't make the claim that industrialisation itself was unique to the UK. You've piqued my interest though so I might attempt to read some more about that stuff in French with my rusty B1.5 level :-)