Author here, I didn't conveniently skip over England. In terms of the Industrial revolution I have written about why England industrialized first: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-england-industri...

But this story is not about the industrial revolution but about the fascination for machinery that spread around Europe in the 1500 and 1600s and which laid the foundation for the later industrial revolution in Britain. This story never gets to the industrial revolution as that isn't the topic I am covering.