Besides the United Kingdom, what other areas would have had the economic capital and industrial resources to have created an Industrial Revolution?
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Northern China, Belgium, and the Northeastern US. They were all lacking in either social, political, or macroeconomic factors though, and the UK came out ahead.
Northern China - political climate - freewheeling capitalism was more or less banned and trade and production of goods were low status things in society.
Belgium - social factors and a lack of a shortage of traditional resources (especially wood) that might force a switch to coal.
Northeastern US - no shortage of traditional resources (wood especially) capital had better outlets for use in financing expansion of settlement and trade than increasing or changing the means of production.
You have to remember nobody set out to create industrialization on purpose. It was only done in the UK after it was forced. They cut down all the trees in England and were force to use coal for iron making to keep from being militarily overwhelmed by their adversaries - Napoleanic France in particular. Only this combination (or a similar one) of a lack of resources and a desperate need for production of goods forced industrialization to occur. Nobody had any foreknowledge that what they were doing might turn out to be useful or productive in the long run. It's not as though the English or anyone else could have advocated a 'policy' of industrialization because nobody knew that such a thing existed.
Edo period Japan also had highly developed market economy and thriving merchant class. Important factor in why they did industrialise with such speed during Meiji period.
Maybe the Ruhr/Rhineland? One of the earliest adopters after the UK, which implies it had the social, political and resource factors necessary. I guess it may have been unlikely as first, since it took Napoleon to put it firmly under one political umbrella (with associated market to produce for) while the Enligsh were almost industrialised by then.
Styria (in Austria) had some potential - at one point before the industrial revolution, it used to produce as much iron products as all of England.
Japan lacked the super accessible and colocated coal and iron deposits though. Otherwise it was well situated.
I don't think that it's been mentioned that the UK was the center of scientific research at the time the industrial revolution happened. It's highly unlikely that the steam engine would've been invented without that.
Of course it wasn't mentioned, since it was only *a* centre of research.
Which reminds me that France would maybe be a strong contender, even if I don't know where exactly in France. Decent market, good resources, all it really lacked was any sort of political stability (but, they were still fairly quick to industrialise despite that).
except it wasn't scientific research so much as engineering experimentation that led to these critical developments.
Well the industrial revolution did start at many places and and different times, the industrial revolution wasn't a revolution but the slow reformation of an economic system. England combined a lot of the features already available to the world into a common system and that could have happened anywhere.
It wasn't really that central, France was more important in this regard. And in any case, the steam engine was the result of practical experimentation by practical men, not academic research. It would take some time still before academic research could be used in productivity-increasing inventions.