There were other large globe spanning powers like France, Spain, the Netherlands that certainly would have loved to have something so lucrative, why was it England that harnessed steam first?
The Industrial Revolution was not a forced process, instead it grew organically.
The agricultural revolution allowed for fewer farmers to produce greater quantities of food. The left the former farmers unemployed and forced them to move into cities to find work or to find alternative employment in the cottage manufacturing idustires.
The increase in the urban labour pool allowed for large concentrations of manufacturing in mills. When steam engines were invented, along with power looms and the like, there was a great demand which in turn helped developed the new inventions which helped increase productivity and in turn promote further developments of machinery and so forth.