Millions of documents show that agriculture had lost its hegemony to manufacturing long before the steam engine. History books, including Wikipedia, date the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the second half of the 18th century in England and Wales.

Research shows that already in the 17th century the workforce performing agricultural tasks experienced a sharp decline. The number of male agricultural workers in Britain fell by more than a third (64% to 42% between 1600 and 1740) For comparison, 200 years later, in the 1930s, during the Second Spanish Republic, 47.3% of Spaniards worked in the fields.