Damnit, my original post got deleted- stupid new mouse. I lean towards Left-Libertarianism so take this with a grain of salt if you love capitalism

, but I am of the belief here that improved success in colonial ventures would significantly help the cause of French industrialization. Particularly in India and New France (Quebec AND Louisiana). Here's a few ideas I've had in the past and may explore if I have the time myself butL
- The Edict of Nantes can still happen, just have the King or Richlieu or someone with authority permit huguenots to settle in the New World. New France was sort of governed as a 'Christian paradise'; if you innovate a court official who does
not hold this view then it could happen anywhere, but otherwise Louisiana was then a claimed but largely unsettled portion of the territory. If huguenots are given free reign to settle there and form a royal colony, if they're lucky with no significant hurricanes/diseases/angry Native Americans turning off future potential settlers an
amerique française colony with portable wealth could emerge- one that the King/bureaucracy probably couldn't ignore over time easily (given wealth = more taxable capital) but one that could also
gain the capital that incentivizes industrialization.
- More importantly I think, improved and earlier adventures in India could roll things along nicely. The wealth generated from a more territorially stable French India would likewise create a merchant class with the capital to buy land and subsidize technological innovations to help along industrialization.
These are just loose, haphazard guesses I'm tossing out before my exam so- I'd need to sit down and brush up again on pre-Industrial France and their colonial adventures in America, but I don't think these could hurt
EDIT: I realize a problem then emerges in "why didn't Spain industrialize then, given all their colonial adventures around the world?" I'll ponder that for a few minutes and see what I come up with.
EDIT2: The answer I fear is long-winded and my analysis, while incomplete and by no means exclusive, is nonetheless is useful for just conceptualizing some ways to get this TL to happen. The jist of what I'd imagine is colonial wealth, in the hands of an entrepreneurial merchant class with some political clout gives any given regime the capacity to develop industrial technology but reaching that capacity takes a number of different factors (as mentioned, mills, geography, the actual innovation and luck

) that- if you want to just explore it, I'd say just make them come together.