Description
Book SynopsisFar from being a record of southern failure, Lakwete concludes, the cotton gin-correctly understood-supplies evidence that the slave labor-based antebellum South innovated, industrialized, and modernized.
Trade ReviewWith careful use of vivid illustrations and keen analytic skills, Lakwete captures the relationship between technology and human initiative. -- Lester P. Lee, Jr. Times Literary Supplement 2004 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which created the Old South and then destroyed it... Lakwete targets this myth in Inventing the Cotton Gin and largely demolishes it. -- John Bezis-Selfa Alabama Review 2005 This study provides students a clear example of how technological choices are not the storybook cases of perfected innovations replacing hopelessly outclassed traditional methods. -- William H. Phillips EH.Net 2004 For those seeking to understand how the interplay of market factors, cultural norms, and personal choices shape-and are shaped by-technology, Inventing the Cotton Gin is an excellent read. -- Don Butts History: Reviews of New Books 2004 Lakwete has written the first scholarly study of the cotton gin in antebellum America... Instead of viewing Eli Whitney's work as a historical watershed, she finds continuity. Choice 2004 Lakwete joins the pantheon of technological historians by demolishing a standard, widely accepted myth with the careful and persuasive analysis of a vast array of evidence... The book is a triumph. -- Barbara Hahn H-South, H-Net Reviews 2004 Few will dispute that this book will change how historians think about the rise of King Cotton and the nature of technological change. -- John Majewski Business History Review 2004 [Lakwete] captures the nuances that distinguish technological success from failure. -- John S. Nader Enterprise and Society 2004 Another myth relating to the South is relegated, shall we say-with apologies to Marx-to the (cotton) dustbin of history... A major work of scholarship. -- Peter A. Coclanis Technology and Culture 2004 Inventing the Cotton Gin is an education in economic and business history as much as a needed revisionist version of the cotton gin myth. -- Kim Long Bloomsbury Review 2004 Bold and path-breaking... Most forcefully, Lakwete impugns the notion that a machine bears the responsibility for the Civil War and its aftermath. -- Mark Finlay South Carolina Historical Magazine 2004 The best and most sophisticated treatment of the gin in the larger context of the antebellum cotton South we are likely to see... The dramatic, great-white man narrative of Eli Whitney yields to a richer, more complex story. -- David L. Carlton Georgia Historical Quarterly 2004 She has done an excellent job of weaving together an amazingly complex series of events in a straightforward and interesting manner. -- Twyla Dell Material Culture 2006 An important addition to the growing list of works on southern industrialization... As with other good history books, it challenges what we think we knew, and sends us searching for more clues. -- Shepherd W. McKinley H-Net Reviews 2007
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
1. Cotton and the Gin to 1600
2. The Roller Gin in the America, 1607-1790
3. The Invention of the Saw Gin, 1790-1810
4. The Transition from the Roller to the Saw Gin, 1796-1830
5. The Saw Gin Industry, 1830-1865
6. Saw Gin Innovation, 1820-1860
7. Old and New Roller Gins, 1820-1870
8. Machine and Myth
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
