Impact on Slavery

Paper Summary:

This paper discuses how the discovery of the cotton gin impacted on millions of slaves in the USA. The author explains that there is a close link between the invention of the cotton gin and the expansion of slavery, as the new technology required even more slaves that were forced to work on plantations for greater profits.

From the Paper:

"Historians that study American history attribute a great importance to the cotton gin for its role in the expansion of slavery throughout America. There are few cases in American history when an object had such an impact on society. The cotton gin was part of the developing process in American industry and it was an invention that is associated by many historians as "a breakthrough that helped set in motion the expansion of chattel slavery in the South and quickened the industrialization of the North" . The impact of the invention of the cotton gin deserves therefore a more close analysis, as it is often linked with one of America's most condemned legacy - slavery.
"Slavery existed at the time the cotton gin was invented, only that it was not such an expanded phenomenon as it became later, aided by the discovery of the cotton gin. The discovery of the cotton gin made cotton exploitation easier and more profitable but at the cost of exploiting millions of slaves. There is a close link between the invention of the cotton gin and the expansion of slavery because the new technology required even more slaves that were forced to work on plantations for greater profits."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Alkalimat, A., Technological Revolution and Prospects for Black Liberation in the 21st Century, available at http://www.net4dem.org/cyrev/archive/issue4/articles/liberation/Liberation1.htm;
• Cotton Gin, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney#Cotton_gin;
• Garrison, R., review of Lakwete, A., Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America, Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, available at http://www.questia.com/read/5008733417;
• Scarborough, W.K., "The cotton gin and its bittersweet harvest", Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 3, December 1994, available at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8723(199412)81%3A3%3C1238%3ATCGAIB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O;

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