Former history grad student wins prestigious award

1:12 p.m., Nov. 18, 2004--"Elegant...ambitious, path breaking...rich in revisionist conclusions...riveting" are some of the adjectives used to describe Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America by Angela Lakwete in the citation for the prestigious Edelstein Prize awarded by the Society for the History of Technology. The award, given to Lakwete, a UD alumna, is for the best scholarly book in the history of technology published in the past three years and was presented at the society’s annual meeting in Amsterdam in October.

A graduate of Goddard College, Lakwete received her master’s and doctoral degrees in history from UD in 1994 and 1997, respectively.

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, Inventing the Cotton Gin was based on Lakwete’s doctoral dissertation at UD under the supervision of George Basalla, professor emeritus of history; with David Allmendinger, professor emeritus of history; Arwen Mohun, associate professor of history; and Farley Grubb, professor of economics, also on the dissertation committee. In her book, Lakwete also cites Anne Boylan, professor of history, and Wunyabari Maloba, associate professor of history, for their advice and encouragement.

“Angela was an extremely dedicated and imaginative scholar,” Basalla said, “Her book is the definitive study of Eli Whitney, cotton gins and the role cotton gins played in the economic development of the South. The award she won is the top prize given in the United States for a book on the history of technology.”

At Goddard College, Lakwete studied anthropology and ancient and contemporary textile production, from a technological and artistic point of view. She practiced what she studied by becoming an accomplished spinner, dyer and weaver.

While a graduate student at UD, Lakwete’s interest in cotton and textile production led to her interest in the cotton gin and its role in American and Southern history, as well as the myths versus the reality surrounding Eli Whitney and his invention of the wire-toothed cotton gin.

With a grant from the National Museum of American History, Lakwete traveled to U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Mesilla Park in New Mexico, which houses several models of cotton gins, to study them firsthand. Her book is illustrated with photographs and diagrams of cotton gins from primitive roller gins to the complex gins of the mid-19th Century.

Cotton gins have been in existence for centuries, according to the book. Lakwete gives a global overview of cotton and early cotton gins from First Century to 1600, followed by a history of the cotton gin in the Americas until 1790. Whitney invented his wire-toothed gin in 1794, which evolved into the saw gin, developed and refined by Southern cotton gin makers. Later the McCarthy and cylinder cotton gins were developed.

Lakwete points out that some historians demonized Whitney’s invention as encouraging and extending the use of slave labor and “portrayed Southerners as incompetents who had thwarted American economic development.” But, in focusing on the “tragedies of slavery and the Civil War,” according to Lakwete, the accomplishments of Southern cotton gin shop owners have been overlooked. They encouraged and rewarded white and enslaved mechanics for their ingenuity and created “an innovative industry that dominated world production at mid-century.”

In her book, Lakwete concludes, “A complex artifact, a contentious idea, the cotton gin is nevertheless testimony to the mastery they achieved, and to the regional and national prosperity they enabled.”

Lakwete teaches history at Auburn University.

Article by Sue Moncure

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