What if the cotton gin had gone differently?

A simple machine makes short-staple cotton profitable, and revives a slave economy that was fading.

If it had gone differently: Cotton stays unprofitable inland; the American South's demand for enslaved labour collapses instead of exploding.

1. 1525The Atlantic slave trade scales up, The plantation economy never finds its labour force; Atlantic colonies stay marginal.
2. 1780The Industrial Revolution, Growth stays flat and Malthusian; most people alive in 1900 live about as their great-grandparents did.
3. 1861The American Civil War, The Union splits for good; there is no single continental United States to become the next century's dominant power.