Rather famously, the cotton gin really jumpstarted slavery in the US south when it had been in a slow decline. I don't think that slavery is as much a barrier

Rather famously, the cotton gin really jumpstarted slavery in the US south when it had been in a slow decline. I don't think that slavery is as much a barrier to automation as people think it is. We're biased by the main exposure to slavery being the US experience, where there's a noticeable difference between (free) mercantile north and (slave) agrarian south. Agriculture isn't particularly amenable to automation--not in the early 19th century at any rate--and it's not like the postbellum south suddenly found a renaissance in manufacturing.