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Frederick jackson turner, “significance of the frontier in american history” (1893).
Perhaps the most influential essay by an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turner’s address to the American Historical Association on “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” defined for many Americans the relationship between the frontier and American culture and contemplated what might follow “the closing of the frontier.”
In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: “Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports.” This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.
Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people—to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said Calhoun in 1817, “We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing!” So saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life. All peoples show development; the germ theory of politics has been sufficiently emphasized. In the case of most nations, however, the development has occurred in a limited area; and if the nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic coast, we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments into complex organs; the progress from primitive industrial society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civilization. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the process of evolution in each western area reached in the process of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. …
In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization. Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.
From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa . The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.
Source: Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, 1919.
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[Footnote in address as reprinted in Turner, The Frontier in American History, 1920] 1 In 1817 John C. Calhoun represented South Carolina in the U.S. House. Later in the year he was appointed Secretary of War by President James Monroe. [NHC note] ƒ fiAbridgment of Debates of Congress,fl v, p. 706. [Footnote in Turner, Frontier, 1920]
The Turner thesis reigned almost un¬ challenged until the early 1930 s. Since then a growing revolt has spread as one scholar after another has trained his heaviest guns on various aspects of the frontier hypothesis. The readings provide. sampling of the chief criticisms which have been raised.
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" 1893 This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and ...
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 1861-1932. Publication date 1921 Topics Frontier thesis, United States -- History, West (U.S.) -- History Publisher New York : H. Holt & Co. ... PDF download. download 1 file . SINGLE PAGE ORIGINAL JP2 TAR download. download 1 file ...
The Frontier Thesis, also known as Turner's Thesis or American frontierism, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the settlement and colonization of the rugged American frontier was decisive in forming the culture of American democracy and distinguishing it from European nations. He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the frontier line ...
Turner's reversal of the traditional approach to American history, which focused on the Eastern states, a reversal on which the Frontier Thesis rests, is a splendid example of just how evolutionism helped him shape his historical discourse. His emphasis on western expansion as the key to American history10 was born out of his early perceptions and
I The Significance of the Frontier in American History. In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.
Frontier Democracy: The Turner Thesis Revisited Lacy K. Ford, Jr. The one-hundredth anniversary of Frederick Jackson Turner's pres-entation of his pathbreaking essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," to the American Historical Association meet-ing in Chicago provides a propitious occasion for a brief reassessment
Frederick Jackson Turner. " The Significance of the Frontier in American History " is a seminal essay by the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner which advanced the Frontier thesis of American history. Turner's thesis had a significant impact on how people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries understood American identity, character ...
No less familiar than the Turner thesis itself, of course, are the com-plaints against it made by Turner's critics.3 In the half century since Turner's William Cronon is an associate professor of history at Yale University. He would like to thank Allan G. Bogue, Merle Curti, Jay Gitlin, Howard R. Lamar, Patricia Limerick,
Frederick Jackson Turner, "Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893) Perhaps the most influential essay by an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turner's address to the American Historical Association on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" defined for many Americans the relationship between the frontier and American culture and contemplated what ...
The Turner thesis concerning the role of the frontier in American history by Taylor, George Rogers, 1895-1983, editor. Publication date 1971 Topics Turner, Frederick Jackson, 1861-1932. ... EPUB and PDF access not available for this item. IN COLLECTIONS
1Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Martin Ridge, ed., Frederick Jackson Turner: Wisconsin's Historian of the Frontier (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1986). 2The foundation of this paper is my article entitled, "Problems in American History," which appeared in The Aegis , a ...
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Turner Thesis (1893) Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis History professor, Univ. of Wisconsin Thesis: frontier experience and westward expansion had stimulated individualism, nationalism, and democracy Suggested "frontier" had alleviated social and economic problems of an industrial society
In 1893 he presented his "frontier thesis" to the American Historical Society. Turner claimed that the process of western settlement was the defining characteristic of American society. Yet he concluded that at the end of the nineteenth century the frontier era had ended, and he worried that its beneficial effects would be lost to ...
In this paper he brings together the historians' "pros and cons" of the Turner frontier thesis. He con- cludes the controversy over Turner with the solution that is advanced by Professor John Hicks in his "The 'Ecology' of Middle-Western Historians," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 24:348 (June, 1941).
Frederick Jackson Turner - Frontier Thesis - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. 1) The document discusses Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 paper on the significance of the American frontier in history. 2) Turner argues that the existence of free land and the continuous westward movement of the frontier line have shaped American development.
LibriVox recording of The Frontier in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner. Read in English by Josh Kirsh; Colleen McMahon Frederick Jackson Turner was an extremely influential U.S. historian, who is best known for his "frontier thesis", which proposed that American democracy was profoundly shaped by the existence of an undeveloped frontier area from the founding through the 1880s.
Turner Thesis - Free ebook download as Word Doc (.doc), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read book online for free. Frederick J. Turner's thesis is a collection of essays on the frontier in American history. The essays are arranged chronologically, with the exception of a few minor corrections. The thesis is dedicated to his wife, carol turner.
Jackson Turner's (1961, originally published, 1893) famous 'frontier thesis' has canonical status (Billington 1966, Slotkin 1973, 1985, 1992). Even its mistakes are believed to be instructive. The thesis purports to establish a causal connection between the territorial expansion of the Western frontier and the crystallization
While historians agree with or at least know the Turner. thesis, it is necessary to elaborate on a definition of republican- ism. Robert E. Shalhope's two splendid historiographical articles. explore the origins, the changes, and the consequences of the republican ideology.12 Two forms have emerged: classical and.
Jackson Turner. Turner, postulating what has become known as the ‚Frontier (or Turner) thesis™argued that the availability of the frontier had led to a particular type of person and had crucially determined the path of US society. fiThe existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of