A modern simplification describes it as Indigenous land possessing an "American ingenuity" that settlers are compelled to forcibly appropriate to create cultural identity that differs from their European ancestors. In the history of religion, for example, Boles (1993) notes that William Warren Sweet at the University of Chicago Divinity School as well as Peter G. Mode (in 1930), argued that churches adapted to the characteristics of the frontier, creating new denominations such as the Mormons, the Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the Cumberland Presbyterians. Release Date: October 14, 2007 [eBook #22994] Language: English. In The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893) he asserted that the American character had been shaped by frontier life and the end of the frontier era. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of ageto the stout in spirit, regardless of party. The Frontier, both the physical land and the ideological idea of it, Turner said, had infused American society with a unique blend of European refinement and untamed coarseness. I spent a week here last fall and of course feel very natural to be here again. [25] Alexander Petrov noted that Russia had its own Frontier and Russians moved over centuries across Siberia all the way from the Urals to the Pacific, struggling with nature in many physical ways similar to the American move across North America - without developing the social and political characteristics noted by Turner. In Australia, "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism. According to Turner, American progress has repeatedly undergone a cyclical process on the frontier line as society has needed to redevelop with its movement westward. ", Bazzi, Samuel, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse. WebTurners thesis asserted that the closing of the American Frontier, as demonstrated by the 1890 Census data, was the end of the most important era of American history. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 0000002878 00000 n
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h0'$1e=T)S!H#PhB [40] This quote from Turners The Frontier in American History is arguably the most famous statement of his work and, to later historians, the most controversial: American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. 0000091351 00000 n
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The process of westward expansion had transformed a desolate and savage
The Frontier Thesis was first published in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. Project Gutenberg, 2007. Countries in Europe were building their empires through global power and trade, and the United States did not want to be left behind. activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United
Frederick Turner longer. " For example, the Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. Turner set up an evolutionary model (he had studied evolution with a leading geologist, Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin), using the time dimension of American history, and the geographical space of the land that became the United States. Roosevelt contended that the formation of the American character occurred not with early settlers struggling to survive while learning a foreign land, but on the cutting edge of expansion in the early battles with Native Americans in the New World. Closing the Frontier: Radical Response in Oklahoma, 1889-1923 Hardcover January 1, 1986 . By forging new and stronger ties overseas, the United States would gain access to international markets for export, as well as better deals on the raw materials needed domestically. 0000003036 00000 n
Therefore, Andrew Jacksons brand of popular democracy was a triumph of the frontier.
Frederick Jackson Turner Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Frederick Jackson Turner - Weber State University By 1898, the government had succeeded in increasing the size of the U.S. Navy to an active fleet of 160 vessels, of which 114 were newly built of steel. Turner moved to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where he remained as senior research associate until his death. Limerick pushes for a continuation of study within the historical and social atmosphere of the American West, which she believes did not end in 1890, but rather continues on to this very day. WebFrom Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1920), pp. Architecturally, The lab's designers rejected the militaristic design of Los Alamos and Brookhaven as well as the academic architecture of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. "Frontier culture: The roots and persistence of rugged individualism in the United States. ", Faragher, John Mack. The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. Further limiting American potential for foreign impact was the fact that a strong international presence required a strong military-specifically a navy-which the United States, after the Civil War, was in no position to maintain. The question is whether their frontiers were powerful enough to overcome conservative central forces based in the metropolis. 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. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. The advance of the Georgia frontier / Frederick Jackson Turner. Specifically, the thesis underscores the pervasive racism and disregard for the indigenous communities, cultures, and individuals in the American borderlands and beyond. As a new industrial United States began to emerge in the 1870s, economic interests began to lead the country toward a more expansionist foreign policy. Other historians, who wanted to focus scholarship on minorities, especially Native Americans and Hispanics, started in the 1970s to criticize the frontier thesis because it did not attempt to explain the evolution of those groups. WebWith his announcement of the "closing" of the frontier, moreover, Turner implied that the nation would be forced to undergo a painful transition, from a perception of America as a [12], Turner and Roosevelt diverged on the exact aspect of frontier life that shaped the contemporary American. Turner (Figure 22.4) and naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan were instrumental in the countrys move toward foreign expansion, and writer Brooks Adams further dramatized the consequences of the nations loss of its frontier in his The Law of Civilization and Decay in 1895. 0000003351 00000 n
The most important aspect of the frontier to Turner is its effect on democracy. [17], Turner saw the land frontier was ending, since the U.S. Census of 1890 had officially stated that the American frontier had broken up. A modern simplification d According to Bancroft, the Germanic germs had spread across of all Western Europe by the Middle Ages and had reached their height. Updates? "On Modernizing Frederick Jackson Turner,", This page was last edited on 6 January 2023, at 16:57. Whether oversees or in the urban slums, they benefitted from the same passions but expressed the same paternalism. "[22], Historians, geographers, and social scientists have studied frontier-like conditions in other countries, with an eye on the Turnerian model. His essays were collected in The Frontier in American History (1920) and Significance of Sections in American History (1932, Pulitzer Prize). It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. Urban historian Richard C. Wade challenged the Frontier Thesis in his first asset, The Urban Frontier (1959), asserting that western cities such as Pittsburgh, Louisville, and Cincinnati, not the farmer pioneers, were the catalysts for western expansion. WebThe first is by transcending the region-frontier divide. [6] Americans inherited such traits as adaptability and self-reliance from the Germanic peoples of Europe. Instead Fermilab's planners sought to return to Turnerian themes. 0000120585 00000 n
MARY AUSTIN AND THE AMERICAN WEST By Susan Goodman Later he focused on sectionalism as a force in U.S. development. WebFind many great new & used options and get the best deals for MARY AUSTIN AND THE AMERICAN WEST By Susan Goodman & Carl Dawson - Hardcover NEW at the best online prices at eBay! He also commented directly on the connections he saw between the past and the present.
The closing of the frontier Smarthistory Richard White, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and James R. Grossman, Barlow and Kapor (1990) "The Electronic Frontier", Barlow (1996) "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", Rod Carveth, and J. Metz, "Frederick Jackson Turner and the democratization of the electronic frontier.,", A.C. The conquest of the American frontier is one of the most exciting and dramatic stories in American history. 0000002336 00000 n
-Charlotte Lottie Moon, 1877. [42], Despite Pierson and other scholars work, Turners influence did not end during World War II or even after the war. Lottie Moon was a Southern Baptist missionary who spent more than forty years living and working in China. It was popular among New DealersFranklin D. Roosevelt and his top aides[27] thought in terms of finding new frontiers. That is exactly what happened. It has been subsequently reprinted and anthologized many times, and was incorporated into Turner's 1920 book, The Frontier in American History, as Chapter I.
Frederick Jackson Turner, Significance of the Frontier in generation, and it shaped the writing of western American history for even
Western Historical Quarterly In these so-called Alabama claims, a U.S. senator charged that the Confederacy won a number of crucial battles with the help of one British cruiser and demanded $2 billion in British reparations. [2], In the thesis, the American frontier established liberty from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. WebPerhaps the most influential essay by an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turners 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. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.[4].
He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the frontier line further for U.S. colonization, and the impact this had on pioneer culture and character. European characteristics fell by the wayside and the old country's institutions (e.g., established churches, established aristocracies, standing armies, intrusive government, and highly unequal land distribution) were increasingly out of place. 0000119689 00000 n
The frontier helped shape individualism and opposition to governmental control. "The emergence of western history as an important field of
Settling popular and scholarly views of the West (and of much else) for two generations. [1], Turner speculated how the frontier drove American history and helped shape American culture in the 1890s. He taught at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard University. Her letter campaign back to the head of the Mission Board provided a vivid picture of life in China and exhorted the Southern Baptist women to give more generously of their money and their time. history. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-Jackson-Turner The Dilemma of the West, African Americans in the Antebellum United States, The Filibuster and the Quest for New Slave States, An Awakening of Religion and Individualism, The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Republican Party, The Dred Scott Decision and Sectional Strife, The Origins and Outbreak of the Civil War, Congress and the Remaking of the South, 1865-1866, The Loss of American Indian Life and Culture, The Impact of Expansion on Chinese Immigrants and Hispanic Citizens, Building Industrial America on the Backs of Labor, The African American Great Migration and New European Immigration, Political Corruption in Postbellum America, The Key Political Issues: Patronage, Tariffs, and Gold, The Origins of the Progressive Spirit in America, New Voices for Women and African Americans, The Spanish-American War and Overseas Empire, American Isolationism and the European Origins of War, Demobilization and Its Difficult Aftermath, Prosperity and the Production of Popular Entertainment, Republican Ascendancy: Politics in the 1920s, Assessing the Hoover Years on the Eve of the New Deal, The Origins of War: Europe, Asia, and the United States, The African American Struggle for Civil Rights, Jimmy Carter in the Aftermath of the Storm, Chapter 22: Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914. With regard to the latter, American businessmen were most interested in the lucrative sugar industry that lay at the heart of the Hawaiian Islands economy. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen. Influenced by such works as Reverend Josiah Strongs Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885), missionaries sought to spread the gospel throughout the country and abroad. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Frederick Jackson Turner's argument that American democracy was built by the American frontier, Saldaa-Portillo, Mara Josefina "Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States," (2016) pp. Such an increased investment in overseas markets in turn strengthened Americans interest in foreign affairs. [3] By contrast, medievalist Nora Berend asked: "What good is a concept not very clearly formulated a hundred years agoTurners frontier was an elastic term that had no sharp definitionand severely criticised ever since?"[4]. WebAnd 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. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.