The Significance of the Frontier in American History
"The Significance of the Frontier in American History" is a seminal essay by the American
The essay summarizes Turner's views on how the idea of the American frontier shaped the American character in terms of democracy and violence. He stresses how the availability of very large amounts of nearly free farmland built agriculture, pulled ambitious families to the western frontier and created an ethos of unlimited opportunity. The frontier helped shape individualism and opposition to governmental control.[1] He argued that the westward migration and the settlement of new frontiers were transformative processes that shaped the idea of American exceptionalism.
Turner speculated how the frontier drove American history and helped shape American culture as it existed in the 1890s. Turner reflects on the past to illustrate his point by noting human fascination with the frontier and how expansion to the
Australian historian Brett Bowden has explored how the concept of "frontier" has been very widely used in both scholarly and popular literature to denote challenging new forces. [3] By contrast, medievalist Nora Berend asked: "What good is a concept not very clearly formulated a hundred years ago—Turner’s frontier was an elastic term that had no sharp definition—and severely criticized ever since?"[4]
Opposition to the Turner Thesis
In 1942, in "The Frontier and American Institutions: A Criticism of the Turner Thesis," Professor George Wilson Pierson debated the validity of the Turner thesis, stating that many factors influenced American culture besides the looming frontier. Although he respected Turner, Pierson strongly argues his point by looking beyond the frontier and acknowledging other factors in American development.
The Turner Thesis was also critiqued by
Urban historian
Glenda Riley has argued that Turner's thesis ignored women. She argues that his context and upbringing led him to ignore the female portion of society, which directly led to the frontier becoming an exclusively male phenomenon.[5] The exclusion of women is one of the central debates around his work, particularly referred to by New Western Historians.
References
- ^ Samuel Bazzi, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse. "Frontier culture: The roots and persistence of “rugged individualism” in the United States." Econometrica 88.6 (2020): 2329-2368, provides statistical support for individualism on the frontier.
- ^ John Mack Faragher, "The frontier trail: rethinking Turner and reimagining the American West." (1993) American Historical Review 98#1 (1993), pp. 106-117. online[dead link]
- ^ Brett Bowden "Frontiers—Old, New, and Final," The European Legacy (2020) 25:6, 671-686, DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2020.1760486
- ^ Nora Berend, “Medievalists and the Notion of the Frontier.” Medieval History Journal 2#1 (1999): 55–72.
- ^ Riley, Glenda. "Frederick Jackson Turner Overlooked the Ladies." Journal of the Early Republic 13.2 (1993): 216–30.
Further reading
- Bowden, Brett. "Frontiers—Old, New, and Final." European Legacy 25.6 (2020): 671–686.
- Bazzi, Samuel, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse. "Frontier culture: The roots and persistence of “rugged individualism” in the United States." Econometrica 88.6 (2020): 2329-2368. Statistical support for Turner's thesis. online
- Carpenter, Ronald H. "Frederick Jackson Turner and the rhetorical impact of the frontier thesis." Quarterly Journal of Speech 63.2 (1977): 117–129.
- Cronon, William. "Revisiting the vanishing frontier: The legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner." Western Historical Quarterly 18.2 (1987): 157-176 online
- Faragher, John Mack. "The frontier trail: rethinking Turner and reimagining the American West." (1993) American Historical Review 98#1 (1993), pp. 106–117. online[dead link]
- Ford, Lacy K. "Frontier democracy: The Turner thesis revisited." Journal of the Early Republic 13.2 (1993): 144–163. online
- Hofstadter, Richard. "Turner and the frontier myth." The American Scholar (1949): 433–443. online; hostile.
- Limerick, Patricia Nelson. "Turnerians all: the dream of a helpful history in an intelligible world." American Historical Review 100.3 (1995): 697–716. online
- Frederick Jackson Turner, ’the significance of the frontier in American ... (n.d.-a). https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/empire/text1/turner.pdf
- The significance of the frontier in American history (1893): AHA. The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893) | AHA. (n.d.). https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/historical-archives/the-significance-of-the-frontier-in-american-history-(1893)#:~:text=The%20most%20significant%20thing%20about,more%20to%20the%20square%20mile.
Primary sources
- Faragher, John Mack ed. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: "The significance of the frontier in American history", and other essays (Yale University Press, 1999); reprints Turner's essays.