the closing of the frontier frederick jackson turner the closing of the frontier frederick jackson turner

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. [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]. 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 Frontier Thesis or Turner's Thesis (also American frontierism) is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that a settler colonial exceptionalism, under the guise of American democracy, was formed by the appropriation of the rugged American frontier. The test tube and the microscope are needed rather than ax and rifle, he wrote; in place of old frontiers of wilderness, there are new frontiers of unwon fields of science. Pioneer ideals were to be maintained by American universities through the training of new leaders who would strive to reconcile popular government and culture with the huge industrial society of the modern world.. His deep, melodious voice commanded attention whether he was addressing a teachers group, an audience of alumni, or a branch of the Chautauqua movement. Next: The Spanish-American War and Overseas Empire, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, Explain the evolution of American interest in foreign affairs from the end of the Civil War through the early 1890s, Identify the contributions of Frederick Jackson Turner and Alfred Thayer Mahan to the conscious creation of an American empire. This comparison, Petrov suggests, shows that it is far from inevitable that an expanding settlement of wild land would produce the American type of cultural and political institutions. Milton Stanley Livingston, the lab's associate director, said in 1968, "The frontier of high energy and the infinitesimally small is a challenge to the mind of man. For the full article, see, https://www.britannica.com/summary/Frederick-Jackson-Turner. Micheaux promoted the West as a place where blacks could experience less institutionalized forms of racism and earn economic success through hard work and perseverance. As a naval power, the country catapulted to the third strongest in world rankings by military experts, trailing only Spain and Great Britain. Turner held that the American character was decisively shaped by conditions on the frontier, in particular the abundance of free land, the settling of which engendered such traits as self-reliance, individualism, inventiveness, restless energy, mobility, materialism, and optimism. 1981 Oxford University Press This essay was presented to a special meeting of the American Historical Association during Rebelling against this view, Turner argued instead that Europeans had been transformed by the process of settling the American continent and that what was unique about the United States was its frontier history. Religious leaders and Progressive reformers joined businesses in their growing interest in American expansion, as both sought to increase the democratic and Christian influences of the United States abroad. [50][51] Scholars analyzing the Internet have often cited Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier model. Frederick Jackson Turner 239. To Roosevelt, the journey westward was one of nonstop encounters with the hostile races and cultures of the New World, forcing the early colonists to defend themselves as they pressed forward. The Turner Thesis was also critiqued by Patricia Nelson Limerick in her 1987 book, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. [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. 0000117746 00000 n Following decades of an official stance of isolationism combined with relatively weak presidents who lacked the popular mandate or congressional support to undertake substantial overseas commitments, a new cadre of American leaders-many of whom were too young to fully comprehend the damage inflicted by the Civil War-assumed leadership roles. Marvin K. Mikesell, "Comparative Studies in Frontier History," in Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Alexander Petrov, "Russian History Re-Examined, Ten Years After The Dissolution Of The Soviet Union", published in Russian Moscow 2001, English translation London 2004, Gerald D. Nash, "The frontier thesis: A historical perspective,", Ann Fabian, "The ragged edge of history: Intellectuals and the American West,", Richard R. John, " Turner, Beard, Chandler: Progressive Historians,", William Appleman Williams, "The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy,", Ray Allen Billington, "Why Some Historians Rarely Write History: A Case Study of Frederick Jackson Turner,", John B. Boles, "Turner, the frontier, and the study of religion in America,", Dan Moosd, "Reclaiming the Frontier: Oscar Micheaux as Black Turnerian,", Richard W. Slatta, "Taking Our Myths Seriously.". Turner saw the closing of the Frontier as an end to an era of expansionism and development of Americans character. 0000099913 00000 n Businesses were not the only ones seeking to expand. The increase in large, metal barbed wire fences on ranches and farms closed the open range cattle business and ended the long drive. 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. Poor health forced his early retirement from Harvard in 1924. activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United pHH=B5BBEFp32(rsM$5$QPftJ@"dtLR5J&(d2E e /deaNU&@P+**}JLTkrMdkFEp3_aM,DAj%$'.&Am 70EQxauku^RgOym]e6}i u;9yx:Qr\p. -Charlotte Lottie Moon, 1877. In his 1890 work, The Influence of Seapower upon History, he suggested three strategies that would assist the United States in both constructing and maintaining an empire. While certainly not all reformers espoused a racist view of intelligence and civilization, many of these reformers believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was mentally superior to others and owed the presumed less evolved populations their stewardship and social uplift-a service the British writer Rudyard Kipling termed the white mans burden.. If you don't remember your password, you can reset it by entering your email address and clicking the Reset Password button. 0000003731 00000 n "Turnerians all: the dream of a helpful history in an intelligible world. Following five more years of political wrangling, the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898, during the Spanish-American War. On the tide of the Father of Waters, North and South met and mingled into a nation. 0000101861 00000 n 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. The individualism fostered by the frontiers wilderness created a national spirit complementary to democracy, as the wilderness defies control. 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. "On Modernizing Frederick Jackson Turner,", This page was last edited on 6 January 2023, at 16:57. [33] Indeed, their approach was to reject the frontier as an important process and to study the West as a region, ignoring the frontier experience east of the Mississippi River. "the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the 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. For a scholar of such wide influence, Turner wrote relatively few books. Indeed, his influence was felt in American classrooms until the 1970s and 80s. Williams viewed the frontier concept as a tool to promote democracy through both world wars, to endorse spending on foreign aid, and motivate action against totalitarianism. 0000002336 00000 n 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. In the words of historian William Appleman Williams, it rolled through the universities and into popular literature like a tidal wave. While todays professional historians tend to reject such sweeping theories, emphasizing instead a variety of factors in their interpretations of the past, Turners frontier thesis remains the most popular explanation of American development among the literate public. (1993), Ford, Lacy K. "Frontier democracy: The Turner thesis revisited. [18][19][20][21], By 1890, settlement in the American West had reached sufficient population density that the frontier line had disappeared; in 1890 the Census Bureau released a bulletin declaring the closing of the frontier, stating: "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. 0000090409 00000 n Even after independence, the eastern coast of the United States sought to control the West. The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. American intellect owes its form to the frontier as well. [38], A 2020 study in Econometrica found empirical support for the frontier thesis, showing that frontier experience had a causal impact on individualism.[39]. 0000091373 00000 n The traits of the frontier are 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., Turner concludes the essay by saying that with the end of the frontier, the first period of American history has ended. WebFrederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" 1893 This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. "[29] Historians adopted it, especially in studies of the west,[30] but also in other areas, such as the influential work of Alfred D. Chandler Jr. (19182007) in business history. . "Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner": Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher. @@P?@/q+b+z1& l6YLBm3(2(fbkt ^/uaN {b2d8i@@yKf!yLByfgy ;i" :`6a[L9@ q endstream endobj 370 0 obj 375 endobj 322 0 obj << /Type /Page /Parent 317 0 R /Resources << /ColorSpace << /CS3 340 0 R /CS4 341 0 R /CS5 335 0 R >> /ExtGState << /GS2 366 0 R /GS3 365 0 R >> /XObject << /Im1 368 0 R >> /Font << /TT6 338 0 R /TT7 329 0 R /TT8 330 0 R /TT9 332 0 R /TT10 348 0 R /TT11 354 0 R >> /ProcSet [ /PDF /Text /ImageC /ImageI ] >> /Contents [ 343 0 R 345 0 R 351 0 R 353 0 R 358 0 R 360 0 R 362 0 R 364 0 R ] /Annots [ 323 0 R 324 0 R 325 0 R 326 0 R ] /MediaBox [ 0 0 612 792 ] /CropBox [ 0 0 612 792 ] /Rotate 0 /StructParents 0 >> endobj 323 0 obj << /Dest [ 322 0 R /XYZ 60 185 null ] /Type /Annot /Subtype /Link /Rect [ 310 515 315 523 ] /C [ 0 0 0 ] /Border [ 0 0 0 ] /H /O >> endobj 324 0 obj << /Dest [ 322 0 R /XYZ 61 149 null ] /Type /Annot /Subtype /Link /Rect [ 321 515 326 523 ] /C [ 0 0 0 ] /Border [ 0 0 0 ] /H /O >> endobj 325 0 obj << /Dest [ 322 0 R /XYZ 62 77 null ] /Type /Annot /Subtype /Link /Rect [ 314 313 321 323 ] /C [ 0 0 0 ] /Border [ 0 0 0 ] /H /O >> endobj 326 0 obj << /Dest [ 322 0 R /XYZ 62 59 null ] /Type /Annot /Subtype /Link /Rect [ 221 300 227 310 ] /C [ 0 0 0 ] /Border [ 0 0 0 ] /H /O >> endobj 327 0 obj << /Type /FontDescriptor /Ascent 916 /CapHeight 687 /Descent -219 /Flags 6 /FontBBox [ -173 -217 1167 912 ] /FontName /IGLCHG+Georgia /ItalicAngle 0 /StemV 0 /XHeight 484 /FontFile2 328 0 R >> endobj 328 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 15396 /Length1 23264 >> stream They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The age of expansionism had come to a close once the national boundaries reached both the west and east coasts O American democracy was largely formed by the American frontier Expansion had been a dominant part of American life for three centuries O The 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. He asked why the Turnerian American character was limited to the Thirteen Colonies that went on to form the United States, why the frontier did not produce that same character among pre-Columbian Native Americans and Spaniards in the New World. "Frontier culture: The roots and persistence of rugged individualism in the United States. The other idea is the thesis of Brooks Adams that America's unique and true democracy could be preserved only by a foreign policy of expansion. The concerns raised by the economic depression of the early 1890s further convinced business owners that they needed to tap into new markets, even at the risk of foreign entanglements. "Revisiting the vanishing frontier: The legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner. WebIt was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. "FrontiersOld, New, and Final. Omissions? However, others viewed this interpretation as the impetus for a new wave in the history of United States imperialism. She began in 1873 when she joined her sister in China as a missionary, teaching in a school for Chinese women. WebThe West of the War of 1812, the West of Clay, and Benton and Harrison, and Andrew Jackson, shut off by the Middle States and the mountains from the coast sections, had a solidarity of its own with national tendencies. He also pushed through the annexation of the Midway Islands in the Pacific Ocean, which subsequently opened a more stable route to Asian markets. Yen, "Western Frontier or Feudal Society: Metaphors and Perceptions of Cyberspace,", E. Brent, "Electronic communication and sociology: Looking backward, thinking ahead, careening toward the next millennium,", The Significance of the Frontier in American History, the challenges to democracy in the late 1890s, "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic historians, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", "Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt's Myth of the Frontier", "How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start", "The Census of 1890 and the Closing of the Frontier", "Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of "Rugged Individualism" in the United States", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frontier_thesis&oldid=1131966330, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Coleman, William, "Science and Symbol in the Turner Frontier Hypothesis,". (1993), Brett Bowden "FrontiersOld, New, and Final,", Nora Berend, Medievalists and the Notion of the Frontier., Riley, Glenda. 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. We use cookies to help provide and enhance our service and tailor content. "The frontier trail: rethinking Turner and reimagining the American West." Most notably, in 1867, Seward obtained the Alaskan Territory from Russia for a purchase price of $7.2 million. Every generation moved further west and became more American, more democratic, and more intolerant of hierarchy. WebJackson Turner Main (1917-2003) was a professor, historian and author who researched and wrote about the colonial American social order before, during and after the American Revolution.He was the grandson of Frederick Jackson Turner author of the influential Frontier Thesis.Main worked most of his adult life as a professor and author of American Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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. According to the theory, the Germanic race appeared and evolved in the ancient Teutonic forests, endowed with a great capacity for politics and government. In the negotiations, Fish also suggested adding the Dominican Republic as a territorial possession with a path towards statehood, as well as discussing the construction of a transoceanic canal with Columbia. Everything in American history up to the 1880s somehow relates the western frontier, including slavery. it served as a "safety valve" for those in the east. He cites British attempts to stifle western emigration during the colonial era and as an example of eastern control. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The Frontier Thesis or Turner's Thesis (also American frontierism) is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that a settler colonial exceptionalism, under the guise of American democracy, was formed by the appropriation of the rugged American frontier. 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. 319 0 obj << /Linearized 1 /O 322 /H [ 1845 491 ] /L 996585 /E 157892 /N 9 /T 990086 >> endobj xref 319 52 0000000016 00000 n He noted that for nearly three centuries the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. He continued: American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.. Turners frontier thesis rose to become the dominant interpretation of American history for the next half-century and longer. "Frontier culture: The roots and persistence of rugged individualism in the United States. John Perry Barlow, along with Mitch Kapor, promoted the idea of cyberspace (the realm of telecommunication) as an "electronic frontier" beyond the borders of any physically based government, in which freedom and self-determination could be fully realized. The farther West Americans pushed (the farther into the Frontier they went) the more unique of an American identity developed. [42], Despite Pierson and other scholars work, Turners influence did not end during World War II or even after the war. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. As mentioned in the chapter opening, Turner announced his Frontier Thesis-that American democracy was largely formed by the American frontier-at the Chicago Worlds Colombian Exposition. In the United States, several newspaper editors openly questioned the purchase and labeled it Sewards Folly (Figure 22.3). WebWhich of the following is NOT part of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis? I spent a week here last fall and of course feel very natural to be here again. Evidently, the belief that free political institutions of the United States spawned in ancient Germanic forests endured well into the 1940s. Their germs were, directly and by way of England, carried to the New World where they were allowed to germinate in the North American forests. In 1899, in an effort to mitigate other foreign interests and still protect their own, the United States joined Great Britain and Germany in a three-party protectorate over the islands, which assured American access to the strategic ports located there. Fish spent much of his time settling international disputes involving American interests, including claims that British assistance to the Confederates prolonged the Civil War for about two years. The most important aspect of the frontier to Turner is its effect on democracy. HV PSgrBr5AwT? Historians have noted that John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s explicitly called upon the ideas of the frontier.