F rederick Jackson Turner

The emergence of western history being an important field of scholarship can best be tracked towards the famous paper Ernest Jackson Turner delivered in a meeting from the American Historic Association in 1893. It had been titled The value of the Frontier in American History. The Turner thesis or frontier thesis, as his argument rapidly grew to become known, formed both popular and scholarly views from the West (as well as anything else) for 2 generations. Turner mentioned his thesis simply. The settlement from the West by white-colored people – the presence of a place of free land, its continuous recession, and also the coming of American settlement westward – was the central story of yankee history. The entire process of westward expansion had transformed a desolate and savage land into modem civilization. It had also constantly restored American ideas of democracy and individualism coupled with, therefore, formed not only free airline however the nation in general. Exactly what the Mediterranean And Beyond ended up being to the Greeks, smashing the bonds of custom, offering new encounters, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and much more, the ever retreating frontier is to the U . s . States. The Turner thesis formed the writing of yankee history for any generation, also it formed the writing of western American history for longer. (quoted from Where Historians Disagree: The ‘Frontier’ and also the West in Alan Brinkley, American History: Market Research, Chapter 16)

• Turner thesis text
• Turner biography in the West by PBS

Turner thought that historians as much as that point hadn’t devoted sufficient research as to the he termed within an earlier essay the essential, dominating fact in U . s . States history, the territorial expansion in the Atlantic towards the Gulf Of Mexico.

Central to Turner’s frontier thesis is the concept the introduction of the American frontier helped to shape not just the smoothness from the United states citizens but the nature of their institutions. More particularly, Turner claimed that characteristics and traits which developed throughout the Nineteenth-Century push from East to West — individualism, nationalism, mobility, egalitarianism — not just deviated in the perceived standard American cultural attitudes which won at that time, but eventually found dominate the development from the American character. Together with his announcement from the closing from the frontier, furthermore, Turner implied the nation would have to undergo an unpleasant transition, from a solid idea of America like a land of endless limitations, to 1 which needed Americans to simply accept their nation was finally a closed-space world, replete using the limitations natural within.

The Turner Theses

The frontier thesis may be the assertion the American character, including such traits as democracy and materialism, produced from the frontier experience.

The presence of a place of free land, its continuous recession, and also the coming of American settlement, explain American development.

The Security Valve

The security valve thesis may be the assertion the frontier, like a host to chance and escape, defused social discontent in the usa.

As long as free land exists, the chance for any competency exists, and economic power safeguards political power.

Turner stated that in the introduction of any frontier area, one phase of social and economic development adopted another in distinct stages. This is actually the idea of successive frontiers.

Stand at Cumberland Gap watching the procession of civilization, marching single file–the zoysia following a trail towards the salt springs, the Indian, the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer player–and also the frontier has transpired by. Stand at South Pass within the Rockies a hundred years later and find out exactly the same procession with wider times between.

Turner’s thesis can be viewed as:

• like a reflection from the 1890s,
• like a statement of yankee expansionism,
• being an idea in American thought,
• being an historic philosophy, and
• because the site of dialogue within the concept of the frontier in American culture.

F rederick Jackson Turner

The emergence of western history being an important field of scholarship can best be tracked towards the famous paper Ernest Jackson Turner delivered in a meeting from the American Historic Association in 1893. It had been titled The value of the Frontier in American History. The Turner thesis or frontier thesis, as his argument rapidly grew to become known, formed both popular and scholarly views from the West (as well as anything else) for 2 generations. Turner mentioned his thesis simply. The settlement from the West by white-colored people – the presence of a place of free land, its continuous recession, and also the coming of American settlement westward – was the central story of yankee history. The entire process of westward expansion had transformed a desolate and savage land into modem civilization. It had also constantly restored American ideas of democracy and individualism coupled with, therefore, formed not only free airline however the nation in general. Exactly what the Mediterranean And Beyond ended up being to the Greeks, smashing the bonds of custom, offering new encounters, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and much more, the ever retreating frontier is to the U . s . States. The Turner thesis formed the writing of yankee history for any generation, also it formed the writing of western American history for longer. (quoted from Where Historians Disagree: The ‘Frontier’ and also the West in Alan Brinkley, American History: Market Research, Chapter 16)

• Turner thesis text
• Turner biography in the West by PBS

Turner thought that historians as much as that point hadn’t devoted sufficient research as to the he termed within an earlier essay the essential, dominating fact in U . s . States history, the territorial expansion in the Atlantic towards the Gulf Of Mexico.

Central to Turner’s frontier thesis is the concept the introduction of the American frontier helped to shape not just the smoothness from the United states citizens but the nature of their institutions. More particularly, Turner claimed that characteristics and traits which developed throughout the Nineteenth-Century push from East to West — individualism, nationalism, mobility, egalitarianism — not just deviated in the perceived standard American cultural attitudes which won at that time, but eventually found dominate the development from the American character. Together with his announcement from the closing from the frontier, furthermore, Turner implied the nation would have to undergo an unpleasant transition, from a solid idea of America like a land of endless limitations, to 1 which needed Americans to simply accept their nation was finally a closed-space world, replete using the limitations natural within.

The Turner Theses

The frontier thesis may be the assertion the American character, including such traits as democracy and materialism, produced from the frontier experience.

The presence of a place of free land, its continuous recession, and also the coming of American settlement, explain American development.

The Security Valve

The security valve thesis may be the assertion the frontier, like a host to chance and escape, defused social discontent in the usa.

As long as free land exists, the chance for any competency exists, and economic power safeguards political power.

Turner stated that in the introduction of any frontier area, one phase of social and economic development adopted another in distinct stages. This is actually the idea of successive frontiers.

Stand at Cumberland Gap watching the procession of civilization, marching single file–the zoysia following a trail towards the salt springs, the Indian, the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer player–and also the frontier has transpired by. Stand at South Pass within the Rockies a hundred years later and find out exactly the same procession with wider times between.

Turner’s thesis can be viewed as:

• like a reflection from the 1890s,
• like a statement of yankee expansionism,
• being an idea in American thought,
• being an historic philosophy, and
• because the site of dialogue within the concept of the frontier in American culture.