While the United States slowly pushed outward and sought to absorb the borderlands (and the indigenous cultures that lived there), the country was also changing how it functioned. "[46] He promoted his political platform as the "New Frontier," with a particular emphasis on space exploration and technology. Turners penetrating analyses of American history and culture were powerfully influential and changed the direction of much American historical writing. The initial work of businesses, missionaries, and reformers set the stage by the early 1890s for advocates of an expanded foreign policy and a vision of an American empire. "Turnerians all: the dream of a helpful history in an intelligible world. Turner referred to the Germanic germ theory by name in his essay, claiming that too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins.[9] Turner believed that historians should focus on the settlers struggle with the frontier as the catalyst for the creation of American character, not racial or hereditary traits. 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. 0000003731 00000 n That is exactly what happened. As was the case elsewhere in the American borderlands, Alaskas industrial development wreaked havoc on the regions indigenous and Russian cultures. The question is whether their frontiers were powerful enough to overcome conservative central forces based in the metropolis. [10], A similarly race-based interpretation of Western history also occupied the intellectual sphere in the United States before Turner. [31], Many believed that the end of the frontier represented the beginning of a new stage in American life and that the United States must expand overseas. Chapter 1: The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492, Chapter 2: Early Globalization: The Atlantic World, 14921650, Chapter 3: Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 15001700, Chapter 4: Rule Britannia! Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). -Charlotte Lottie Moon, 1877. (Ironically, Turner passed up an opportunity to attend Buffalo Bills Wild West show so that he could complete The Significance of the Frontier in American History on the morning that he presented it.) 0000102444 00000 n As of 1865, the U.S. State Department had barely sixty employees and no ambassadors representing American interests abroad. 0000099913 00000 n Etulain, Richard W. and Gerald D. Nash, eds. HV PSgrBr5AwT? [35] However his ideas presented in his graduate seminars at Wisconsin and Harvard influenced many areas of historiography. 2023 Wilderness Medical Society. Closing the Frontier: Radical Response in Oklahoma, 1889-1923 WebWHAT ROLE DID FENCES PLAY IN CLOSING DOWN THE "OPEN RANGE" CATTLE BUSINESS & ENDING THE "LONG DRIVE"? [5], The Frontier Thesis came about at a time when the Germanic germ theory of history was popular. Led by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, among several other organizations, missionaries conflated Christian ethics with American virtues, and began to spread both gospels with zeal. duP+ h0'$1e=T)S!H#PhB Countries in Europe were building their empires through global power and trade, and the United States did not want to be left behind. He stressed in this thesis that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism, of a lack of interest in bourgeois or high culture, and violence. Only if gold were to be found, the editors decried, would the secretive purchase be justified. [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]. Their good intentions and willingness to work in difficult conditions shone through in the letters and articles they wrote from the field. According to Turner, what separated Americans from Europeans was the constant availability of new land to the west. 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 While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. WebIt was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Additionally, as late as 1890, with the U.S. Navy significantly reduced in size, a majority of vessels were classified as Old Navy, meaning a mixture of iron hulled and wholly wooden ships. Turner He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. You will then receive an email that contains a secure link for resetting your password, If the address matches a valid account an email will be sent to __email__ with instructions for resetting your password. thesis" or "frontier thesis," as his argument quickly became known, shaped both 1-4,22-23,29-31,32,37-38. Even after independence, the eastern coast of the United States sought to control the West. 0000020399 00000 n 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. Lotties combination of moral certainty and selfless service was emblematic of the missionary zeal of the early American empire. 0000101861 00000 n For a scholar of such wide influence, Turner wrote relatively few books. His writing, too, bore the stamp of oratory; indeed, he reworked his lectures into articles that appeared in the nations most influential popular and scholarly journals. 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. WebIdentify the contributions of Frederick Jackson Turner and Alfred Thayer Mahan to the conscious creation of an American empire a variety of factors, from the closing of the American frontier to the countrys increased industrial production, led the United States to look beyond its borders. Western expansion and the goal of Manifest Destiny still held the countrys attention, and American missionaries proselytized as far abroad as China, India, the Korean Peninsula, and Africa, but reconstruction efforts took up most of the nations resources. 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. [1], Turner speculated how the frontier drove American history and helped shape American culture in the 1890s. Rejecting the East and West coast life styles that most scientists preferred, they selected a Chicago suburb on the prairie as the location of the lab. 0000121758 00000 n [37], Slatta (2001) argues that the widespread popularization of Turner's frontier thesis influenced popular histories, motion pictures, and novels, which characterize the West in terms of individualism, frontier violence, and rough justice. "The emergence of western history as an important field of For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions 0000091351 00000 n 0000020789 00000 n 0000033612 00000 n There was no longer an unbroken frontier line in the United States, although frontier conditions lasted in certain parts of the American West until 1920. He began his teaching career at the University of Wisconsin in 1889. The Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, was one of these leaders who sought to expand American influence globally, and he advocated for the expansion of the U.S. Navy, which at the turn of the century was the only weapons system suitable for securing overseas expansion. :mx?6zj 'm=H*.\U{j;] ~ H8Fk?<6,H'iM*m*m/pY8!_9s1-F{mM{V [3], Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. 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. [2], In the thesis, the American frontier established liberty from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. Editors of such magazines as Century, Outlook, and Harpers supported an imperialistic stance as the democratic responsibility of the United States. WebTurner is best known for his Frontier Thesis, an idea put forth in the essay excerpted. For example, the Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. Japan fascinated my heart and fancy four years ago, but now I honestly believe I love China the best, and actually, which is stranger still, like the Chinese best. Limerick asserts the notion of a "New Western History" in which the American West is treated as a place and not a process of finite expansion. Her true passion, however, was to evangelize and minister, and she undertook a campaign to urge the Southern Baptist missionaries to allow women to work beyond the classroom. 1981 Oxford University Press WebFind many great new & used options and get the best deals for The Frontier In American History by Frederick Turner: Franklin Library 1977 (LE) at the best online prices at eBay! WebIn 1893, three years after the superintendent of the Census announced that the western frontier was closed, Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian from the University of She began in 1873 when she joined her sister in China as a missionary, teaching in a school for Chinese women. 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. ", Bazzi, Samuel, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse. But her primary goal was to evangelize her Christian beliefs to the people in China. scholarship can best be traced to the famous paper Frederick Jackson Turner (quoted from "Where Historians Disagree: The 'Frontier' and the West" [28] FDR, in celebrating the third anniversary of Social Security in 1938, advised, "There is still today a frontier that remains unconqueredan America unreclaimed. It was 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. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Frederick Jackson Turner Free shipping for many products! To read this article in full you will need to make a payment. They adapted to the new physical, economic and political environment in certain waysthe cumulative effect of these adaptations was Americanization. Frederick Jackson Turner, (born Nov. 14, 1861, Portage, Wis., U.S.died March 14, 1932, San Marino, Calif.), U.S. historian. 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. pHH=B5BBEFp32(rsM$5$QPftJ@"dtLR5J&(d2E e /deaNU&@P+**}JLTkrMdkFEp3_aM,DAj%$'.&Am 70EQxauku^RgOym]e6}i u;9yx:Qr\p. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. He argued that the tide of intelligence had always moved from east to west. [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. 0000119667 00000 n WebGalena, South Dakota, in the Black Hills, 1890 frontier of the seventeenth century; the Alleghanies that of the eighteenth; the Mississippi that of the first quarter of the Also mindful of the mitigating influence of a frontier-in terms of easing pressure from increased immigration and population expansion in the eastern and midwestern United States-he encouraged new outlets for further population growth, whether as lands for further American settlement or to accommodate more immigrants. She won the right to minister and personally converted hundreds of Chinese to Christianity. 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. Evidently, the belief that free political institutions of the United States spawned in ancient Germanic forests endured well into the 1940s. Details for: The removal of the Cherokee Nation : manifest destiny The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. WebBy that reasoning, the closing of the frontier would make the US an industrial nation like those of Europe. generation, and it shaped the writing of western American history for even Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. 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. Author: Frederick Jackson Turner. Jensen, Richard. The Significance of the Frontier in American History Awarded a doctorate in 1891, Turner was one of the first historians professionally trained in the United States rather than in Europe. By 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, American exports had reached a height of $1.3 billion annually. They emphasized the values of individualism, empiricism, simplicity, equality, courage, discovery, independence, and naturalism in the service of democratic access, human rights, ecological balance, and the resolution of social, economic, and political issues. 2 Ibid., 2. Turner stated his thesis simply. 0000090409 00000 n Turner sets up the East and the West as opposing forces; as the West strives for freedom, the East seeks to control it. 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. 0000020183 00000 n . In the summer of 1893, at the Chicago Worlds Columbian Exposition, Frederick Jackson Turner a minor academic in the new discipline of social science, presented his now-famous paper on the closing of the American frontier. 0000120607 00000 n This essay was presented to a special meeting of the American Historical Association during Later he focused on sectionalism as a force in U.S. development. By the end of this section, you will be able to: During the time of Reconstruction, the U.S. government showed no significant initiative in foreign affairs. "Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner": Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher. WebExplains frederick jackson turner's claim that the frontier made the united states unique. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-Jackson-Turner, Wisconsin Life - Frederick Jackson Turner and the History of the American West, Weber State University - Biography of Frederick Jackson Turner, National Humanities Center - The Significance of the Frontier in American History 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). The follow-up to that study, The United States, 18301850: The Nation and Its Sections (1935), would not be published until after his death. 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. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady 0000002336 00000 n Frederick Jackson Turner 0000002314 00000 n What the world needed now, he argued, was a highly organized provincial life to serve as a check upon mob psychology on a national scale, and to furnish that variety which is essential to vital growth and originality. Turner never ceased to treat history as contemporary knowledge, seeking to explore the ways that the nation might rechannel its expansionist impulses into the development of community life. delivered at a meeting of the American Historical Association in 1893. The Closing of the American Wilderness | American 0000099706 00000 n The farther West Americans pushed (the farther into the Frontier they went) the more unique of an American identity developed. 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. Other factors need to be taken into consideration, such as the great difference between British society from which settlers went across the Atlantic and the Russian society which sent its own pioneers across the Urals. Sewards previous acquisition of the Midway Islands served this purpose by providing an essential naval coaling station, which was vital, as the limited reach of steamships and their dependence on coal made naval coaling stations imperative for increasing the navys geographic reach. American emigration west is not spurred by government incentives, but rather some expansive power inherent within them that seeks to dominate nature. The closing of the frontier Smarthistory 0000122616 00000 n 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. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Essay. He was an early leader of the American Historical Association, serving as its president in 1910 and on the editorial board of the associations American Historical Review from 1910 to 1915. Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE However, the work of historians during the 1980s1990s, some of whom sought to bury Turner's conception of the frontier, and others who sought to spare the concept but with nuance, have done much to place Western myths in context. As the century came to a close, however, a variety of factors, from the closing of the American frontier to the countrys increased industrial production, led the United States to look beyond its borders. The Western Historical Quarterly is published for the Western Historical Association by Utah State University, and the Department of History, Utah State University. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier (1893) Frederick Jackson Turner 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. %(]YK" PXQ^VNmlao{Fs! "[22], Historians, geographers, and social scientists have studied frontier-like conditions in other countries, with an eye on the Turnerian model. [42], Despite Pierson and other scholars work, Turners influence did not end during World War II or even after the war. The advance of the Georgia frontier / Frederick Jackson Turner. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. The increase in large, metal barbed wire fences on ranches and farms closed the open range cattle business and ended the long drive. 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.. The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. The settlement of the West by white people - However, others viewed this interpretation as the impetus for a new wave in the history of United States imperialism. The frontier helped shape individualism and opposition to governmental control. 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. 0000090357 00000 n WebFrederick Jackson Turner and the frontier. "Revisiting the vanishing frontier: The legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner. 0000033105 00000 n WebThe Closing of the American Wilderness. The Significance of the Frontier in American History, Samuel Bazzi, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. 0000003508 00000 n [41], This assertions racial overtones concerned historians as Adolf Hitler and the Blood and soil ideology, stoking racial and destructive enthusiasm, rose to power in Germany. [16], Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson argue that during the heyday of Kennedy's "New Frontier," the physicists who built Fermilab explicitly sought to recapture the excitement of the old frontier. Publisher. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen. An example of this concern is in George Wilson Piersons influential essay on the frontier. Although he respected Turner, Pierson strongly argues his point by looking beyond the frontier and acknowledging other factors in American development. [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. Sewards purchase added an enormous territory to the country-nearly 600,000 square miles-and also gave the United States access to the rich mineral resources of the region, including the gold that trigged the Klondike Gold Rush at the close of the century. Frederick Jackson Turner 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. Though Turners work was massively popular in its time and for decades after, it received significant intellectual pushback in the midst of World War II. Otten E. Wilderness medicine quo vadis? [6] Americans inherited such traits as adaptability and self-reliance from the Germanic peoples of Europe. WebFrederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" 1893 This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. t!p/G>Q]y wh4R}b]Z,SqCES7J.2U|?}=8lD7{A+[/SW7i|9vtB3X[gY.~0u83cRuq[v5^>Vq6Vwt1gcY vy_>rs&^*s[&=u{{ >0cGL%i&yb|&zb2tVVVAQ4fY)6^;bb/" 0i 1n eplg\tCKGHAXb-s1Z4&34z 'q9q!$`>HNq|HB. Ax4HR&6DH&A)E@o This seminal event influenced Frederick Jackson Turners frontier thesis and by the turn of the 20 th century, the wilderness frontierindividualistic and ruggedcame to define the essence of the American spirit. Frederick Jackson Turner | Biography, Works, & Influence in Alan Brinkley, American History: A Survey, Chapter 16), http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/isern/103/turner.htm. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in The process of westward expansion had transformed a desolate and savage The Closing of the American Wilderness Omissions? Walker D. Wyman and Clifton B. Kroeber, eds. Future acquisitions in the Pacific and Caribbean increased this naval supply network (Figure 22.5). Please enter a term before submitting your search. In these writings Turner promoted new methods in historical research, including the techniques of the newly founded social sciences, and urged his colleagues to study new topics such as immigration, urbanization, economic development, and social and cultural history. Each side, the Westerners and the native savages, struggled for mastery of the land through violence.[13]. 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. 0000100879 00000 n When Queen Liliuokalani tapped into a strong anti-American resentment among native Hawaiians over the economic and political power of exploitative American sugar companies between 1891 and 1893, worried businessmen worked with the American minister to Hawaii, John Stevens, to stage a quick, armed revolt to counter her efforts and seize the islands as an American protectorate (Figure 22.6). Frederick Jackson Turner, (born November 14, 1861, Portage, Wisconsin, U.S.died March 14, 1932, San Marino, California), American historian best known for the frontier thesis. The single most influential interpretation of the American past, it proposed that the distinctiveness of the United States was attributable to its long history of westering. Despite the fame of this monocausal interpretation, as the teacher and mentor of dozens of young historians, Turner insisted on a multicausal model of history, with a recognition of the interaction of politics, economics, culture, and geography.