Frontier Thesis: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|Argument by historian Frederick Jackson Turner's argument that American democracy was built by the American frontier}}

The '''Frontier Thesis''', oralso known as '''Turner's Thesis''' (alsoor '''American frontierism'''), is the argument advanced by historian [[Frederick Jackson Turner]] in 1893 that athe settlersettlement colonialand exceptionalism,colonization underof the guise ofrugged [[American democracyfrontier]], was formeddecisive byin appropriation offorming the ruggedculture of [[American frontierdemocracy]] and distinguishing it from European nations. He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the [[Frontier|frontier line]] further for U.S. colonization, and the impact this had on [[American pioneer|pioneer]] culture and character. 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.<ref>Saldaña-Portillo, María Josefina "Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States," (2016) pp. 10</ref> Turner's text follows in a long line of thought withintakes the frameworkideas ofbehind [[Manifest Destiny]] establishedand decadesuses earlier.them Heto stressedexplain inhow thisAmerican thesisculture thatcame Americanto democracybe. wasThe thefeatures primaryof result,this alongunique withAmerican culture included democracy, [[egalitarianism]], of a lack of interestuninterest in [[bourgeois]] or [[high culture]], and an ever-present potential for violence. "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. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," saidwrote Turner.<ref>{{cite book|authorlast=Turner, |first=Frederick Jackson |author-link=Frederick Jackson Turner |title=The Frontier in American History|page = 293|chapter = The Significance of the Frontier in American History|year=1920|chapter-url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/turner/}}</ref>

In thethis thesisview, the American frontier experience established the distinctively American style of liberty fromcontrasted to deferential European mindsets andstill affected by the expectations of feudalism. It erodingeroded old, dysfunctional customs. Turner's ideal of frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats, or nobles; there was no landed gentry who controlled the land or charged heavy rents and fees. Frontier landRather, waspioneers practicallywent freeand claimed territory for themselves using only loose organizations, and the takingtoughness accordingof tothe Turnerexperience gave them discipline and self-sufficiency that would be handed down over generations, even after the frontier advanced beyond the old boundaries. 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. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as ''The Frontier in American History.''<ref>Turner, ''The Frontier in American History'' (1920) chapter 1</ref>

Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. 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.<ref>Allan G. Bogue, "Frederick Jackson Turner Reconsidered," ''The History Teacher,'' (1994) 27#2 pp. 195–221 at p 195 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/494720 in JSTOR]</ref> It was not confined to academia, but rather was a popular and accepted view. For example, President [[John F. Kennedy]] described his programs in the 1960 election as a "[[New Frontier]]" to conquer, except meaning space and domestic issues. While this view remains reasonably common at a popular level, since the 1980s academic historians no longer hold to the Frontier Thesis, or only accept its most basic conclusions.

Turner begins the essay by calling to attention the fact that the western frontier line, which had defined the entirety of American history up to the 1880s, had ended. He elaborates by stating that,

The frontier line, which separates civilization from wilderness, is “the most rapid and effective Americanization” on the continent; it takes the European from across the Atlantic and shapes him into something new. American emigration west is not spurred by government incentives, but rather some “expansive"expansive power”power" inherent within them that seeks to dominate nature. Furthermore, there is a need to escape the confines of the State.

The Frontier Thesis came about at a time when the [[Germanic germ theory]] of history was popular. Proponents of the germ theory believed that political habits are determined by innate racial attributes.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ostrander |first1=Gilman |title=Turner and the Germ Theory |journal=Agricultural History |date=October 1958 |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=258–261 |jstor=3740063 }}</ref> Americans inherited such traits as adaptability and self-reliance from the Germanic peoples of Europe. According to the theory, the Germanic race appeared and evolved in the ancient Teutonic forests, endowed with a great capacity for politics and government. 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 so doing, the Anglo-Saxons and the Germanic people’speople's descendants, being exposed to a forest like their Teutonic ancestors, birthed the free political institutions that formed the foundation of American government.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ostrander |first1=Gilman |title=Turner and the Germ Theory |journal=Agricultural History |date=October 1958 |volume=32 |issue=4 |page=259 |jstor=3740063 }}</ref>

Historian and ethnologist [[Hubert Howe Bancroft]] articulated the latest iteration of the Germanic germ theory just three years before Turner’sTurner's paper in 1893. He argued that the “tide"tide of intelligence”intelligence" had always moved from east to west. According to Bancroft, the Germanic germs had spread across of all Western Europe by the Middle Ages and had reached their height. This Germanic intelligence was only halted by “civil"civil and ecclesiastical restraints”restraints" and a lack of “free"free land.”"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bancroft |first1=Hubert |title=Essays and Miscellany |url=https://archive.org/details/essaysandmiscel01bancgoog |date=1890 |location=San Francisco |page=43 |publisher=San Francisco, The History Company |edition=First}}</ref> This was Bancroft’sBancroft's explanation for the Dark Ages.

Turner’sTurner's theory of early American development, which relied on the frontier as a transformative force, starkly opposed the Bancroftian racial determinism. 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.”<ref>{{cite web |last1=Turner |first1=Frederick |title=The Frontier in American History |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm |website=Project Gutenberg |access-date=20 April 2019}}</ref> 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.

Though Turner’sTurner's view would win over the Germanic germ theory’stheory's version of Western history, the theory persisted for decades after Turner’sTurner's thesis enraptured the American Historical Association. In 1946, medieval historian [[Carl Stephenson (historian)|Carl Stephenson]] published an extended article refuting the Germanic germ theory. Evidently, the belief that free political institutions of the United States spawned in ancient Germanic forests endured well into the 1940s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stephenson |first1=Carl |title=The Problem of the Common Man in Early Medieval Europe |journal=American Historical Review |date=April 1946 |volume=51 |issue=3 |pages=419–438 |doi=10.2307/1840107 |jstor=1840107 }}</ref>

A similarly race-based interpretation of Western history also occupied the intellectual sphere in the United States before Turner. The racial warfare theory was an emerging belief in the late nineteenth century advocated by [[Theodore Roosevelt#Historian|Theodore Roosevelt]] in ''The Winning of the West''. Though Roosevelt would later accept Turner’sTurner's historiography on the West, calling Turner’sTurner's work a correction or supplementation of his own, the two certainly contradict.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Slotkin |first1=Richard |title=Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt's Myth of the Frontier |journal=American Quarterly |date=Winter 1981 |volume=33 |issue=5 |pages=608–637 |jstor=2712805 |doi=10.2307/2712805 |url=https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/div2facpubs/31 }}</ref>

Whereas Turner saw the development of American character occur just behind the frontier line, as the colonists tamed and tilled the land, Roosevelt saw it form in battles just beyond the frontier line. In the end, Turner’sTurner's view would win out among historians, which Roosevelt would accept.

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.<ref>Sharon E. Kingsland, ''The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–2000'' (2005) p. 133</ref><ref>William Coleman, "Science and Symbol in the Turner Frontier Hypothesis," ''American Historical Review'' (1966) 72#1 pp. 22–49 [https://www.jstor.org/pss/1848169 in JSTOR]</ref> The first settlers who arrived on the east coast in the 17th century acted and thought like Europeans. They adapted to the new physical, economic and political environment in certain ways—the cumulative effect of these adaptations was Americanization.<ref name="SM 2023-01/02">{{Cite magazine |last=Woodard |first=Colin |date=January–February 2023 |title=How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-myth-american-frontier-got-start-180981310/ |access-date=2023-01-06 |magazine=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}}</ref>

Historians, geographers, and social scientists have studied frontier-like conditions in other countries, with an eye on the Turnerian model. South Africa, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Australia—and even ancient Rome—had long frontiers that were also settled by pioneers.<ref>Walker D. Wyman and Clifton B. Kroeber, eds. ''Frontier in Perspective'' (1957)</ref> However these other frontier societies operated in a very difficult political and economic environment that made democracy and individualism much less likely to appear and it was much more difficult to throw off a powerful royalty, standing armies, established churches and an aristocracy that owned most of the land. The question is whether their frontiers were powerful enough to overcome conservative central forces based in the metropolis.<ref>Marvin K. Mikesell, "Comparative Studies in Frontier History," in Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., ''Turner and the Sociology of the Frontier'' (1968) pp. 152–72</ref> Each nation had quite different frontier experiences. For example, the Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. In Australia, "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Mateship and Individualism in Modern Australian Drama |first=Dennis |last=Carroll |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=34 |issue=4 |year=1982 |pages=467–80 |jstor=3206809 |doi=10.2307/3206809 }}</ref> Alexander Petrov noted that [[Russia]] had its own Frontierfrontier 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. To the contrary, [[Siberia]] - the Russian Frontier Land - became emblematic of the oppression of Czarist Absolute Monarchy. 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. 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.<ref>Alexander Petrov, "Russian History Re-Examined, Ten Years After The Dissolution Of The Soviet Union", published in Russian Moscow 2001, English translation London 2004</ref>

Though Turner’sTurner's work was massively popular in its time and for decades after, it received significant intellectual pushback in the midst of World War II.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ostrander |first1=Gilman |title=Turner and the Germ Theory |journal=Agricultural History |date=October 1958 |volume=32 |issue=4 |page=261 |jstor=3740063 }}</ref> This quote from Turner’sTurner's The Frontier in American History is arguably the most famous statement of his work and, to later historians, the most controversial:

This assertion’sassertion's racial overtones concerned historians as [[Adolf Hitler]] and the [[Blood and soil]] ideology, stoking racial and destructive enthusiasm, [[Rise of Hitler|rose to power in Germany]]. An example of this concern is in [[George Wilson Pierson]]’s influential essay on the frontier. 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 era|pre-Columbian Native Americans]] and [[Spanish colonization of the Americas|Spaniards in the New World]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pierson |first1=George |title=The Frontier and American Institutions: A Criticism of the Turner Theory |journal=New England Quarterly |date=June 1942 |volume=15 |issue=2 |page=253 |doi=10.2307/360525 |jstor=360525 }}</ref>

Despite Pierson and other scholars’ work, Turner’sTurner's influence did not end during World War II or even after the war. Indeed, his influence was felt in American classrooms until the 1970s and 80s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bogue |first1=Alan |title=Frederick Jackson Turner Reconsidered |journal=The History Teacher |date=February 1994 |volume=27 |issue=2 |page=214 |doi=10.2307/494720 |jstor=494720 }}</ref>

{{MainFurther|New Frontier}}

Subsequent critics, historians, and politicians have suggested that other 'frontiers,' such as scientific innovation, could serve similar functions in American development. Historians have noted that [[John F. Kennedy]] in the early 1960s explicitly called upon the ideas of the frontier.<ref>Max J. Skidmore, ''Presidential Performance: A Comprehensive Review'' (2004) p. 270</ref> At his acceptance speech upon securing the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] nomination for U.S. president on July 15, 1960, Kennedy called out to the American people, "I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age—to the stout in spirit, regardless of party."<ref>John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen, ''Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy 1947 to 1963'' (1991) p. 101</ref> Mathiopoulos notes that he "cultivated this resurrection of frontier ideology as a motto of [[progress]] ('getting America moving') throughout his term of office."<ref>Margarita Mathiopoulos, ''History and Progress: In Search of the European and American mind'' (1989) pp. 311–12</ref> He promoted his political platform as the "New Frontier," with a particular emphasis on space exploration and technology. Limerick points out that Kennedy assumed that "the campaigns of the Old Frontier had been successful, and morally justified."<ref>Richard White, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and James R. Grossman, ''The Frontier in American Culture'' (1994) p. 81</ref> The "frontier" metaphor thus maintained its rhetorical ties to American social progress.{{r|SM The frontier thesis is one of the most influential documents on the American west today.2023-01/02}}

[[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. They argue that, "Frontier imagery motivates Fermilab physicists, and a rhetoric remarkably similar to that of Turner helped them secure support for their research." 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. A small herd of [[American bison]] was started at the lab's founding to symbolize Fermilab's presence on the frontier of physics and its connection to the American prairie. TheThis herd, known as the [[Fermilab bison herd]], still lives on the grounds of Fermilab.<ref>{{cite web |author=Fermilab |date=30 December 2005|title=Safety and the Environment at Fermilab |url=http://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/safety/questions.html |access-date=2006-01-06}}</ref>

{{Wikisource|Author:Frederick Jackson Turner|Works by, Frederick Jackson Turner}}

{{Reflist|30em}}

* {{Cite book |last=Billington, |first=Ray Allen. ''|title=Frederick Jackson Turner: historian, scholar, teacher.'' (|publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1973), |isbn=978-0-19-501609-3 |location=New York |lccn=72091005}} {{emdash}} highly detailed scholarly biography.

* Milner,{{Cite Clydebook A., ed. ''|title=Major Problems in the History of the American West'' 2nd|publisher=Houghton edMifflin (|year=1997), |isbn=978-0-669-41580-3 |editor-last=Milner |editor-first=Clyde A. |edition=2nd |location=Boston |editor-last2=Butler |editor-first2=Anne M. |editor-last3=Lewis |editor-first3=David Rich}} {{emdash}} primary sources and essays by scholars

{{Historiography}}{{US history}}