Preview

Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
257 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis
In Frederick Jackson Turners Frontier Thesis, he defines the frontier as a meeting point between savagery and civilization and wilderness that shapes people. After migrating to the frontier, the colonists are finally able to overcome it and make it their own and creates an opportunity for settlers to start fresh or stay put. Americanization occurred at the frontier when settlers began transforming it into their own version of their homelands. This concept would eventually lead to the settlement further West, as people were encourage to move through with the promise of better futures. America has always been associated with the notion of being the land of the free which created a feeling of confidence in whatever ventures may lie ahead. When

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Throughout the entirety of the history of our nation, there have been a multitude of factors that widely contributed to the success of America. Many have argued that the Frontier was the vital element, while ours may argue that immigration was the key to success. Immigration in the 19th century was imperative as immigrants from Germany, England, and Ireland became prevalent in our country. The Frontier was a thesis based on the opinions of Frederick Jackson Turner in the 1890s, who stated that the biased idea of expansion westward would provide opportunities to citizens. During the 1800s, immigration was the preeminent factor of America’s success that shaped the overall way we live today due to the influence on industrial growth and the impact…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The American West was viewed as a land of opportunity and success for many people of different racial and financial backgrounds during the time between 1865 to 1890. However, the extent of success from the opportunity varied on multiple factors. For the homesteader, opportunity was based upon good weather conditions and hard work but mostly only large scale corporations succeeded. Mining provided little for the average miner; large mining industries profited instead.. At some point West was the land of opportunity and at the same time it was not a land of opportunity for Native American Indians and Minorities.…

    • 366 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to Turner, the hardships required to perpetuate social evolution along the frontier had shaped the political process in America at the time. His theory, being from a Westerner’s perspective, did not receive much acknowledgment at the time. However, many thinkers of this era were of a post Darwinism understanding. Political and socioeconomic evolutions are due in part to the settler mindset that is deeply instilled into the western frontier of America. To Turner, America imposes a Composite nationality. The people who inhabited the frontier early on were primarily servants. This promoted a population of people from various cultures around the world. Not only did this promote individualism, but it also allowed communities to redefine themselves and become something new. Turner believes that it is from here, and not European influence, that we found our economic and political voice as a nation.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As a country full of diversity one can assume that we have learned cultural differences from other countries that we have interacted with. Frederick Jackson Turner discusses this idea in his excerpts from the “Turner Thesis” written on July 12, 1893. He touches on this idea when he speaks about how America adapted and learned from the cultures in which it conquered as the country moved in westward expansion. Such as when Americans learned from the Natives and began to use horseback for war tactics. This gave the Americans an advantage and allowed them to continue advancing forward. With each new opponent they faced, they would gather new ways to fight and this allowed them to evolve as the strongest military. By using these new ways, they also…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    AMH 2010 exam 1 notes

    • 2006 Words
    • 8 Pages

    As the next generation of colonists moved westward to find new, fertile land, they encountered plentiful acreage at cheap prices. Frontier families lived with the bare necessities acquired through subsistence farming, created a widely dispersed society of equals, and were subjected to a disorganized existence without organized law and order, community institutions, or organized churches. Thus, frontier communities became volatile and violent places where deep divisions festered between its residents and those of the eastern seaboard.…

    • 2006 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Differences in expansion of early United States history compared to the late 19th and early 20th century was reason for expansion. After expanding all the way to California, Americans became paranoid; the 1890 census said that there was no longer frontier, which clashed with Frederick J. Turner's idea that America's success had been directly linked to its ability to expand west into frontier, (as in "The Significance of the Frontier in America"), this gave way to the idea of looking…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    I agree with that the measures Nat Turner took were extreme, but at the time it was difficult for a Black man or women to voice their opinions freely without the fear of being brutally attacked or killed. That's why I also disagree, I felt that to voice Turner's ideals he could only resort to violence, to prove that they are not weak or of lesser value compared to the whites. Although his attempt ended up with more black causalities then whites, it made a statement to the whites and potential other salves. He could of unintentionally struck hope in other slaves giving them a peace of mind knowing that fellow slaves were fighting for their freedom and potentially sparking more revolts against the…

    • 125 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, many Americans considered the lands west of the Mississippi as the "Great American Desert" and unfit for civilization. However, by the mid-1840s, migrants from the eastern United States transformed this vast desert into a fruitful land awaiting settlement and civilization known as the frontier. The development of the frontier was the result of the mass population of the many different regions of the far West. These regions were diverse in climate as well as in natural resources and, as a result, attracted different types of settlers (Doc I). The wide-ranging natural landscape of the far West offered promising lifestyles to those who chose the occupations of farmers,…

    • 867 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frederick Cody Thesis

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages

    William Frederick Cody, also known as Buffalo Bill, was born on February 26, 1846 in Scott County, Iowa. He was a well known buffalo hunter, U.S. Army scout, Pony Express Rider, Indian fighter, and actor. He became one of the world’s first global celebrities from his Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Shortly after he was born, his father, Isaac Cody, moved his whole family to their farm near LeClaire, Iowa. In 1857 his father was stabbed while giving an antislavery speech. As a result, Cody began working at age of nine for a freight company as a horseman. That same year, Cody was “Celebrated as the youngest Indian fighter on the Great Plains” after he fought a Native American who attacked the cattle where he was working (Certo).…

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Turner Thesis is a significant article that was presented in 1893 to inform why the American frontier is important to the development of American history. Frederick Jackson Turner, point of view on America, is that the U.S. is exceptional from other countries due to the fact of westward expansion. For example, he believes the frontier gave new opportunities for the U.S. to improved and become more superior, as a result of the manifest destiny and American settlers restarting from the beginning. In addition, he implies that the free land, cause Americans to evolve and adapt to the new environment, and therefore a better democracy, individualism, civilized, and society was formed. He states that expanding to the west, American settlers became…

    • 129 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Turner’s thesis discussed the significance of the frontier and how it embodied what America was all about at the time; he argued that the frontier brought out raw survival instincts and embellished nationalism, independence, and democracy. Turner’s new viewpoint was revolutionary for its time because most historians thought with an Atlantic Coast bias, believing that the East, especially New England, was the true heart of American culture and that that culture traced back to English political institutions. Turner, a rural Wisconsin native, had been unaffected by this general bias and strongly believed that the narrow perspective of 19th century Eastern-American historians neglected the broader contours of social, cultural, and economic history that had shaped American…

    • 2324 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    IAH 201 paper 1

    • 1173 Words
    • 3 Pages

    America first took a step towards greater world involvement due to 1. The effects of the frontier on the American spirit. In 1893 Fredrick Jackson Turner delivered the idea of "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," to a gathering of historians. According to Turner, the frontier was "the line of most rapid Americanization."1 The idea of the frontier as explained by Turner looks at the constant movement westward by the European's who came to America. It speaks of the time from the first arrival until the time when there is no longer a frontier line, and how the nation developed as the movement westward continued. "Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe, not simply the development of Germanic germs, any more than the first phenomenon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact is, that here is a new product that is American. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American."2 As the Americans ventured westward each new move past a frontier was developed on trials of the one before it. Whereas most of the time expansion would be met by other people whom have conquered that land, this was not the case for America, which provided it with a unique opportunity. It was then brought back to the primitive stage as each frontier was advanced upon, giving rise to new forms of government and institutions. The…

    • 1173 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Historians are seen as individuals telling the common folks of the world, in this case the common folk of the United States, the events of the past. Historians do not just regurgitate facts, they create a narrative; mostly made up of facts, but also from their perspective. What individuals do not realize is historians do not miraculously know the information; they must research the information from evidence, from a certain period, making historians a type of detective. A detective investigates evidence to decipher the events that took place; just like a historian. In Jackson’s Frontier-and Turner’s, each historians individual perspective, and their present circumstances, had an impact on the evidence they used for their research, and the outlook they had on the evidence about Andrew Jackson and what kind of man he was seen as.…

    • 570 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    American Identity Dbq

    • 2153 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Through the established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and the old, dysfunctional customs of the mother country, treaties with foreign nations and native tribes; political compromise; military conquest; establishment of law and order; the building of farms, ranches, and towns; the marking of trails and digging of mines; and the pulling in of great migrations of foreigners, freedom, voting, citizenship, blacks, whites, war within, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states, created the evolution of the american identity and a prosperous nation full of equal opportunity. But this Evolution of the american identity of the frontier isn't over yet, John F Kennedy once said, that “there is still today a frontier that remains unconquered—an America unreclaimed. This is the great, the nation-wide frontier of insecurity, of human want and fear. This is the frontier—the America—we have set ourselves to reclaim.” The frontier is evolving everyday from scientific innovation to today Electronic frontier. Americans never stop moving…

    • 2153 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    women's frontier thesis

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages

    England, a small and familiar place for many, was a community with very strict rules and beliefs. The Church of England was the dominant power over the country, and not everyone was happy with this dictatorship. Once the land in America was founded, Puritans and other men searching for freedom gathered and sailed across the sea to the new land. America became a “melting pot” full of various traditions, cultures, and beliefs from England as well as new “American” ideas. This process took time and involved adapting and hard work to civilize the land. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner discussed and wrote about the frontier and how it shaped American characteristics. He talked about the steps the Europeans had to take to transform the environment into one with reasonable laws and into one with more of a community rather than mere wilderness. “As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics. (Turner 153)”1This quote talks about the frontier having characteristics from the old country, England, as well as new developed ones from America. Turner’s argument is based off the European men arriving in American and having to adapt to the Indian lifestyle which consisted of hunting and of living off the land. Later the Europeans introduced their own more civilized ideas to further the society and build up the area as a whole. Turner only talked about the male figures shaping America and completely disregarded women and their roles in the community. Although Turner’s “frontier thesis” involving males shaping America became a very prominent idea, Elizabeth Ashbridge and Mary Rowlandson, two women, wrote about their completely different experiences. Elizabeth Ashbridge and Mary Rowlandson both represent victims of slavery and viewed the frontier as a place of fear, confusion,…

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays