Westward Expansion Summary

Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, by Ray Allen Billington, with the collaboration of James Blaine Hedges (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company,
1949, Fourth Edition, 1974, 840 pp., maps, tables, bibliography, index.)

As the preface to the first edition states, Westward Expansion attempts to follow the pattern that Frederick Jackson Turner might have used had he ever compressed his researches on the American frontier within one volume. Dr. Billington makes no pretense of original scholarship except in limited instances. Instead a synthesis of the voluminous writings inspired by Turner's original essays is presented. In that respect, the book is highly successful. Dr. Billington masterfully weaves these
Thus, the most Dr. Billington concedes is a modification of Turner, not a refutation. According to Dr. Billington, the frontier was a vast westward moving zone, contiguous to the populated portions of the country, peopled by a variety of self-aggrandizing individuals intent on exploiting the natural resources of their respective zone. The expanding west was an area of seemingly unlimited resources and opportunities where people could improve their lot through trapping, trading, ranching, mining, speculating, and farming, to name but a few of the opportunities available. The frontier appealed to the restless, the adventurous, to people who were willing to gamble against nature for the chance of wealth and improvement. Frontiersmen were inventive, wasteful, mobile, and nationalistic. They believed in democracy and scorned tradition. These psychological "types" interacted with the physical environment to create a unique social environment that existed in the newer settlements. This social environment allowed for a flexible rise in social standing of the individual, just as the low man-land ratio allowed
Self rule was the norm under such circumstances militating against control by the few. These attitudes inevitably spread eastward, affecting the entire country. Generally speaking, the book was well received during its time. The two book reviews attached, one published in the New York Times and authored by Dr. Allan
Nevins, professor of American history at Columbia University, and the other published in the Saturday Review of Literature and authored by Dr. John Hicks, professor of history at the University of California, attest to its favorable reception. For the most part I agree with the conclusions and statements of both reviews although I view the book as more detached than Dr. Nevins does and am not as excited by Dr. Billington's style as Dr. Hicks appears. For example, when discussing the impact of technology on the arid Great Plains,
Dr. Billington sets forth in a typically prosaic manner: "Similar improvements speeded planting. The spring-tooth harrow, perfected by a
Michigan mechanic in 1869, proved more usable on prairie soils than disk and spike-tooth implements, for its flexible teeth bounced over obstacles and automatically dislodged