The West - Frederick Jackson Turner The Frontier Thesis

I said yesterday that it was the West that gave America a reputation for being rugged.  Historian Frederick Jackson Turner points out that moving West was the most IMPORTANT factor in American history.  He claimed that “the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.”  For Turner, the deeper significance of the frontier lay in the effects of this social recapitulation on the American character. "The frontier," he claimed, "is the line of most rapid Americanization.” What does this previous sentence mean? 

It means that the West was a place where easterners and Europeans experienced a return to a time before civilization.  Frontier communities underwent an evolution which recapitulated the development of civilization itself, tracing the path from hunter to trader to farmer to town.  In that process the frontier successfully emerged and vanished (Frontier is said to be closed around 1890) - a special American character was forged, marked by fierce individualism, pragmatism, and egalitarianism.  Thus transforming America’s people.  Americans built their commitment to democracy, escaped the perils of class conflict, and overran a continent.

Even though you’ve just started researching the West do you thing he has a point?  Do you agree or disagree?  Has anything else in history defined who we are more or just as much?  Also what can you compare the West to in today’s world?


          Cronon, William. "Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson

               Turner."  The Western Historical Quarterly 18.2 (1987): 157-76. JSTOR - Western

               History Association 8, 8 Oct . 2011. Web. 4 Nov. 2014

        "Frederick Jackson Turner." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.