Preview

Frederick Jackson Turner Frontier Thesis Summary

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
862 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Frederick Jackson Turner Frontier Thesis Summary
The American Frontier was a time that required influential judgment to shape the nation, involving promises of a new identity, eager to prospect. Frederick Jackson Turner was an all-time American historian who was famously known for the “Frontier Thesis”. For 40 years, he studied the Frontier Thesis, ending in 1994 when he wrote the main article, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” in 1893. Reliable, Turner's work seemed to convince others to unite with him because he offered plans that would help those who wanted to learn more about the unique character of the United States. He sought many claims involving the Americas, constituting one for the American frontier. Turner's claim was for equality. No doubt that what he shared vocally was to be …show more content…
He contributed to the American frontier by acknowledging the lack of free will and instituted prerogatives that people of all classes could be equal. This is what made the American frontier so revolutionary. Luckily, Turner's claim appeared to be true, “American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character”. This provides superior evidence that America was changed after a certain amount of time, due to Turner’s claim. Though some may have not believed in the equilibrium that Turner saw so gracefully, others may suggest otherwise. He understood that in order to gain political excellence, such things as freedom of speech and equal ballot should be applied. “It was from this experience that Turner derived his understanding of the public domain and, at the same time, his naive sense of the operation of the land system that would make the public domain

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Apush Chapter 15 Summary

    • 944 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Frederick Jackson Turner “Frontier Thesis”- Turner decisively rejected the then common belief that the European background had been primarily responsible for the characteristics of the United States…

    • 944 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Turner presented his thesis to a group of historians in 1893. The motivation for his masterwork was an American census apart of 1890, which declared that the era of the frontier was over. Turner lamented this development and formed an elaborate theory, which he called the significance of the frontier in American History. Turner believed that the frontier moved along a line. Once an area was settled a group of people moved on to the next frontier line.…

    • 191 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The American political institutions did not so much serve the frontier, as the frontier served to help shape the politics in America. We can begin to understand what Turner means as we deconstruct his thoughts on the Growth of Democracy. The ideas as to what individual liberties were at the time became convoluted as those operating in the frontier acted without government. We can see how our ideas of what it is to have a right evolve from a standard of living. On the frontier, there is a lack of supervision and democracy, leading to a lifestyle that is supported by extreme individualism. Things such as our right to property and privacy come about from a life removed from government, according to Turner. Democracy, in turn, is shaped according to this mode of operation further on down the line. As the frontier began to flourish and take shape, so did the ideas that were so deeply instilled in the area.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893.…

    • 267 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Conclusively, Robert Morgan’s central ideas in his article, “There is no true history of the Westward Expansion,” can be agreed with. History doesn’t just come from the few historical people, but the…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Turner’s thesis has had such a long impact that it is considered one of the main documents of American histography. According to Turner, it was the frontier that shaped American institutions, Romel Santiago This is not a proper citation. Romel Santiago Quotes should only be used when the writer cannot put the authors words in his/her own without losing the meaning or idea. This is not one of those times.…

    • 843 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Apush Paper (It's Fail)

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In this article, Frederick Jackson Turner believes that, in relation to his frontier thesis, the history of the United States is most influenced mainly by how Americans had assimilated the West into the culture they held. The frontier, in Turner’s stance, was where settlers had restarted civilization as a whole and begun to redevelop the conditions present further east in the United States. By doing so, the frontier is classified as being the most rapidly Americanized area in the whole nation; however, the frontier also influenced the culture of the United States by promoting individualism, American ingenuity, and a restless amount of energy. Additionally supporting his argument, Turner also pointed out the dangers of having no frontier. Turner began to question the possible outcomes from the dissipation of the frontier. Historians, on the other hand, took up a different view on the frontier and its effect on American culture. The historians believed that, instead of the frontier, other factors had influenced the history of the United States, such as slavery, the Civil War, capitalism, and slavery. Furthermore, they hotly contested Turner’s claim of “free land.” The historians declared that the land, which was inhabited by the Indians, was in all actuality not free at all as countless wars had been fought for this land, resulting in many deaths. The historians also challenged Turner’s thesis by stating how communities, corporations, and even the federal government had allowed the inhabitation of the West, instead of individualism. Therefore, Turner’s thesis and the thoughts of the historians contrasted sharply; however, both sides acquiesced to the idea that the West had influenced us to some extent.…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the early 19th century the United States faced a time of internal expansion. This internal expansion was mainly due to the Louisiana Purchase when the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory to become part of the United States. This event marked the beginning of expansion within the United States, which sparked other events that helped increase the acquisition of the Western lands of the United States. In the 1840s Manifest Destiny was a popular idea that the United States was destined to acquire the lands from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the Manifest Destiny, there was the end of The Frontier in 1890, which according to Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis” that all of the unoccupied fertile lands…

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although the frontier has fascinated Americans since the colonial era, it first came to prominence as a true ideological concept late in the nineteenth century. In 1890, Frederick Jackson Turner, sought to discover an antidote to the "germ theory" of history, which argued that all American institutions evolved from European precedents transplanted into the New World by the colonists, argued that the frontier was more important than any other single factor in shaping American history and culture. An influential address delivered before the American Historical Association, Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" suggests that the process of westward migration across the North American continent unleashed forces directly responsible for…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thesis:By the mid 1840’s migration was heading west. There was more opportunity, and known as the “frontier”. It was an empty land awaiting settlement and civilization; a place of wealth, adventure, opportunity, and untrammeled individualism…

    • 1873 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Notes on American History

    • 4172 Words
    • 17 Pages

    1. Frederick Jackson Turner was a historian who argued that the Frontier life promoted individualism, independence and social and political democracy. He said it made an important role in the creation of the American Society.…

    • 4172 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Satisfactory 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
  • Good Essays

    The borders of the frontier were wilder, to Turner, than the borders of England. The frontier basically had no borders at all; there was no…

    • 1669 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Student

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The myth of the American West has been intertwined throughout United States history. It is often perceived as a romantic story, a legacy that has ingrained itself in American culture and society. The 1890 census announced the end of the frontier, closing a chapter in American history. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner argued the importance of the frontier in shaping American politics, economy, and culture. Turner’s nationalistic view of the West created a problem, providing a mythical notion of a realistically rough arena filled with conflict and frustration. Furthermore, the thesis proposed by Turner proved to be futile for the present and future. The firmness of Turner’s thesis left it susceptible to challenges, creating a revolution of historical study of the Old West in the mid-twentieth century. Historians dedicated to the American West have branched off from Turner and have created a field that hinges on this complex area. These historians have challenged the old myths of a quaint West, seeking to expose the true nature of Western expansion. Among these historians, Patricia Nelson Limerick has developed a perception of the West based on the stories of the men…

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays