Frederick Jackson Turner Thesis Summary

Frederick Jackson Turner wrote a paper in 1893 later dubbed the Turner Thesis, which argued that American progress was a direct result of emigration along a receding western frontier of the United States. Furthermore, Turner contended that the free land of the frontier explained American advancement, and its settlement was the determining factor causing the United States to develop as a nation. However, the essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in which the Turner Thesis is conveyed undervalues the significant role of minority groups in American history, it creates a frontier, where not existed, and it falsely describes the emigration of European-Americans westward as settlement, rather than more accurately, as conquest.
Turner’s ethnocentric approach does not include the Native-American indians in his classification of an American. Instead, he refers to Native-Americans and their culture as “savage” and “uncivilized,” despite their arrival on the continent some 12,000 years ago, and their establishing extraordinary and complex social systems. It cannot be denied that the development of European-American culture in the United States largely resulted in the destruction of Native-American culture. However, Turner ignores the extraordinary pre-existing civilizations of the indians, and defines American history only by the contributions of those of European-American extraction. His is a social darwinist view of American history, where the strong grew in power and cultural influence, and the weak became sufficiently insignificant, that their long history is negated. Furthermore, European-Americans during the Westward Expansion, shared the land with not only Native-Americans, but also over time, with those of African, Hispanic, and Asian, non-white descent. Some of these non-white immigrants were an important source of labor, as exemplified by the