"The Significance of the Frontier in American History" is a seminal essay by the American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

Frederick Jackson Turner Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian during the early 20th century, based at the University of Wisconsin until 1910, and then Harvard University. He was known primarily for his frontier thes ...

which advanced the Frontier Thesis of

American history The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of Settlement of the Americas, the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Native American cultures in the United States, Numerous indigenous cultures formed ...

. It was presented to a special meeting of the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...

at the

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

in 1893, and published later that year first in ''Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin'', then in the ''Annual Report of the American Historical Association''. It has been subsequently reprinted and anthologized many times, and was incorporated into Turner's 1920 book, ''The Frontier in American History'', as Chapter I. The essay summarizes Turner's views on how the idea of the

American frontier The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of United States territorial acquisitions, American expansion in mainland North Amer ...

shaped the American character in terms of democracy and violence. He stresses how the availability of very large amounts of nearly free farm land built agriculture, pulled ambitious families to the western frontier, and created an ethos of unlimited opportunity. The frontier helped shape individualism and opposition to governmental control. Turner speculated how the frontier drove American history and helped shape American culture in the 1890s. Turner reflects on the past to illustrate his point by noting human fascination with the frontier and how expansion to the

American West The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...

changed American views on its culture. The essay had a major impact on historiography for decades, with serious criticism emerging in the 1940s. In the 1980s a new approach to the Western U.S. appeared which was much more negative. Australian historian Brett Bowden has explored how the concept of "frontier" has been very widely used in both the scholarly and the popular literature to denote challenging new forces. By contrast, medievalist Nora Berend asked: "What good is a concept not very clearly formulated a hundred years ago—Turner’s frontier was an elastic term that had no sharp definition—and severely criticised ever since?"

Opposition to the Turner Thesis

In 1942, in "The Frontier and American Institutions: A Criticism of the Turner Thesis," Professor

George Wilson Pierson George Wilson Pierson (October 22, 1904 – October 12, 1993) was an American academic, historian, author and Larned Professor of History at Yale University. He was the first official historian of the university.Kennedy, Randy "George Pierson, 88 ...

debated the validity of the Turner thesis, stating that many factors influenced American culture besides the looming frontier. Although he respected Turner, Pierson strongly argues his point by looking beyond the frontier and acknowledging other factors in American development. The Turner Thesis was also critiqued by

Patricia Nelson Limerick Patricia Nelson Limerick (born May 17, 1951) is an American historian, author, lecturer and teacher, considered to be one of the leading historians of the American West. Early life and education Limerick is the daughter of Grant and Patricia Ne ...

in her 1987 book, ''The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West''. Limerick asserts the notion of a "New Western History" in which the American West is treated as a place and not a process of finite expansion. Limerick pushes for a continuation of study within the historical and social atmosphere of the

, which she believes did not end in 1890, but rather continues on to this very day. Urban historian Richard C. Wade challenged the Frontier Thesis in his first asset, ''The Urban Frontier'' (1959), asserting that western cities such as

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

, and

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

, not the farmer pioneers, were the catalysts for western expansion. Glenda Riley has argued that Turner's thesis ignored women. She argues that his context and upbringing led him to ignore the female portion of society, which directly led to the frontier becoming an exclusively male phenomenon.Riley, Glenda. "Frederick Jackson Turner Overlooked the Ladies." ''Journal of the Early Republic'' 13.2 (1993): 216–30. The exclusion of women is one of the central debates around his work, particularly referred to by New Western Historians.

References

External links

*
The Frontier in American History
' at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

*
E-book version of ''The Frontier in American History''
* Extra Census Bulletin No. 2 (1891) Distribution of Population According to Density: 1890 {{DEFAULTSORT:Significance of the Frontier in American History History books about the American Old West 1893 essays

Opposition to the Turner Thesis

References

Further reading

Primary sources

External links