Web" The Significance of the Frontier in American History " is a seminal essay by the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner which advanced the Frontier thesis of American history. For example, the Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. [25] Alexander Petrov noted that Russia had its own Frontier and Russians moved over centuries across Siberia all the way from the Urals to the Pacific, struggling with nature in many physical ways similar to the American move across North America - without developing the social and political characteristics noted by Turner. It was Countries in Europe were building their empires through global power and trade, and the United States did not want to be left behind. 0000033334 00000 n Wilderness Medical Society: the first dozen years. In frequent conversations with President Lincoln, among others, Seward openly spoke of his desire to obtain British Columbia, the Hawaiian Islands, portions of the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other territories. As the century came to a close, however, a variety of factors, from the closing of the American frontier to the countrys increased industrial production, led the United States to look beyond its borders. The initial work of businesses, missionaries, and reformers set the stage by the early 1890s for advocates of an expanded foreign policy and a vision of an American empire. ", Bazzi, Samuel, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Volume XLI, Sept 19, 1975, p. 2. In The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893) he asserted that the American character had been shaped by frontier life and the end of the frontier era. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Frederick Jackson Turner [26], Turner's thesis quickly became popular among intellectuals. trailer << /Size 371 /Info 316 0 R /Root 320 0 R /Prev 990075 /ID[<72a791510c44fbfc687e8adeb5826df1>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 320 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 317 0 R /Metadata 318 0 R /OpenAction [ 322 0 R /XYZ null null null ] /PageMode /UseNone /StructTreeRoot 321 0 R /PieceInfo << /MarkedPDF << /LastModified (D:20051018094202)>> >> /LastModified (D:20051018094202) /MarkInfo << /Marked true /LetterspaceFlags 0 >> >> endobj 321 0 obj << /Type /StructTreeRoot /RoleMap 52 0 R /ClassMap 55 0 R /K 244 0 R /ParentTree 270 0 R /ParentTreeNextKey 9 >> endobj 369 0 obj << /S 296 /C 444 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 370 0 R >> stream Not the constitution but free land and an abundance of natural resources open to a fit people, made the democratic type of society in America for three centuries while it occupied its empire. In Australia, "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. Lottie Moon was a Southern Baptist missionary who spent more than forty years living and working in China. 0000003508 00000 n . He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the frontier line further for U.S. colonization, and the impact this had on pioneer culture and character. ", Carpenter, Ronald H. "Frederick Jackson Turner and the rhetorical impact of the frontier thesis. 0000003731 00000 n 0000090409 00000 n They emphasized the values of individualism, empiricism, simplicity, equality, courage, discovery, independence, and naturalism in the service of democratic access, human rights, ecological balance, and the resolution of social, economic, and political issues. [23] However these other frontier societies operated in a very difficult political and economic environment that made democracy and individualism much less likely to appear and it was much more difficult to throw off a powerful royalty, standing armies, established churches and an aristocracy that owned most of the land. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. Imports over the same period also increased substantially, from $238 million in 1865 to $616 million in 1898. Their good intentions and willingness to work in difficult conditions shone through in the letters and articles they wrote from the field. 0000033105 00000 n As a new industrial United States began to emerge in the 1870s, economic interests began to lead the country toward a more expansionist foreign policy. The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. Following five more years of political wrangling, the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898, during the Spanish-American War. He was an early leader of the American Historical Association, serving as its president in 1910 and on the editorial board of the associations American Historical Review from 1910 to 1915. While certainly not all reformers espoused a racist view of intelligence and civilization, many of these reformers believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was mentally superior to others and owed the presumed less evolved populations their stewardship and social uplift-a service the British writer Rudyard Kipling termed the white mans burden.. He taught at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard University. 0000102444 00000 n 0000121679 00000 n He questioned why historians should limit themselves to choosing between a region or a frontier when the true 1 Turner, Frederick Jackson. Westward Expansion and the End of American Exceptionalism 0000019771 00000 n Omissions? [1], Turner speculated how the frontier drove American history and helped shape American culture in the 1890s. Deeply influenced by his Wisconsin childhood, Turner rejected the doctrine that U.S. institutions could be traced mainly to European origins, and he demonstrated his theories in a series of essays. Whereas Turner saw the development of American character occur just behind the frontier line, as the colonists tamed and tilled the land, Roosevelt saw it form in battles just beyond the frontier line. [14][15] The first settlers who arrived on the east coast in the 17th century acted and thought like Europeans. Many were influenced by recent scholarship on race-based intelligence and embraced the implications of social Darwinist theory that alleged inferior races were destined to poverty on account of their lower evolutionary status. We had the best possible voyage over the water-good weather, no headwinds, scarcely any rolling or pitching-in short, all that reasonable people could ask. Jackson Turner "Frontier culture: The roots and persistence of rugged individualism in the United States. American intellect owes its form to the frontier as well. Later WebFrederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" 1893 This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. . Frederick Jackson Turner Turner may have had difficulty writing books, but he was a brilliant master of the historical essay. Additionally, as late as 1890, with the U.S. Navy significantly reduced in size, a majority of vessels were classified as Old Navy, meaning a mixture of iron hulled and wholly wooden ships. By 1898, the government had succeeded in increasing the size of the U.S. Navy to an active fleet of 160 vessels, of which 114 were newly built of steel. [16], Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson argue that during the heyday of Kennedy's "New Frontier," the physicists who built Fermilab explicitly sought to recapture the excitement of the old frontier. He also commented directly on the connections he saw between the past and the present. t!p/G>Q]y wh4R}b]Z,SqCES7J.2U|?}=8lD7{A+[/SW7i|9vtB3X[gY.~0u83cRuq[v5^>Vq6Vwt1gcY vy_>rs&^*s[&=u{{ >0cGL%i&yb|&zb2tVVVAQ4fY)6^;bb/" 0i 1n eplg\tCKGHAXb-s1Z4&34z 'q9q!$`>HNq|HB. Ax4HR&6DH&A)E@o Other factors need to be taken into consideration, such as the great difference between British society from which settlers went across the Atlantic and the Russian society which sent its own pioneers across the Urals. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. WebFrederick Jackson Turner and the frontier. Lottie remained in China through famines, the Boxer Rebellion, and other hardships. States." Poor health forced his early retirement from Harvard in 1924. Her true passion, however, was to evangelize and minister, and she undertook a campaign to urge the Southern Baptist missionaries to allow women to work beyond the classroom. Furthermore, there is a need to escape the confines of the State. A treaty with Nicaragua set the early course for the future construction of a canal across Central America. Web-- Condition and ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes (December 8, 1829) / Andrew Jackson.
