An Emerging Empire Frederick Jackson Turner ideologies was that America has created distinctive politics, governments, industrial society, civilization, and division of labor. Not only this, the frontier line is always expanding, building and creating American society over and over again along the line. This expansion and resources in the west help supply the forces dominating America’s distinctive character. He argues that the Great West shaped the history of the American nation, not the Atlantic Coast. The reason for this is because, when man came to this new land, the wilderness powers over the colonist. The land have new resources never to be seen in his home country. He has to find food, shelter, and clothing. His needs puts him in a situation where he is wearing a hunting shirt and moccasins, not a suit that he used to wear in his home country. He is eating corn, but not eating bread. He is living in a log cabin, rather than a nice boarded house. The colonist has to grow accustomed to the environment and build with the resources he has on the American land to make up a new civilization that will have distinctive American characteristics. Turner’s argument is his frontier thesis, which argues that the geographical frontier in …show more content…
A theory which applied natural selection from Charles Darwin and Spencer’s sociological theories together. Herbert Spencer argued that certain individuals or social groups achieve advantages over others because of genetic superiority. This theory helped justify imperialism, racism, and laissez faire policies. This theory claimed that groups or individuals at the top of the social system belonged there because of their genetic superiority. It is because they have competed with other groups and have adapted well, is the sole reason why they belong in the top of the system. If something were to intervene, such as social and political factors, it would erode the foundation of the natural
The West is a very big part of American culture, and while the myth of the West is much more enticing than the reality of the west, it is no doubt a very big part of America. We’re constantly growing up playing games surrounded by the West such as cowboys and Indians and we’re watching movies that depict the cowboy to be a romanticized hero who constantly saves dames in saloons and rides off into the sunset. However, the characters of the West weren’t the only things that helped the development of America; many inventions were a part of the development of the West and helped it flourish into a thriving community. Barbed wire, the McCormick reaper and railroads—for example—were a large part of the development in the West—from helping to define claimed land boundaries, agricultural development and competition, and even growth of the West.
In Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, he talked about how he thought the West was where true American character was formed and that the West was the birthplace of democracy. However, in my perspective I don’t only feel that Turner was inaccurate in his analysis, but also very racist and selfish. I believe that Turner wanted to justify why taking over the West would be so necessary and beneficial to Americans. He stated several things in his essay that were obviously undermined by many primary sources in Hollitz’s book. At the time Americans took on the ideology of Manifest Destiny, which basically was the belief that Americans were destined to expand from coast to coast in North America despite the fact that there was people already occupying land on
The Frontier Thesis has been very influential in people’s understanding of American values, government and culture until fairly recently. Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the frontier thesis in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. He argues that expansion of society at the frontier is what explains America’s individuality and ruggedness. Furthermore, he argues that the communitarian values experienced on the frontier carry over to America’s unique perspective on democracy. This idea has been pervasive in studies of American History until fairly recently when it has come under scrutiny for numerous reasons. In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, William Cronon argues that many scholars, Turner included, fall victim to the false notion that a pristine, untouched wilderness existed before European intervention. Turner’s argument does indeed rely on the idea of pristine wilderness, especially because he fails to notice the serious impact that Native Americans had on the landscape of the Americas before Europeans set foot in America.
This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states
According to the thesis of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the frontier changed America. Americans, from the earliest settlement, were always on the frontier, for they were always expanding to the west. It was Manifest Destiny; spreading American culture westward was so apparent and so powerful that it couldn’t be stopped. Turner’s Frontier Theory says that this continuous exposure to the frontier has shaped the American character. The frontier made the American settlers revert back to the primitive, stripping them from their European culture. They then created something brand new; it’s what we know today as the American character. Turner argues that we, as a culture, are a product of the frontier. The uniquely American personality includes such traits as individualism, futuristic, democratic, aggressiveness, inquisitiveness, materialistic, expedite, pragmatic, and optimistic. And perhaps what exemplifies this American personality the most is the story of the Donner Party.
However, it is relevant that we understand the ripple effect that Turner’s thesis had on the world. Soon to be President had already written three of the fourteen four volumes of Winning the West, prior to reading the pamphlet. The concern I see that effects our society is that Turner was able through a speech able to not on influence but encourage Roosevelt to continue to write more in regards to Winning the Race in the West. The impact of Turner’s ideas and Roosevelt’s rise to presidency are a great indication of how significant the thesis was through the “frontiers” which included the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and the Philippine-American War. During both of these engagements, American soldiers were accused and found guilty of brutally beating, killing and even raping women and men in both regions. The tolerance of “manifest destiny” was still alive and well as Roosevelt then Governor of the Philippines would soon take over as President of the United States in 1904. Although this was a negative impact, this is still significant to our history even
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
...or wider opportunities. Even the safety valve theory has an element of truth when applied to ambitious young men of the professional class who had a better chance of making it big much quicker in the West than in the East. Without the open frontier, moreover, there would have been a much larger migration of young people from the farms to the cities; thus the frontier helped indirectly to check the exploitation of the working class by preventing it from expanding too rapidly. The Westward Expansion also weakened state and regional loyalties and promoted national unity due to its inherent mobility. Most westerners thought of themselves primarily as Americans, and wanted strong national government with broad powers for developing transportation and promoting the general welfare. The most significant feature of the Westward Expansion was that the pioneers took with them the essential institutions of their civilization. Thus we must look upon the Westward Expansion as one of the factors in the shaping of the American civilization but not the only one. AKSHARA PRADHAN Roll No. 385 Tute. Grp.- Tuesday, 1st Pd.
Frederick Jackson Turner claimed that the frontier made the United States unique. Among other reasons, it served as a "safety valve" for those in the East. Do you believe him to be correct? Defend your answer.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
Turner's interpretation of the frontier played a decisive role in shaping american identity. The crucial element Turner argue that transformed the europeans to americans was the process of settling the frontier.He theorized that the frontier was a process that transformed Europeans into a new people, the Americans.Although there were people that disagreed with the thesis stating that many factors influenced american culture besides the looming frontier. The significance of the frontier was that as pioneers moved into the frontier zone they were changed by the encounter. Many historians proposed that modern america was an outgrowth of european civilization in a new land. Turner opposed this popular view by arguing that the geographical frontier
Social Darwinism was a set of theories developed by various people during the 19th century. It was the adaptation of Darwin theory of evolution applied to human social behavior and ability to survive compared to other human beings. It can now easily be seen that these theories could be used to justify racial discrimination and they have been used in this way throughout history. This misconception of Darwin’s theories popularized by various academics in the west gave western nations to treat other nations badly. People like French man Joseph Gobineau had already come up with race supremacy ideas before Darwin’s theories of evolution had started to become a popular idea. He took his ideas from what he was seeing around him at the time not looking at other factors as to why people from these other races had not succeeded in the same way his own race had. Similar ideas again were backed up in the French translation of Darwin’s The Origin of Species as an introduction added by the translator Clemence Royer applied some of Darwin’s ideas to the different human races. Herbert Spencer probably the most popular Social Darwinists believed that the fight between races was inevitable and time would tell who came out on top. These race supremacy ideas were put into use by colonial Britain which showed that many ‘well educated’ and like wise people in the west believed that social evolution had made them a more advanced race.
Turner’s essay is motivated essentially by the fact that the frontier is disappearing. The 1890 Census explicitly states that “Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line….[the frontier’s extent] can not therefore have a place in the census reports”. Turner’s essay is sparked by this statement because he does not want the frontier to disappear, since he believes that the frontier has given so much to the American culture and contributed so much to American history, and he believes
Patricia Nelson Limerick describes the frontier as being a place of where racial tension predominately exists. In her essay, “The Frontier as a Place of Ethnic and Religion Conflict,” Limerick says that the frontier wasn’t the place where everyone got to escape from their problems from previous locations before; instead she suggested that it was the place in which we all met. The frontier gave many the opportunities to find a better life from all over the world. But because this chance for a new life attracted millions of people from different countries across the seas, the United States experienced an influx of immigrants. Since the east was already preoccupied by settlers, the west was available to new settlement and that was where many people went. Once in the western frontier, it was no longer just about blacks and whites. Racial tension rose and many different races and ethnic groups soon experienced discrimination and violence based on their race, and beliefs instead of a since of freedom at the western frontier.
The concept of Social Darwinism was a widely accepted theory in the nineteenth-century. Various intellectual, and political figures from each side of the political spectrum grasped the theory and interpreted it in various ways. In this paper, we will discuss three different nineteenth-century thinkers and their conception of Social Darwinism. The conservative, Heinrich von Treitschke, and liberal Herbert Spencer both gave arguments on the usefulness of competition between people on a global scale. The anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, refuted the belief of constant competition among members of the same species and emphasized mutual aid.