"The Significance of the Frontier in American History", Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893

Résumé du document

Towards the end of the 19th century, the United State grew in puissance. Americans tried to set themselves apart from the European influence. Indeed the need for identity emerged as an important milestone especially since reconstruction had proved to be a failure. It is also the gilded age period which provided the United States with a changed and a new assurance. Further, it was in this period of questioning, that the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner made a remarkable difference. Frederick Jackson Turner, delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an essay entitled ?The Significance of the Frontier in American History.' In his essay, he has explained that the development in the United States was due to the Frontier and not due to the estranged European influence.

Extraits

[...] He would by this mean justify the massacres with the seek for democracy and American identity. Frederick Jackson Turner answered to the Americans' need of identity with his frontier thesis. And as the American expansion came to an end as the census of 1890 stated, his thesis inspired the United-States imperialism period with the colonial ideology (The White Man's burden). Indeed the frontier was the source of power of the United-States, so the expansion of the United-States should continue but outside the country. [...]

[...] In fact, from the point of view of Tuner; the Frontier gave birth to American “distinctiveness” and “exceptionalism”. This "perennial rebirth, this expansion westward with its new opportunities and its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society” gave birth to the democracy in the United States. II. The frontier or the promotion of the democracy The rise of individualism Turner thought that individualism stemmed from the Frontier and led to democracy in the United State. When civilian people, coming from the Atlantic coast, settled in the Great West their institutions decline to kind of primitive organisation based on the family”. [...]

[...] Indeed according to Turner, the first settlers who landed in America thought and acted like Europeans. But they had to deal with a very new situation that is to say new fertile but wild territories. They adapt their way of life to the environment and civilization were settled. Then the settlers decided to go beyond the frontier (that is to say the meeting point between savagery and civilization) and once again they had to face an hostile land for settling. [...]

[...] In fact development in Europe occurred in a limited area and in the United State, development not only occurred in a limited area (Atlantic coast) but also in an expansion process. This difference furnished "the forces dominating the American character". But in this theory, Turner implied that the great West was not colonized but in fact he forgot the Native Americans and the French and Spanish Settlements. But this might be explained by the fact that there was a general belief that the gilded age gave them superiority over the uncivilized people. [...]

[...] A justification for the American expansion But beyond the democratisation and distinctiveness gave by the Frontier, Turner justified the American expansion through this text. Indeed it appeared throughout the text, that without the Frontier, development was no more possible. If there was not a perpetual return to primitive conditions when settling in new territories then distinctiveness and individualism were not possible and at the end the development of democracy was endanger. Expansion was a necessary step for the development of the United State. [...]