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{{Short description|Argument by historian Frederick Jackson Turner}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2023}}
The '''Frontier Thesis''', also known as '''Turner's Thesis''' or '''American frontierism''', is the argument by historian [[Frederick Jackson Turner]] in 1893 that the settlement and colonization of the rugged [[American frontier]] was decisive in forming the culture of [[American democracy]] and distinguishing it from European nations. He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the [[Frontier|frontier line]] further for U.S. colonization, and the impact this had on [[American pioneer|pioneer]] culture and character.  Turner's text takes the ideas behind [[Manifest Destiny]] and uses them to explain how American culture came to be. The features of this unique American culture included democracy, [[egalitarianism]], uninterest in [[bourgeois]] or [[high culture]], and an ever-present potential for violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the ''[[Susan Constant]]'' to Virginia, nor in the ''[[Mayflower]]'' to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," wrote Turner.<ref>{{cite book|last=Turner |first=Frederick Jackson |author-link=Frederick Jackson Turner |title=The Frontier in American History|page = 293|chapter = The Significance of the Frontier in American History|year=1920|chapter-url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/turner/}}</ref>

In this view, the frontier experience established the distinctively American style of liberty contrasted to deferential European mindsets still affected by the expectations of feudalism.  It eroded old, dysfunctional customs. Turner's ideal of frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats, or nobles; there was no landed gentry who controlled the land or charged heavy rents and fees.  Rather, pioneers went and claimed territory for themselves using only loose organizations, and the toughness of the experience gave them discipline and self-sufficiency that would be handed down over generations, even after the frontier advanced beyond the old boundaries.  The Frontier Thesis was first published in a paper entitled "[[The Significance of the Frontier in American History]]", delivered to the [[American Historical Association]] in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as ''The Frontier in American History.''<ref>Turner, ''The Frontier in American History'' (1920) chapter 1</ref>

Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories.  By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.<ref>Allan G. Bogue, "Frederick Jackson Turner Reconsidered," ''The History Teacher,'' (1994) 27#2 pp. 195–221 [195], {{JSTOR|494720}}</ref>  It was not confined to academia, but rather was a popular and accepted view.  For example, President [[John F. Kennedy]] described his programs in the 1960 election as a "[[New Frontier]]" to conquer, except meaning space and domestic issues.  While this view remains reasonably common at a popular level, since the 1980s academic historians no longer hold to the Frontier Thesis, or only accept its most basic conclusions.

==Summary==
Turner begins the essay by calling to attention the fact that the western frontier line, which had defined the entirety of American history up to the 1880s, had ended. He elaborates by stating that,

{{Blockquote
|text=Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life.
}}

According to Turner, American progress has repeatedly undergone a cyclical process on the frontier line as society has needed to redevelop with its movement westward. Everything in American history up to the 1880s somehow relates the western frontier, including slavery. In spite of this, Turner laments, the frontier has received little serious study from historians and economists.

The frontier line, which separates civilization from wilderness, is “the most rapid and effective Americanization” on the continent; it takes the European from across the Atlantic and shapes him into something new. American emigration west is not spurred by government incentives, but rather some "expansive power" inherent within them that seeks to dominate nature. Furthermore, there is a need to escape the confines of the State.

The most important aspect of the frontier to Turner is its effect on democracy. The frontier transformed [[Jeffersonian democracy]] into [[Jacksonian democracy]]. The individualism fostered by the frontier's wilderness created a national spirit complementary to democracy, as the wilderness defies control. Therefore, Andrew Jackson's brand of popular democracy was a triumph of the frontier.

Turner sets up the East and the West as opposing forces; as the West strives for freedom, the East seeks to control it. He cites British attempts to stifle western emigration during the colonial era and as an example of eastern control. Even after independence, the eastern coast of the United States sought to control the West. Religious institutions from the eastern seaboard, in particular, battled for possession of the West. The tensions between small churches as a result of this fight, Turner states, exist today because of the religious attempt to master the West.

American intellect owes its form to the frontier as well. The traits of the frontier are "coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom."

Turner concludes the essay by saying that with the end of the frontier, the first period of American history has ended.<ref>{{cite book|author=Turner, Frederick Jackson|title=The Frontier in American History|page = 293|chapter = The Significance of the Frontier in American History|year=1920|chapter-url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/turner/}}</ref>

==Intellectual context==
===Germanic germ theory===
The Frontier Thesis came about at a time when the [[Germanic germ theory]] of history was popular. Proponents of the germ theory believed that political habits are determined by innate racial attributes.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ostrander |first1=Gilman |title=Turner and the Germ Theory |journal=Agricultural History |date=October 1958 |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=258–261 |jstor=3740063 }}</ref> Americans inherited such traits as adaptability and self-reliance from the Germanic peoples of Europe. According to the theory, the Germanic race appeared and evolved in the ancient Teutonic forests, endowed with a great capacity for politics and government. Their germs were, directly and by way of England, carried to the New World where they were allowed to germinate in the North American forests. In so doing, the Anglo-Saxons and the Germanic people's descendants, being exposed to a forest like their Teutonic ancestors, birthed the free political institutions that formed the foundation of American government.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ostrander |first1=Gilman |title=Turner and the Germ Theory |journal=Agricultural History |date=October 1958 |volume=32 |issue=4 |page=259 |jstor=3740063 }}</ref>

Historian and ethnologist [[Hubert Howe Bancroft]] articulated the latest iteration of the Germanic germ theory just three years before Turner's paper in 1893. He argued that the "tide of intelligence" had always moved from east to west. According to Bancroft, the Germanic germs had spread across of all Western Europe by the Middle Ages and had reached their height. This Germanic intelligence was only halted by "civil and ecclesiastical restraints" and a lack of "free land."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bancroft |first1=Hubert |title=Essays and Miscellany |url=https://archive.org/details/essaysandmiscel01bancgoog |date=1890 |location=San Francisco |page=43 |publisher=San Francisco, The History Company |edition=1st}}</ref> This was Bancroft's explanation for the Dark Ages.

Turner's theory of early American development, which relied on the frontier as a transformative force, opposed Bancroftian racial determinism. Turner referred to the Germanic germ theory by name in his essay, claiming that “too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins.”<ref name="The Frontier in American History">{{cite web |last1=Turner |first1=Frederick |title=The Frontier in American History |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm |website=Project Gutenberg |access-date=20 April 2019}}</ref> Turner believed that historians should focus on the settlers’ struggle with the frontier as the catalyst for the creation of American character, not racial or hereditary traits.

Though Turner's view would win over the Germanic germ theory's version of Western history, the theory persisted for decades after Turner's thesis enraptured the American Historical Association. In 1946, medieval historian [[Carl Stephenson (historian)|Carl Stephenson]] published an extended article refuting the Germanic germ theory. Evidently, the belief that free political institutions of the United States spawned in ancient Germanic forests endured well into the 1940s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stephenson |first1=Carl |title=The Problem of the Common Man in Early Medieval Europe |journal=American Historical Review |date=April 1946 |volume=51 |issue=3 |pages=419–438 |doi=10.2307/1840107 |jstor=1840107 }}</ref>

===Racial warfare===
A similarly race-based interpretation of Western history also occupied the intellectual sphere in the United States before Turner. The racial warfare theory was an emerging belief in the late nineteenth century advocated by [[Theodore Roosevelt#Historian|Theodore Roosevelt]] in ''The Winning of the West''. Though Roosevelt would later accept Turner's historiography on the West, calling Turner's work a correction or supplementation of his own, the two certainly contradict.<ref name="wesscholar.wesleyan.edu">{{cite journal |last1=Slotkin |first1=Richard |title=Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt's Myth of the Frontier |journal=American Quarterly |date=Winter 1981 |volume=33 |issue=5 |pages=608–637 |jstor=2712805 |doi=10.2307/2712805 |url=https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/div2facpubs/31 }}</ref>

Roosevelt was not entirely unfounded in saying that he and Turner agreed; both Turner and Roosevelt agreed that the frontier had shaped what would become distinctly American institutions and the mysterious entity they each called “national character.” They also agreed that studying the history of the West was necessary to face [[Gilded Age|the challenges to democracy in the late 1890s]].<ref name="wesscholar.wesleyan.edu"/>

Turner and Roosevelt diverged on the exact aspect of frontier life that shaped the contemporary American. Roosevelt contended that the formation of the American character occurred not with early settlers struggling to survive while learning a foreign land, but “on the cutting edge of expansion” in the early battles with Native Americans in the New World. To Roosevelt, the journey westward was one of nonstop encounters with the “hostile races and cultures” of the New World, forcing the early colonists to defend themselves as they pressed forward. Each side, the Westerners and the native savages, struggled for mastery of the land through violence.<ref name="wesscholar.wesleyan.edu"/>

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. In the end, Turner's view would win out among historians, which Roosevelt would accept.

==Evolution==
[[File:Frederick Jackson Turner.jpg|thumb|Frederick Jackson Turner, c. 1890]]
Turner set up an evolutionary model (he had studied evolution with a leading geologist, [[Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin]]), using the time dimension of American history, and the geographical space of the land that became the United States.<ref>Sharon E. Kingsland, ''The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–2000'' (2005) p. 133</ref><ref>William Coleman, "Science and Symbol in the Turner Frontier Hypothesis," ''American Historical Review'' (1966) 72#1 pp. 22–49 {{JSTOR|1848169}}</ref> The first settlers who arrived on the east coast in the 17th century acted and thought like Europeans. They adapted to the new physical, economic and political environment in certain ways—the cumulative effect of these adaptations was Americanization.<ref name="SM 2023-01/02">{{Cite magazine |last=Woodard |first=Colin |date=January–February 2023 |title=How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-myth-american-frontier-got-start-180981310/ |access-date=2023-01-06 |magazine=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}}</ref>

Successive generations moved further inland, shifting the lines of settlement and wilderness, but preserving the essential tension between the two. European characteristics fell by the wayside and the old country's institutions (e.g., established churches, established aristocracies, standing armies, intrusive government, and highly unequal land distribution) were increasingly out of place. Every generation moved further west and became more American, more democratic, and more intolerant of hierarchy. They also became more violent, more individualistic, more distrustful of authority, less artistic, less scientific, and more dependent on ad-hoc organizations they formed themselves. In broad terms, the further west, the more American the community.<ref>Ray Allen Billington, ''America's Frontier Heritage'' (1974){{page needed|date=December 2024}}{{ISBN?}}</ref>

==Closed frontier==
Turner saw the land frontier was ending, since the [[1890 United States census|U.S. Census of 1890]] had officially stated that the American frontier had broken up.<ref>{{cite book |last1 = Porter |first1 = Robert |last2 = Gannett |first2 = Henry |last3 = Hunt |first3 = William | title='Progress of the Nation', in 'Report on Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part 1'| pages = xviii–xxxiv | publisher = Bureau of the Census | year = 1895}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Turner, Frederick Jackson|title=The Frontier in American History|page = 293|chapter = The Significance of the Frontier in American History|year=1920|chapter-url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nash |first1=Gerald D. |title=The Census of 1890 and the Closing of the Frontier |journal=The Pacific Northwest Quarterly |date=1980 |volume=71 |issue=3 |pages=98–100 |jstor=40490574 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40490574}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lang |first1=Robert E. |last2=Popper |first2=Deborah E. |last3=Popper |first3=Frank J. |title='Progress of the Nation': The Settlement History of the Enduring American Frontier |journal=Western Historical Quarterly |date=1995 |volume=26 |issue=3 |pages=289–307 |doi=10.2307/970654 |jstor=970654 |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/970654}}</ref>

By 1890, settlement in the American West had reached sufficient population density that the frontier line had disappeared; in 1890 the Census Bureau released a bulletin declaring the closing of the frontier, stating: "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. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports."<ref>{{cite book|author=Turner, Frederick Jackson|title=The Frontier in American History|page = 1|chapter = The Significance of the Frontier in American History|year=1920|chapter-url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm#Page_1}}</ref>

However, Turner argued that as the North American frontier was ending, a new frontier would have to be pursued, because the country could not maintain its self-concept of being a nation based on ideals without some kind of savage 'other' to contend with. To this end, he claimed that the rising American influence in the [[Asia-Pacific]] constituted a new frontier.<ref>{{Citation |last=Turner |first=Oliver |title=US imperial hegemony in the American Pacific |date=2020 |work=The United States in the Indo-Pacific |pages=13–28 |url=https://www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781526135025/9781526135025.00008.xml |access-date=2024-09-06 |publisher=Manchester University Press |language=en-US |isbn=978-1-5261-3502-5}}</ref>

==Comparative frontiers==
Historians, geographers, and social scientists have studied frontier-like conditions in other countries, with an eye on the Turnerian model.  South Africa, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Australia—and even ancient Rome—had long frontiers that were also settled by pioneers.<ref>Walker D. Wyman and Clifton B. Kroeber, eds. ''Frontier in Perspective'' (1957)</ref>  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. The question is whether their frontiers were powerful enough to overcome conservative central forces based in the metropolis.<ref>Marvin K. Mikesell, "Comparative Studies in Frontier History," in Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., ''Turner and the Sociology of the Frontier'' (1968) pp. 152–172</ref> Each nation had quite different frontier experiences. For example, the Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. In Australia, "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Mateship and Individualism in Modern Australian Drama |first=Dennis |last=Carroll |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=34 |issue=4 |year=1982 |pages=467–480 |jstor=3206809 |doi=10.2307/3206809 }}</ref> 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. To the contrary, [[Siberia]]—the Russian Frontier Land—became emblematic of the oppression of Czarist Absolute Monarchy. This comparison, Petrov suggests, shows that it is far from inevitable that an expanding settlement of wild land would produce the American type of cultural and political institutions. 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.<ref>Alexander Petrov, "Russian History Re-Examined, Ten Years After The Dissolution Of The Soviet Union", published in Russian Moscow 2001, English translation London 2004</ref> Mexico inherited a vast Northern Frontier from the Spanish Empire, and largely continued existing Spanish institutions in the new world such as the Mission and the Presidio with few exceptions, and lost this new territory to the Americans shortly thereafter before significant development could take place.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Weber |first=David J. |date=February 1986 |title=Turner, the Boltonians, and the Borderlands |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/i305094 |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=91 |issue=1 |pages=66–81 |doi=10.2307/1867235 |jstor=i305094}}</ref>

==Impact and influence==
Turner's thesis quickly became popular among intellectuals. It explained why the American people and American government were so different from their European counterparts. It was popular among New Dealers—Franklin D. Roosevelt and his top aides<ref>[[Henry A. Wallace]], ''New Frontiers'' (1934)</ref> thought in terms of finding new frontiers.<ref>Gerald D. Nash, "The frontier thesis: A historical perspective," ''Journal of the West'' (Oct 1995) 34#4 pp. 7–15</ref> FDR, in celebrating the third anniversary of Social Security in 1938, advised, "There is still today a frontier that remains unconquered—an America unreclaimed. This is the great, the nation-wide frontier of insecurity, of human want and fear. This is the frontier—the America—we have set ourselves to reclaim."<ref>Franklin D. Roosevelt, ''Rendezvous with Destiny: Addresses and Opinions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt'' (2005) p. 130</ref> Historians adopted it, especially in studies of the west,<ref>Ann Fabian, "The ragged edge of history: Intellectuals and the American West," ''Reviews in American History'' (Sept 1998), 26#3 pp. 575–580</ref> but also in other areas, such as the influential work of [[Alfred D. Chandler Jr.]] (1918–2007) in business history.<ref>Richard R. John, " Turner, Beard, Chandler: Progressive Historians," ''Business History Review'' (Summer 2008) 82#2 pp. 227–240</ref>

Many believed that the end of the frontier represented the beginning of a new stage in American life and that the United States must [[history of United States overseas expansion|expand overseas]]. However, others viewed this interpretation as the impetus for a new wave in the [[American Empire (term)|history of United States imperialism]]. [[William Appleman Williams]] led the [[Wisconsin School (diplomatic history)|"Wisconsin School" of diplomatic historians]] by arguing that the frontier thesis encouraged American overseas expansion, especially in Asia, during the 20th century. Williams viewed the frontier concept as a tool to promote democracy through both world wars, to endorse spending on foreign aid, and motivate action against totalitarianism.<ref>William Appleman Williams, "The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy," ''Pacific Historical Review'' (1955) 24#4 pp. 379–395. {{JSTOR|3635322}}</ref> However, Turner's work, in contrast to Roosevelt's work ''The Winning of the West'', places greater emphasis on the development of American [[Republicanism in the United States|republicanism]] than on territorial conquest. Other historians, who wanted to focus scholarship on minorities, especially Native Americans and Hispanics, started in the 1970s to criticize the frontier thesis because it did not attempt to explain the evolution of those groups.<ref>Nichols (1986)</ref> Indeed, their approach was to reject the frontier as an important process and to study the West as a region, ignoring the frontier experience east of the Mississippi River.<ref>Milner (1991)</ref>

Turner never published a major book on the frontier for which he did 40 years of research.<ref>Ray Allen Billington, "Why Some Historians Rarely Write History: A Case Study of Frederick Jackson Turner," ''The Mississippi Valley Historical Review'', Vol. 50, No. 1. (Jun., 1963), pp. 3–27. {{JSTOR|1888979}}</ref> However his ideas presented in his graduate seminars at Wisconsin and Harvard influenced many areas of [[historiography]]. In the history of religion, for example, Boles (1993) notes that William Warren Sweet at the [[University of Chicago Divinity School]] as well as Peter G. Mode (in 1930), argued that churches adapted to the characteristics of the frontier, creating new denominations such as the [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints|Mormons]], the [[Churches of Christ|Church of Christ]], the [[Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)|Disciples of Christ]], and the [[Cumberland Presbyterians]]. The frontier, they argued, shaped uniquely American institutions such as revivals, camp meetings, and itinerant preaching. This view dominated religious historiography for decades.<ref>John B. Boles, "Turner, the frontier, and the study of religion in America," ''Journal of the Early Republic'' (1993) 13#2 pp. 205–216</ref> Moos (2002) shows that the 1910s to 1940s black filmmaker and novelist [[Oscar Micheaux]] incorporated Turner's frontier thesis into his work. Micheaux promoted the West as a place where blacks could experience less institutionalized forms of racism and earn economic success through hard work and perseverance.<ref>Dan Moosd, "Reclaiming the Frontier: Oscar Micheaux as Black Turnerian," ''African American Review'' (2002) 36#3 pp. 357–381</ref>

Slatta (2001) argues that the widespread popularization of Turner's frontier thesis influenced popular histories, motion pictures, and novels, which characterize the West in terms of individualism, frontier violence, and rough justice. [[Disneyland]]'s Frontierland of the mid to late 20th century reflected the myth of rugged individualism that celebrated what was perceived to be the American heritage. The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. However, the work of historians during the 1980s–1990s, some of whom sought to bury Turner's conception of the frontier, and others who sought to spare the concept but with nuance, have done much to place Western myths in context.<ref>Richard W. Slatta, "Taking Our Myths Seriously." ''Journal of the West'' 2001 40(3): 3–5.</ref>

A modern interpretation describes it as appropriating Indigenous land by means of "American ingenuity", in the process creating a unique cultural identity different from their European ancestors.<ref>Saldaña-Portillo, María Josefina ''Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States'', (2016) p. 10 {{ISBN?}}</ref>

A 2020 study in Econometrica found empirical support for the frontier thesis, showing that frontier experience had a causal impact on individualism.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Bazzi|first1=Samuel|last2=Fiszbein|first2=Martin|last3=Gebresilasse|first3=Mesay|date=2020|title=Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of 'Rugged Individualism' in the United States|journal=Econometrica|language=en|volume=88|issue=6|pages=2329–2368|doi=10.3982/ECTA16484|issn=1468-0262|doi-access=free}}</ref>

==Early anti-Turnerian thought==
Though Turner's work was massively popular in its time and for decades after, it received significant intellectual pushback in the midst of World War II.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ostrander |first1=Gilman |title=Turner and the Germ Theory |journal=Agricultural History |date=October 1958 |volume=32 |issue=4 |page=261 |jstor=3740063 }}</ref> This quote from Turner's The Frontier in American History is arguably the most famous statement of his work and, to later historians, the most controversial:

{{Blockquote
|text=American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier. 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.<ref name="The Frontier in American History">{{cite web |last1=Turner |first1=Frederick |title=The Frontier in American History |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm |website=Project Gutenberg |access-date=20 April 2019}}</ref>
}}

This assertion's racial overtones concerned historians as [[Adolf Hitler]] and the [[Blood and soil]] ideology, stoking racial and destructive enthusiasm, [[Rise of Hitler|rose to power in Germany]]. An example of this concern is in [[George Wilson Pierson]]’s influential essay on the frontier. He asked why the Turnerian American character was limited to the [[Thirteen Colonies]] that went on to form the United States, why the frontier did not produce that same character among [[Pre-Columbian era|pre-Columbian Native Americans]] and [[Spanish colonization of the Americas|Spaniards in the New World]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pierson |first1=George |title=The Frontier and American Institutions: A Criticism of the Turner Theory |journal=New England Quarterly |date=June 1942 |volume=15 |issue=2 |page=253 |doi=10.2307/360525 |jstor=360525 }}</ref>

Despite Pierson and other scholars’ work, Turner's influence did not end during World War II or even after the war. Indeed, his influence was felt in American classrooms until the 1970s and 80s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bogue |first1=Alan |title=Frederick Jackson Turner Reconsidered |journal=The History Teacher |date=February 1994 |volume=27 |issue=2 |page=214 |doi=10.2307/494720 |jstor=494720 }}</ref>

== Criticisms ==
The Frontier Thesis has met scrutiny in the time since publication. Criticisms of the thesis include the lack of information regarding how the thesis applies to indigenous Americans, African Americans, and Women. It has been argued that the Frontier Thesis is Eurocentric and offers nothing to non-whites.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Shreves |first=Bradley |date=February 19, 2017 |title=Frontiers and Perspectives |url=https://tribalcollegejournal.org/frontiers-and-perspectives/ |journal=Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education |volume=28 |issue=3 |pages=N/A |via=}}</ref> Others postulate that the Thesis simply forgot about them, as in the case of Glenda Riley's article.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Riley |first=Glenda |date=Spring 1993 |title=Frederick Jackson Turner Overlooked the Ladies |url=http://ereserve.library.utah.edu/Annual/HIST/7620/Reeve/hist7620fred.pdf |journal=Journal of the Early Republic |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=216–230 |doi=10.2307/3124088 |jstor=3124088 }}</ref> Indigenous Peoples, Mexican/Hispanic Americans, and African Americans are encouraged by modern scholars to adopt a thesis of their own rather than look towards a Turnerian model. David J Weber's article, utilizing the Bolton Thesis, has argued that the Turner Thesis is not applicable to the Mexican Frontier and that cultures have just as much to do with political development than environment, and that isolation from the metropolis can foster despotism as much as foster liberty. Obstacles to Turnerian development in Mexican Frontier history include Geographic isolation promoting caudillismo and disunion, inarable desert and jungle, and rebellious independent indigenous peoples who were at odds with and fought Mexican people. The idea of the frontier thesis has been traded in by certain Historians for a Boltonian outlook that postulates that the culture of the colonizing people shapes the environment rather than the environment shaping the people. Other scholars and contemporary individuals postulate that the equality, unity and liberty promoted by western expansion was illusory and does not account for the Chinese Exclusion Act, or the expansion of poverty and during the Gilded Age, or the spread of slavery westward and disenfranchisement of Mexican-Americans as a result of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Washington |first=Margaret |date=Spring 1993 |title=African American History and the Frontier Thesis |url=http://ereserve.library.utah.edu/Annual/HIST/7620/Reeve/hist7620afri.pdf |journal=Journal of the Early Republic |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=230–241|doi=10.2307/3124089 |jstor=3124089 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Mondhi |first=Mondi |date=2006 |title="Connected and Unified?": A More Critical Look at Frederick Jackson Turner's America |url=https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=constructing |access-date=December 6, 2024 |website=digitalcommons.edu}}</ref> African Slave Marronage in the Southeast and Black Pioneers such as Jim Beckwourth are also ignored despite advancements in the field.<ref name=":1" />  Despite criticism, scholars still work to apply the Turnerian Frontier Thesis to Mexico and other Latin American nations.

==New frontiers==
{{Further|New Frontier}}
[[File:John F. Kennedy, White House photo portrait, looking up.jpg|thumb|left|President John F. Kennedy]]
Subsequent critics, historians, and politicians have suggested that other 'frontiers,' such as scientific innovation, could serve similar functions in American development. Historians have noted that [[John F. Kennedy]] in the early 1960s explicitly called upon the ideas of the frontier.<ref>Max J. Skidmore, ''Presidential Performance: A Comprehensive Review'' (2004) p. 270 {{ISBN?}}</ref> At his acceptance speech upon securing the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] nomination for U.S. president on July 15, 1960, Kennedy called out to the American people, "I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age—to the stout in spirit, regardless of party."<ref>John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen, ''Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy 1947 to 1963'' (1991) p. 101 {{ISBN?}}</ref> Mathiopoulos notes that he "cultivated this resurrection of frontier ideology as a motto of [[progress]] ('getting America moving') throughout his term of office."<ref>Margarita Mathiopoulos, ''History and Progress: In Search of the European and American mind'' (1989) pp. 311–312 {{ISBN?}}</ref> He promoted his political platform as the "New Frontier," with a particular emphasis on space exploration and technology. Limerick points out that Kennedy assumed that "the campaigns of the Old Frontier had been successful, and morally justified."<ref>Richard White, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and James R. Grossman, ''The Frontier in American Culture'' (1994) p. 81</ref> The frontier metaphor thus maintained its rhetorical ties to American social progress.{{r|SM 2023-01/02}}

===Fermilab===
[[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. They argue that, "Frontier imagery motivates Fermilab physicists, and a rhetoric remarkably similar to that of Turner helped them secure support for their research." Rejecting the East and West coast life styles that most scientists preferred, they selected a Chicago suburb on the prairie as the location of the lab. A small herd of [[American bison]] was started at the lab's founding to symbolize Fermilab's presence on the frontier of physics and its connection to the American prairie. This herd, known as the [[Fermilab bison herd]], still lives on the grounds of Fermilab.<ref>{{cite web |author=Fermilab |date=30 December 2005|title=Safety and the Environment at Fermilab |url=http://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/safety/questions.html |access-date=2006-01-06}}</ref>
Architecturally, The lab's designers rejected the militaristic design of [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]] and [[Brookhaven National Laboratory|Brookhaven]] as well as the academic architecture of the [[Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]] and the [[Stanford Linear Accelerator Center]]. Instead Fermilab's planners sought to return to Turnerian themes. 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. Milton Stanley Livingston, the lab's associate director, said in 1968, "The frontier of high energy and the infinitesimally small is a challenge to the mind of man. If we can reach and cross this frontier, our generations will have furnished a significant milestone in human history."<ref>[[Adrienne Kolb]] and [[Lillian Hoddeson]], "A New Frontier in the Chicago Suburbs: Settling Fermilab, 1963–1972," ''Illinois Historical Journal'' (1995) 88#1 pp. 2–18, quotes on pp. 2 and 5</ref>

===Electronic frontier===
[[John Perry Barlow]], along with [[Mitch Kapor]], promoted the idea of [[cyberspace]] (the realm of telecommunication) as an "electronic frontier" beyond the borders of any physically based government, in which freedom and self-determination could be fully realized.<ref>Barlow and Kapor (1990) "The Electronic Frontier"</ref><ref>Barlow (1996) "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" {{ISBN?}}{{page needed|date=December 2024}}</ref> Scholars analyzing the Internet have often cited Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier model.<ref>Rod Carveth, and J. Metz, "Frederick Jackson Turner and the democratization of the electronic frontier.," ''American Sociologist'' (1996) 27#1 pp. 72–100. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02691999?LI=true#page-1 online]</ref><ref>A.C. Yen, "Western Frontier or Feudal Society: Metaphors and Perceptions of Cyberspace," ''Berkeley Technology Law Journal'' (2002) 17#4 pp. 1207–1264</ref><ref>E. Brent, "Electronic communication and sociology: Looking backward, thinking ahead, careening toward the next millennium," ''American Sociologist'' 1996, 27#1 pp. 4–10</ref> Of special concern is the question whether the electronic frontier will broadly replicate the stages of development of the American land frontier.

==People referenced by Turner==
* [[Lyman Beecher]]
* [[Thomas Hart Benton (politician)|Thomas Benton]]
* [[Edmund Burke]]
* [[John C. Calhoun]]
* [[Christopher Columbus]]
* [[Francis Grund]]
* [[Hermann von Holst]]
* [[Andrew Jackson]]
* [[James Madison]]
* [[James Monroe]]
* [[John Mason Peck]]

==See also==
{{Wikisource|Author:Frederick Jackson Turner|Works by Frederick Jackson Turner}}
* [[Discovery doctrine]]
* [[Rural history]]
{{clear}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{Cite book |last=Billington |first=Ray Allen |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007356270 |title=The American Frontier |publisher=Service Center for Teachers of History |year=1958 |location=Washington, DC |lccn=58-6043}} {{endash}} 35 page essay on the historiography
* {{Cite book |title=The Frontier Thesis: Valid Interpretation of American History? |publisher=Holt, Rinehart and Winston |year=1966a |editor-last=Billington |editor-first=Ray Allen |location=New York}} {{endash}} the major attacks and defenses of Turner
* {{Cite book |last=Billington |first=Ray Allen |title=Frederick Jackson Turner: historian, scholar, teacher |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1973 |isbn=978-0-19-501609-3 |location=New York |lccn=72091005}} {{endash}}  detailed scholarly biography
* {{Cite book |last=Billington |first=Ray Allen |title=America's Frontier Heritage |publisher=Holt, Rinehart and Winston |year=1966b |location=New York |lccn=66013289}} an analysis of Turner's theories in relation to social sciences and historiography
* {{Cite book |last=Billington |first=Ray Allen |url=https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106262124 |title=Land of Savagery / Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier in the Nineteenth Century |publisher=Norton |year=1981 |location=New York |oclc=5946517 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080408150133/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106262124 |archive-date=2008-04-08}}
* {{Cite book |last=Bogue |first=Allan G. |title=Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-8061-3039-2 |location=Norman}} {{endash}} detailed scholarly biography
* {{Cite book |last=Brown |first=David S. |title=Beyond the Frontier: The Midwestern Voice in American Historical Writing |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-226-07651-5}}
*{{Cite journal |last=Coleman |first=William |year=1966 |title=Science and Symbol in the Turner Frontier Hypothesis |journal=American Historical Review |volume=72 |issue=1 |pages=22–49 |doi=10.2307/1848169 |jstor=1848169}}
* {{Cite book |last=Etulain |first=Richard W. |title=Does the frontier experience make America exceptional? |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-312-18309-7}}
* {{Cite book |title=Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians |publisher=University of Nevada Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-87417-517-2 |editor-last=Etulain |editor-first=Richard W. |location=Reno}}
* {{Cite book |url=https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=89052336 |title=Researching Western History: Topics in the Twentieth Century |publisher=University of New Mexico Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-8263-1758-2 |editor-last=Etulain |editor-first=Richard W. |location=Albuquerque |editor-last2=Nash |editor-first2=Gerald D. |url-status=dead |access-date=August 28, 2017 |archive-date=June 4, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604055329/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=89052336 }}
* {{Cite book |last1=Faragher |first1=John Mack |title=Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner:The Significance of the Frontier in American History, and Other Essays |last2=Turner |first2=Frederick Jackson |publisher=H. Holt |year=1994 |isbn=978-0-8050-3298-7}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Hine |first1=Robert V. |title=The American West: A New Interpretive History |last2=Faragher |first2=John Mack |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-300-07833-6 |location=New Haven, CT}} {{endash}} deals with events, not historiography; concise edition is {{Cite book |last1=Hine |first1=Robert V. |title=Frontiers: A Short History of the American West |last2=Faragher |first2=John Mack |year=2007 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-11710-3}} 
* {{Cite book |last=Hofstadter |first=Richard |title=The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1979 |isbn=978-0-226-34818-6 |location=Chicago}} {{endash}} interpretation of the historiography
*  {{Cite book |title=Turner and the Sociology of the Frontier |publisher=Basic Books |year=1968 |editor-last=Hofstadter |editor-first=Richard |location=New York |lccn=68022859 |editor-last2=Lipset |editor-first2=Seymour Martin}} {{endash}} 12 essays by scholars in different fields
* {{Cite journal |last=Jensen |first=Richard |year=1980 |title=On Modernizing Frederick Jackson Turner |journal=[[Western Historical Quarterly]] |volume=11 |pages=307–320 |doi=10.2307/967565 |jstor=967565}}
* {{Cite book |title=The New Encyclopedia of the American West |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-300-07088-0 |editor-last=Lamar |editor-first=Howard R. |location=New Haven, CT}} {{endash}} 1000+ pages of articles by scholars
* {{Cite book |title=Trails: Toward a New Western History |publisher=University Press of Kansas |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-7006-0500-2 |editor-last=Limerick |editor-first=Patricia Nelson |location=Lawrence |editor-last2=Milner |editor-first2=Clyde A. II |editor-last3=Rankin |editor-first3=Charles E.}}
* {{Cite book |title=Major Problems in the History of the American West |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-669-41580-3 |editor-last=Milner |editor-first=Clyde A. |edition=2nd |location=Boston |editor-last2=Butler |editor-first2=Anne M. |editor-last3=Lewis |editor-first3=David Rich}} {{endash}} primary sources and essays by scholars
* {{cite book |editor-last=Nichols |editor-first=Roger L. |title=American Frontier and Western Issues: An Historiographical Review |year=1986 |isbn=978-0-313-24356-1 |location=Westport, CT |publisher=Greenwood Press}} {{endash}} essays by 14 scholars
* {{cite book |author-link=Richard Slotkin |last=Slotkin |first=Richard |title=Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 |year=1973 |location=Middletown, CT |publisher=Wesleyan University Press |isbn=978-0-8195-4055-3}} {{endash}} complex literary reinterpretation of the frontier myth from its origins in Europe to [[Daniel Boone]]
* {{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Henry Nash |title=Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth |publisher=[[University of Virginia]] |year=1950 |isbn=978-0-674-93955-4}}
* {{Cite book |last=Turner |first=Frederick Jackson |url=https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/TURNER/contents.html |title=The Frontier of American History |publisher=Henry Holt and Co. |year=1921 |location=New York |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230317215441/https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/TURNER/contents.html |archive-date=2023-03-17 |url-status=dead |orig-year=1893}} {{endash}} original essay from 1893

{{Historiography}}{{US history}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1893 introductions]]
[[Category:Historiography of the United States]]
[[Category:History of United States expansionism]]
[[Category:History of the American West]]
[[Category:Historical controversies]]

[[de:Frederick Jackson Turner#Die Frontierthese]]