TURNERS THESIS

The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian in that American democracy was formed by the.

The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. Turner's essay reached triumphalist heights in his belief that the promotion of individualistic democracy was the most important effect of the frontier. Most migrant wagon trains, for example, were composed of extended kinship networks. Mode in , argued that churches adapted to the characteristics of the frontier, creating new denominations such as the Mormons , the Church of Christ , the Disciples of Christ , and the Cumberland Presbyterians. It was popular among New Dealers—Franklin Roosevelt and his top aides [19] thought in terms of finding new . Instead 's planners sought to return to Turnerian themes. In Australia, "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism. In Turner's conception, our region, the Great Plains, is important because it was the last frontier. European characteristics fell by the wayside and the old country's institutions e. For a scholar of such wide influence, Turner wrote relatively few books. But even within Western and frontier history, a growing body of historians has contested Turner's approach. The particular environmental situation to which these individuals were subjected directly affected their economic and social development. Women and minorities are not a part of his pretty picture. For many women, Asians, Mexicans who suddenly found themselves residents of the United States, and, of course, Indians, the West was no promised land. The numerous Indian wars provoked by American expansion belie Turner's argument that the American "free land" frontier was a sharp contrast with European nations' borders with other states. Wikipedia is a major presence on the electronic frontier, and the Wikipedia editors have been explicitly compared to the pioneers of Turner's in terms of their youth, aggressiveness, boldness, equalitarianism and rejection of limitations. Europeans had long been trapped in the suffocating confines of the final stage, which had caused corruption and staleness both in Europe and in the eastern United States, where European traditions had continued to reign. Individualism was king on the frontier. Even after independence, the eastern coast of the United States sought to control the West. Nevertheless, he made it clear that his historical writing was shaped by a contemporary agenda. 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. American intellect owes its form to the frontier as well. Milner II, and Charles E. He most cogently articulated this idea in "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," which he first delivered to a gathering of historians in at Chicago, then the site of the World's Columbian Exposition, an enormous fair to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus' voyage. Moreover, as the 19th century wore on, the role of the federal government and large corporations grew increasingly important.