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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.
The frontier, they argued, created uniquely American institutions such as revivals, camp meetings, and itinerant preaching. This opinion dominated religious historiography for decades. [17] Moos (2002) says that the 1910s to 1940s black filmmaker and novelist Oscar Micheaux incorporated Turner's frontier thesis into his work. Micheaux promoted ...
"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. Turner's thesis had a significant impact on how people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries understood American identity, character, and national growth.
In his "Frontier Thesis" (1893), Turner theorized that the frontier was a process that transformed Europeans into a new people, the Americans, whose values focused on equality, democracy, and optimism, as well as individualism, self-reliance, and even violence.
While Turner did not create the myth of the frontier, he gave voice to it, and his frontier thesis was a major contribution to the general acceptance of the myth by scholars in the twentieth century. The focus on the West, and particularly the idealized concept of the frontier, placed those areas as foundational for American identity.
In line with historian Frederick Jackson Turner's influential Frontier Thesis, they argue that the American frontier allowed individualism to flourish as pioneers adopted democracy and social equality, and shed centuries-old European institutions such as royalty, standing armies, established churches, and a landed aristocracy that owned most of ...
It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," said Turner. [26] In Turner's thesis, the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats ...
His parents were John Smith and Dorothy Kinsey (Turner) Main. He married Gloria Jean Lund and they had three children, Jackson Turner Main Jr., Eifiona Llewelyn Main and Judson Kempton Main. Main was the grandson of Frederick Jackson Turner, [1] who was widely known for his acclaimed and sometimes controversial work Frontier Thesis. [2]