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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 essay summarizes Turner's views on how the idea of the American frontier shaped the American character in terms of democracy and violence. He stresses how the availability of very large amounts of nearly free farmland built agriculture, pulled ambitious families to the western frontier and created an ethos of unlimited opportunity.
His The Frontier in American History (1920) was a collection of older essays. As a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin from 1890 to 1910 and Harvard from 1910 to 1922, Turner trained scores of disciples who, in turn, dominated American history programs throughout the country.
The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few ...
In the United States, the concept of the frontier first became significant in 1893 when Frederick Jackson Turner used the term as a model for understanding American culture in his essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", read before the American Historical Association in Chicago during the World's Columbian Exhibition (Chicago World's Fair).
The frontier eventually closes and at the end of his essay, Turner reminisces about what the frontier has done for America. Certain qualities such as strength, quickness of the "grasp of material things", and freedom came from the frontier, which defined the American.
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The American frontier, also known as the "Old West", popularly known as the "Wild West", encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few ...