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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 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.
Turner's essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" included ideas that formed the frontier thesis. In it, Turner argued that the moving western frontier exerted a strong influence on American democracy and the American character from the colonial era until 1890. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism.
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.
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.
Jackson Turner Main (1917–2003) was an American professor, historian and author who researched and wrote about the colonial American social order before, during and after the American Revolution. He was the grandson of Frederick Jackson Turner , author of the influential Frontier Thesis .
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 ...
Ray Allen Billington (September 28, 1903 in Bay City, Michigan - March 7, 1981 in San Marino, California) was an American historian who researched the history of the American frontier and the American West, becoming one of the leading defenders of Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis" from the 1950s to the 1970s, [1] [2] expanding the field of the history of the American West.