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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.
One of Turner's last students, Merle Curti used an in-depth analysis of local Wisconsin history to test Turner's thesis about democracy. Turner's view was that American democracy, "involved widespread participation in the making of decisions affecting the common life, the development of initiative and self-reliance, and equality of economic and ...
Turner states that the greatness of the American frontier is that two key important values for America, tolerance and individualism, are able to thrive. He believed that "so long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power ”. [ 2 ]
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. Main worked most of his adult life as a professor and ...
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.