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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.
Frederick Jackson Turner "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 ...
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.
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 Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825–70. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. online. Hamilton, William B. "The Southwestern Frontier, 1795–1817: An Essay in Social History." Journal of Southern History 10.4 (1944): 389–403. online; Mann, Ralph. "Frontier Opportunity and the New Social History."
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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Theorist Frederick Jackson Turner went deeper, arguing that the frontier was the scene of a defining process of American civilization: "The frontier," he asserted, "promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people." He theorized it was a process of development: "This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life ...