What Was The Turner Thesis

Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago.

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The dynamic of these oppositional conditions engendered a process by which citizens were made, citizens with the power to tame the wild and upon whom the wild had conferred strength and individuality...

Successive generations moved further inland, shifting the lines of settlement and wilderness, but preserving the essential tension between the two.

He displayed the importance of how the Frontier line had always sparked individual strength and democracy.

He believed that the West was the most important component of the American story.

His model of sectionalism as a composite of social forces, such as ethnicity and land ownership, gave historians the tools to use social history as the foundation for all social, economic and political developments in American history.

By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.They adapted to the new environment in certain ways — the cumulative effect of these adaptations was Americanization.According to Turner, the forging of the unique and rugged American identity had to occur precisely at the juncture between the civilization of settlement and the savagery of wilderness.The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis is the conclusion of Frederick Jackson Turner that the wellsprings of American exceptionalism and vitality have always been the American frontier, the region between urbanized, civilized society and the untamed wildnerness.In the thesis, the frontier was seen as a region that created freedom, "breaking the bonds of custom, offering new experiences, [and] calling out new institutions and activities." Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.In our new interface, materials are organized by era, so users will easily be able to view many different types of resources for a particular era such as the textbook, images, primary sources, multimedia and teacher materials.Although the links to our textbook, primary sources, and other educational materials changed in the new interface, we believe the benefits significantly outweigh any inconvenience.Every generation moved further west and became more American, more democratic, and as intolerant of hierarchy as they were removed from it.They became more violent, more individualistic, more distrustful of authority, less artistic, less scientific, and more dependent on ad-hoc organizations they formed themselves.Turner's thesis quickly became popular, especially since the U. Census of 1890 had officially stated that the American frontier had ceased to exist and westward movement would no longer be discussed in census reports.The idea that the source of America's power and uniqueness was gone was a distressing concept.