Customer Reviews

The Frontier in American History

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Although this book is now considered by some to be politically incorrect and by others to have been superceded by later research, it is an important introdction to the ways in which the frontier experience has shaped American culture. From the time of the first European settlements on the East Coast until the 1890s, when Jackson and others first recognized that the American frontier had disappeared, the possibility of farming/mining/foresting new lands had always be a possibility for Americans and an attractant for European immigrants. This was a basis for Americans and other to think of the U.S. as a land of opportunity. An excellent read and a good introduction to a fascinating subject.

Current US international policy shows just how brilliant and enduring Frederick Turner's Frontier Thesis really is.

The basic idea is that after the initial explorations by Spain, England, etc., the real colonisation of America was a flight from conditions in Europe (including Ireland and Britain) which led to a European-style culture and settlement of the East Coast.

This led to a second flight from European-like influences into the interior - which simply pulled European-style culture further west. And so it continued until Europe finally reached the West Coast.

There are numerous ramifications of the thesis, including the "force majeur" (might=right) attitude of the settlers towards the Native Americans - with its ominous overtones on the eve of war in the Middle-East.

As far as I understand it, for all the "warts", Turner was looking to UNDERSTAND the American mentality/culture, as shaped by by historical experience, and the Frontier Thesis is a critique, NOT a criticism.

Read this book and gain a whole new, or at least greatly expanded, view of what it means to be an "American".

The other reviewers offered boilerplate accounts of THE essay that changed American History without mentioning the reasons of its true significance. Frederick Jackson Turner explained how the Frontier purified Democracy as settlers crafted governmental institutions to meet their needs. From the West came suffrage for women, coeducational colleges, direct election of senators, and Social Welfare, as the vastness of the West taught citizens to act collectively when solving problems beyond the capabilities of individual settlers. Rugged individualism remained the ideal, while in practice, government became the agent of change. These purifying affects emerged as prime motivations for Americans to expand Anglo-American civilization beyond the shores of North America after the Frontier closed. Shortly after Turner's address to the American Historical Association in 1893, the Frontier Thesis justified the intellectual argument for American colonization of the Pacific and Caribbean Basins prior to the Spanish American War in 1898. The Frontier Thesis and Turner's following essays influenced U.S. presidents and foreign policy from that time forward including the current "informal empire" that spans the globe. Turner's essays will be a historical Rosetta Stone for young historians deciphering the twists and turns of American foreign policy throughout the twentieth century and beyond.

This is an interesting book. Well written, although at times painfully, soddenly dated (and I do not criticize the historic tone of voice nor the apparent biases of this emminent historian--prejudice, in itself, is an important contribution to the understanding of American history as it is learned--), The Frontier in American History develops an original idea of American expansion into empire.

Portions of this book are very relevent to the present, showing Turner to be an ambitious and far-reaching historian of the past. His chapters on the general influence on American government of the midwest are fascinating, especially in the light of present day hindsight. The shift in moral vision of people founding early regions of the American colonies and post-revolutionary national expansion, in a great sense, explores both the influence and subsequent dismissal of east coast religious Puritanism and the 'witch-hunting' mentality of the people. Of course, subsequent to this volume, (and even during its publication), that very religious notion shifted to the fear-mongering operation of federal government and explains something more of the fearful consistancy of American character. This book shows the manner in which religious and political interests have been and continue to be polarized based on the presumption of self-interest and regional safeguarding.

An important book well worth yet another reconsideration in the light of current international events.

The title says it all. It's a basic history book covering the population of the American Frontier. I bought it for some insight into how folks lived and managed their day to day lives back then. So far it's been pretty decent in covering that for me (i'm about 25% of the way through)

The idea that the frontier is crucial to the development of American civilization has been one of the major themes of American history. It has also led to endless speculations as to what the closing of the frontier has meant. And it too has led to speculations about the search for new frontiers including the one in space. We went as far as we could to the West and then we went up.
I cannot evaluate the accuracy of the Turner thesis. I remember however that his idea that it is precisely the settled people of the East, the veterans who head out for the West gave me the idea of Americans as a people in constant motion away from their old and hopefully toward their new and better self.

It took me a couple of days to notice, but why is Frontier misspelled in the title of this book? And who published it and where are they located?

Mr. Turner ingeniously express's who we are and the reasons why. This work produced last century harbors a number of ideas on what made this country the greatest nation in the world. Mr. Turner correctly weaves his thesis on the frontier in a very short span.

By reading this work you will realize what separates the United States from every other land. All other works on the history of this special place we call home are details and footnotes on the events that have taken place over our brief span of time.