What was turners thesis

The first has to do with national history. If Turner was right, then the American national character is a product of the frontier; we talk and behave the way we do because of the frontier experience.

The second reason has to do with regional history. In Turner's conception, our region, the Great Plains, is important because it was the last frontier. If you want to get Turner's ideas in his own words, he's available on-line from University of Virginia Hypertexts. He was the final presenter of that hot and humid day, but his essay ranks among the most influential arguments ever made regarding American history. Turner was trained at the University of Wisconsin his home state and Johns Hopkins University, then the center of Germanic-type graduate studies—that is, it was scientific and objectivist rather than idealist or liberal.

Turner rebelled against that purely scientific approach, but not by much. In , the U. Census revealed that the frontier defined as fewer than two people per square mile was closed. There was no longer an unbroken frontier line in the United States, although frontier conditions lasted in certain parts of the American West until Turner lamented this, believing the most important phase of American history was over.

What is most prominent in the Turner Thesis is the proposition that the United States is unique in its heritage; it is not a European clone, but a vital mixture of European and American Indian. The wilderness masters the colonist.

It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin.

It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails.

Politically and socially, according to Turner, the American character—including traits that prioritized equality, individualism, and democracy—was shaped by moving west and settling the frontier. By conquering the wilderness, Turner stressed, they learned that resources and opportunity were seemingly boundless, meant to bring the ruggedness out of each individual.

The farther west the process took them, the less European the Americans as a whole became. In his vision, they cannot compete with European technology, and they fall by the wayside, serving as little more than a catalyst for the expansion of white Americans. For Turner, the American West is a progressive process, not a static place. There were many Wests, as the process of conquering the land, changing the European into the American, happened over and over again.

What would happen to the American character, Turner wondered, now that its ability to expand and conquer was over? Use Handout A: Point-Counterpoint Graphic Organizer to answer historical reasoning questions about this point-counterpoint.

Cooper, James Fenimore. Last of the Mohicans A Leatherstocking Tale. New York: Penguin, Turner, Frederick Jackson. New York: W. Faragher, John Mack. Why sign up? Create Account. Suggest an Edit. Enter your suggested edit s to this article in the form field below.

Accessed 11 November In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada.