Turning the American West in Historiography

This paper examines how Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 frontier thesis reshaped American historiography. In his thesis, Turner argued that the existence and gradual settlement of the western frontier had fundamentally shaped American political ideals. These ideals, mainly democracy and liberty, distinguished the United States from Europe and served as a key example of the “Americanization” that the West furthered. This paper demonstrates how his thesis reflected and reinforced the principles of Manifest Destiny, the anxieties surrounding the 1890 “closing” of the frontier, and the rise of American imperialism. Through analysis of primary sources from Turner’s era as well as of multiple papers on American historiography both before and after Turner’s speech, this paper considers the shifting perceptions of the role of the West in American development and links them to Turner’s claims about expansion and national development. This paper further explores how Turner’s thesis displaced an earlier racially-based historiographical model, the Germanic germ theory, by emphasizing the origins of American democracy as being from the conditions of the frontier rather than genetically inherited traits. Finally, this paper considers Turner’s enduring influence on twentieth-century historians, showcasing how even critiques of Turner’s speech still utilized his frontier-centric framework of American development. Ultimately, this paper argues that Turner’s frontier thesis permanently altered American historiography in making the frontier central to the development of America and its political ideals.