Frederick Jackson Turner

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Frederick Jackson Turner

Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for The Significance of the Frontier in American History.

Born in Portage, Wisconsin, Turner graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1884. He gained his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 with a thesis on the Wisconsin fur trade directed by Herbert Baxter Adams. As a professor of history at Wisconsin (1890–1910) and Harvard (1910–1922), Turner trained scores of disciples who in turn dominated American history programs throughout the country. His emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. 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 of all social, economic and political developments in American history. At the American Historical Association, he collaborated with J. Franklin Jameson on major projects.

Turner wrote only one book; he is remembered for his interpretive theories (expressed in articles), which influenced his hundreds of disciples. Two theories in particular were influential, the "Frontier Thesis" and the "Sectional Hypotheses." He announced the frontier thesis is a scholarly paper in 1893, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" read to the American Historical Association in Chicago. Turner expounded an evolutionary model; he had been influenced by work with geologists at Wisconsin. The West, not the East, was where distinctively American characteristics emerged. As each generation of pioneers moved 50 to 100 miles west, they abandoned useless European practices, institutions and ideas, and instead found new solutions to new problems created by their new environment. The frontier proves over multiple generations produced characteristics of informality, violence, crudeness, democracy and initiative that the world recognized as "American."

Turner's ideas impacted many areas of historiography. In the history of religion, for example Boles (1993) notes that William Warren Sweet at the University of Chicago Divinity School, argued that churches adapted to the characteristics of the frontier, creating new denominations such as the Mormons, the Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the Cumberland Presbyterians. The frontier, they argued, shaped uniquely American institutions such as revivals, camp meetings, and itinerant preaching. This view dominated religious historiography for decades. Moos (2002) shows that 1910s to 1940s black filmmaker and novelist Oscar Micheaux incorporated Turner's frontier thesis into his work. Micheaux promoted the West as a place where blacks could transcend race and earn economic success through hard work and perseverence. Slatta (2001) argues that the widespread popularization of Turner's frontier thesis impacted popular histories, motion pictures, and novels. They characterize the West in terms of individualism, frontier violence, and rough justice. Disneyland's Frontierland of the late 20th century reflected the myth of rugged individualism that celebrated what was perceived to be the American heritage. The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. However, the work of historians during the 1980's-90's, some of whom sought to bury Turner's conception of the frontier and others who have sought to spare the concept while presenting a more balanced and nuanced view, have done much to place Western myths in context and rescue Western history from them.[1]

Turner ignored gender and race, downplayed class, and left no room for victims. His values represented a challenge to historians of the 1960s and later who stressed that race, class and gender were all-powerful explanatory tools. The new generation has stressed gender, ethnicity, professional categorization, and the contrasting victor and victim legacies of manifest destiny and imperialist expansion. Some criticized Turner's frontier thesis and the theme of American exceptionalism. The disunity of the concept of the West, the similarity of American expansion to European colonialism and imperialism in the 19th century, and the realities of minority group oppression revealed the limits of Turnerian and exceptionalist paradigms.[2]


His essays are collected in The Significance of Sections in American History, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1933. Turner's sectionalism thesis had almost as much influence among historians as his frontier thesis. He argued that different ethno-cultural groups had distinct settlement patterns, and this revealed itself in politics, economics and society.


Turner's theories slipped out of fashion in the 1960s, but never disappeared. He influenced the new field of environmental history.[3] Turner gave a strong impetus to quantitative methods, and scholars using new statistical techniques and data sets have, for example, confirmed many of Turner's suggestions about population movements.[4]

Primary Sources

  • Turner, Frederic Jackson. "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)
  • Turner, Frederic Jackson. "Dominant Forces in Western Life," The Atlantic monthly, 79:474 April 1897 online edition
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. The early writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, with a list of all his works compiled by Everett E. Edwards; University of Wisconsin Press, 1938
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. Rise of the New West, 1819-1829. (1906) Gutenberg edition
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. ed. "Correspondence of the French ministers to the United States, 1791-1797" in American Historical Association. Annual report ... for the year 1903. Washington, 1904.
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. "Is Sectionalism in America Dying Away?" (1908). American Journal of Sociology, 13: 661-75, in JSTOR
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. "Social Forces in American History," presidential address before the American Historical Association American Historical Review, 16: 217-33 in JSTOR
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. 375 pp. New York, Henry Holt & Co (1920), Pulitzer prize
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of Sections in American History introduction by Max Farrand. ix, 347 pp., maps. New York, Henry Holt & Co. (1932)
    • CONTENTS: I. Problems in American History, pp. 3- 21 (a reprinting from 1904. 2. The Significance of the Section in American History, pp. 22- 51 (a reprinting from 1925). 3. The Origin of Genet's Projected Attack on Louisiana and the Floridas, pp. 52- 85 (a reprinting from 1898). 4. Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era, pp. 86-138 (a reprinting from 1895) the Revolutionary Era, pp. 86-138 (a reprinting from 1895). 5. The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley in the Period of Washington and Adams, pp. 139-82 (a reprinting from 1905). 6. Geographical Influences in American Political History, pp. 183-92 (a reprinting from 1914). 7. Geographical Sectionalism in American History, pp. 193- 206 (a reprinting from 1925). 8. Since the Foundation, pp. 207-34 (a reprinting from 1924). 9. The West-- 1876 and 1926, pp. 235-55 (a reprinting from 1926). 10. The Children of the Pioneers, pp. 256‐86 (a reprinting from 1926). II. Is Sectionalism in America Dying Away? pp. 287- 314 (a reprinting from 1907). 12. Sections and Nation, pp. 315-39 (a reprinting from 1922).
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. "Dear Lady": the letters of Frederick Jackson Turner and Alice Forbes Perkins Hooper, 1910-1932. Edited by Ray Allen Billington. Huntington Library, 1970
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. America's great frontiers and sections: Frederick Jackson Turner's unpublished essays edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs. University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
  • Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and other essays ed by John Mack Faragher, (1999)

Secondary Sources

  • Ray Allen Billington. "Why Some Historians Rarely Write History: A Case Study of Frederick Jackson Turner," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 50, No. 1. (Jun., 1963), pp. 3-27. in JSTOR
  • Ray Allen Billington. Frederick Jackson Turner: historian, scholar, teacher. (1973). full-scale biography; also online at ACLS History e-Book
  • Ray Allen Billington, ed,. The Frontier Thesis: Valid Interpretation of American History? (1966). The major attacks and defenses of Turner.
  • Ray Allen Billington. America's Frontier Heritage (1984). Analysis of Turner's theories.
  • Allan G. Bogue. Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down. (1988) full-scale biography
  • Boles, John B. "Turner, the Frontier, and the Study of Religion in America." Journal of the Early Republic 1993 13(2): 205-216. Issn: 0275-1275 Fulltext: in Jstor
  • Richard Hofstadter. The Progressive Historians—Turner, Beard, Parrington. (1979).
  • Hutton, T. R. C. "Beating a Dead Horse: the Continuing Presence of Frederick Jackson Turner in Environmental and Western History." International Social Science Review 2002 77(1-2): 47-57. Issn: 0278-2308 Fulltext: in Ebsco
  • Hall, Patricia Kelly and Ruggles, Steven. "'Restless in the midst of Their Prosperity': New Evidence on the Internal Migration of Americans, 1850-2000. Journal of American History 2004 91(3): 829-846. Issn: 0021-8723 Fulltext: in History Cooperative and Ebsco
  • Moos, Dan. "Reclaiming the Frontier: Oscar Micheaux as Black Turnerian." African American Review 2002 36(3): 357-381. Issn: 1062-4783 Fulltext: Jstor and Ebsco
  • Scharff, Virginia et al. "Claims and Prospects of Western History: a Roundtable." Western Historical Quarterly 2000 31(1): 25-46. Issn: 0043-3810 Fulltext: in Jstor


External links

  1. ↑ Richard W. Slatta, "Taking Our Myths Seriously." Journal of the West 2001 40(3): 3-5. Issn: 0022-5169
  2. ↑ Scharf et al, 2000
  3. ↑ Hutton (2002)
  4. ↑ Hall and Ruggles, 2004
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