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IntroductionFrederick Jackson Turner was an American historian based at the University of Wisconsin until 1910, and then Harvard University. Turner is best known for his “Frontier Thesis,” an idea put forth in the essay excerpted. This essay was presented to a special meeting of the American Historical Association during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. In this essay, Turner argued that the frontier shaped key elements of the American experience. Turner’s Frontier Thesis stimulated an intense debate among historians about the American character in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Sourcing Questions
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“The Significance of the Frontier in American History” http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/empire/text1/turner.pdf Who said the American frontier is closed?In 1893, three years after the superintendent of the Census announced that the western frontier was closed, Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian from the University of Wisconsin, advanced a thesis that the conquest of the western frontier had given American society its special character.
What was Frederick Johnson Turner's Frontier Thesis?The Frontier Thesis or Turner's Thesis (also American frontierism) is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that a settler colonial exceptionalism, under the guise of American democracy, was formed by appropriation of the rugged American frontier.
What did Frederick Jackson Turner say about the frontier?Historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed that the strength and the vitality of the America identity lay in its land and vast frontier.
What was the closing of the Western frontier?In 1890, the Census Bureau broadcast the closure of the frontier, meaning that in the west there was no apparent tracts of land without settlers. This news was a distinguished event in American history; the frontier represented danger because of the Natives who lived in the region but also freedom and opportunity.
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