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 his Frontier Thesis announced in his 1893 paper on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," his theories of geographical sectionalism, his many PhD students, and his leadership of the history profession.

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.

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.

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. 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.

Further reading

• Billington, Ray Allen. "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
• Billington, Ray Allen. Frederick Jackson Turner: historian, scholar, teacher. (1973). full-scale biography; online at ACLS e-books
• Billington, Ray Allen. ed,. The Frontier Thesis: Valid Interpretation of American History? (1966). The major attacks and defenses of Turner.
• Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage (1984). detailed analysis of Turner's theories from social science perspective
• Bogue, Allan G. Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down. (1988) along with Billington (1973), the leading full-scale biography
• Cronon, William. "Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner," The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 157-176 online at JSTOR
• Faragher, John Mack, ed.Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and other essays, (1999) excerpt and text search
• Hofstadter, Richard. The Progressive Historians—Turner, Beard, Parrington. (1979), highly influential critique
• Jensen, Richard. "On Modernizing Frederick Jackson Turner: The Historiography of Regionalism," The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 307-322 in JSTOR
• Turner, Frederick Jackson. Rise of the New West, 1819-1829. (1906) Gutenberg edition
• 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 online edition
• Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. 375 pp. (1920), Pulitzer prize online edition