The thesis describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American being and their characteristics. He talks about how the frontier drove American history and that is why America is how it is today. Turner reflects on the past to prove his point by noting human fascination with the frontier and how expansion to the American West changed peoples' views on their culture. It is a thesis that has been respected in the historical circle for many years.
Opposition to the Turner Thesis
In 1942, in "The Frontier and American Institutions: A Criticism of the Turner Thesis," Professor George Wilson Pierson debated the validity of the Turner thesis, stating that many factors influenced American culture besides the looming frontier. Although he respected Turner, Pierson strongly argues his point by looking beyond the frontier and acknowledging other factors in American development.
The Turner Thesis was also critiqued by Patricia Nelson Limerick in her 1987 book, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. Limerick asserts the notion of a "New Western History" in which the American West is treated as a place and not a process of finite expansion. Limerick pushes for a continuation of study within the historical and social atmosphere of the American West, which she believes did not end in 1890, but rather continues on to this day.
Urban historian Richard C. Wade challenged the Frontier Thesis in his first book, The Urban Frontier (1959), asserting that western cities such as Pittsburgh, Louisville, and Cincinnati, not the farmer pioneers, were the catalysts for western expansion.
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