I wrote a paper where I extended Turner's thesis to the internet. With the expanded "frontiers" of the World Wide Web, especially in its early stages, a revitalization of democracy took place and continues today.
Read J. W. Moore; an economic geographer who critiques capitalist dependence on 'frontiers' in the light of climate change and other environmental crises. Very very good stuff
I am a Spanish student studying US history and I have perfectly understood the thesis of the border and American exceptionalism thanks to this video. Thanks for your hard work on this!
The frontiers were an unclaimed territory. The philosophies of native peoples, when it came to land and personal property and law, was incomprehensible to white European settlers. It was "wild" and "untamed".
Your thesis fails when it collides with the reality of the Hodenosaunee [The Five and later Six Nations, a.k.a. the Iroquois Confederacy]. Early explorers found them very civilized. They would have survived if they had remained united and neutral, but the tribes chose different sides in the American Revolution, and got betrayed by both. These people incorporated defeated enemies rather than exterminating them. They had a decentralized government that may have influenced the US founders [this is debated inconclusively].....Nuff said!!
We are young. Nationally. You know how it was at 24. You thought you were the shit and invincible. Thats kinda how americans feel. It is odd. A lot of americans miss out by assuming they cant learn from others.
I like the end where you state that regardless of it’s credibility, it’s still an important part of America’s history and helps give it an identity when others think it shouldn’t because of what it became.
My great great grandfather was a frountier man in northwest Missouri. He built log cabins by trade . I still live here and the western world is very much apart of our life today. It's very interesting and often hard work. Great video
So that's where the idea of a Western themed setting comes from. You'd be amazed how much fiction that isn't from the U.S. uses that term to refer to something with a 'Wild West' or 'Frontier' aspect to it, even in Sci-Fi works. Heck, I've seen it in a lot of fiction works out of Japan, and referred to as being Western themed by the Japanese even. Very interesting video, and it definitely gave me something to think about.
What I'm missing here is a short description of Borderland theory. You say that it basically destroyed the frontier thesis among professional historians, but in what way did it do that and what did it replace it with?
+Andre Engels basically it's about interaction between cultures, seeing that there is some sort of diffusion instead of one simply conquering the other. Unlike Turner, there is no discrete theory, more like a methodology. Borderlands history can be applied anywhere, and I've seen it used in Oceania and Central Asia. It's complicated
Even if Turner's thesis has been mostly dropped, a corollary to it would be that the existence of an open frontier to escape toward as well as the romance of the unknown would have a huge formation factor upon the American psyche and national mythos.
+Erl Tyriss part of the problem is the idea of an "open frontier." It ignores those who were already there. It's for that reason why many Historians now refuse to even use the word frontier
Ah, I see your point. By using the term frontier, it is implying or decreasing the emphasis on just how imperial the American march Westward was. For the native tribes it was worse than Caesar's conquest of Gaul.
I think the point is still valid. Even thought there were already people there, the perception that there was open land had a big influence. And even for people who acknowledged the existence of the native Americans (many of whom actually wanted to become Indian Fighters), the romance of the unknown was very real.
Wow ! Your channel takes me back to my grad. course in Historiography. In the 1970's, at least in my school, the schools of American History were subdivided rather more, starting with Whig, Federalist Nationalist, etc. Later skipping to the Marxist, Neo-Marxist and new left [there having been more between and since]. Your analysis of the Turner Thesis is very interesting. It was considered seminal in my Historiography course [I was studying to be a historian or history teacher, but got out of it because the jobs were scarce and hard to get]. I had my doubts about it because it was too simplistic. Here in Massachusetts, we kind of think of The West as Beyond the Connecticut River. The frontier experience here was significantly different from the frontier beyond the Appalachians. Some of my ancestors were first settlers of a town southwest of Boston. In contrast to other parts of the country, settlement was strictly regulated. The settlers were required to build a road to Boston and/or the nearest town, build a church, meeting house, school, drainage ditches, fences [or stone walls] and an armory. The Puritans even had dress codes detailing what people could wear. This was definitely not the free-wheeling wild west of movies and Libertarian fantasies, or even the semi-socialism of the real frontier. Thanks and best wishes for continued productions.
Comparing and contrasting as a French person who lived in the US for years, I think about colonization, especially in Algeria, the only settler colony in the second French colonial empire. There was an attempt by the colonial lobby and politicians intent on settling Algeria to promote the same kind of "frontier liefestyle", settling down in a farm and growing vineyards in the Mitidja (plain south of Algiers), with many European foreigners participating (Spanish, Maltese, Italian); it sort of attempts to do the same thing as the American frontier imagery. The difference was that it failed; most European settlers lived in cities and land was appropriated by a wealthy upper class of colonists.
The Frontier Thesis is true but it is only true because Americans believe it to be true. If instead we believed that our identity instead came from the War of 1812 then the war of 1812 would be the genesis of American identity. The nature of identity means that nobody can tell you what you are and what you are not. If Americans believe that our culture was massively influenced by the frontier then simply by believing that and by consuming so many western movies, we make that fact true. This is basic nationalism in a nutshell. If Americans believed that you need to be an anti-racist to be American then overtime racist Americans will stop identifying as Americans. But more importantly, outsiders like those living in Europe and Asia will no longer recognize racist Americans as American but instead by some other identity.
The very notion of American exceptionalism might be largely lost on those of a younger generation such as the Cynical Historian. One must interact with the oppressed people of the earth to realize that they certainly believe in American exceptionalism. That is why they flock here in droves. It is certainly easy to make light of exceptionalism unless you are intimately involved in the process, such as those who fought desperate battles with Indians who sought to wipe them out. The stories of such battles certainly on lived in my family. Additionally, insight might be derived from the narratives of contemporary historians such as William Manchester, who lived the history he wrote about so eloquently and persuasively.
History, the final frontier, these are the videos of the Cynical Historian, his 5 year mission to seek out new topics about old civilizations, to boldly go where no RU-vidr has gone before.
Although it may have dubious historical validity, exceptionalism and the frontier myth has been and remains extremely powerful in our culture. There’s some saying (Joseph Campbell?) about shared myths, even when we know them to be false, being stronger than the truth.
People who say westerns died because of other genre tin to really not understand how long lasting genres can be. As the statement goes: their still there just not as loud as they were, originally.
There should be a video on Herbert Baxter Adams; he was Frederick Jackson Turner's graduate adviser. Without him the American Historical profession would have looked totally different. He was, in my opinion, an American version of Leopold Von Ranke.
I'm doing my BA dissertation on this topic, or more specifically how the frontier narrative has prevailed in American society and continues to contribute to the marginalization of minority narratives. This is a great little introductory video to that topic, thanks for making it!
I think whether or not the culture suplanted by the frinteirsmen doesn't really matter. It only matters that the frontiersmen percieved the frontier to be a savage land. Only a portion if that being the culture they supplanted. I'm 100% positive that most modern people could not survive the frontier.
Is it really fair to say Frederick Jackson Turner was a proponent of American Exceptionalism simply because his work was used to promote such? I am not yet done reading his thesis, but I have yet to encounter any pronounced sense of patriotism to give credence to the thought that he thought the United States or even the North American landmass was special as much as the opportunities provided by the frontier are historically significant to the people who inhabit the land.
Read J. W. Moore; an economic geographer who critiques capitalist dependence on 'frontiers' in the light of climate change and other environmental crises. Very very good stuff
I’m trying to understand this and attempting to ignore any bias I was raised with. But essentially, is he not wrong in saying that the ‘constant frontier’ significantly shaped the American character? couldn’t that be true even without necessitating “white supremacist” ideals? How exactly was his thesis disproven? Is it because of an assumption that the idea of a frontier has to exist only because of racist supremacist ideas?
By pioneering the land from the Appalachian mts. to the Pacific, city by city by city, etc., early America established a new civilization - one great enough to be a democratic (in spirit) superpower today. Those 370 broken treaties with the Native Americans is one of our nation's original sins; while they weren't advanced, they were civilized. Any read of the frontier stories may likely include words from Chiefs, words inspiring enough to lead people to gospel. Btw: Greely didn't say "Go West..." - he was the editor not the author of that article in the 1840s.
really disliked the last couple chapters, especially his explanation of Chinese inability to compete. The Africa chapter was also lacking quite a few details that challenge his central conceit. He is one of the "8 Eurocentric Historians" James Blaut went after posthumously. I do like his explanation for the Americas though
The Cynical Historian generally the Mediterranean climate argument holds water, but he does have quite broad generalization of areas disregarding the less obvious nuances of the various independent cultures... Didn't China's monarchy self impose resistance to technological advancements based on over-dependence on ancient traditionalism? Ninja edit, added Mediterranean
