Resumen
Resumen de La frontera en la historia estadounidense
Para quién es
For readers who love American history, explorations of how nations explain themselves, and the roots of ideas like rugged individualism. It rewards anyone curious about how one idea can shape a country.
De qué trata este libro
What if the story of America was written not on the Atlantic coast but on its moving western edge? That is the bold claim of Frederick Jackson Turner. In July 1893, a professor from Wisconsin stood before historians in Chicago and changed how Americans read their own past. Turner said they missed the key force. The Frontier in American History, published in 1920, gathers that famous paper and the essays that grew around it. It is one of the most influential and most disputed arguments in American history.
En este resumen
- 1The frontier, not Europe, made AmericaFree
- 2Settlement moves in waves across the land
- 3Frontier life breaks old habits
- 4Free land fed democracy and individualism
- 5The frontier built a national union
- 6Sections matter as much as the nation
- 7The safety valve and the closing of the frontier
- 8The Mississippi Valley and the pioneer ideal
- 9Praised, challenged and still debated
Idea clave 1 de 9
The frontier, not Europe, made America
Turner opens with a census fact. The 1890 census reported that the country no longer had a clear frontier line of settlement. Turner takes this as the end of a great first period of American history.
His answer to what that period was is bold. Free land and the steady advance of settlement across it explain American development. The older view looked east to Europe. Turner turns the reader around to look west.
European habits did cross the ocean, but the wilderness changed them. American history becomes the story of a people repeatedly starting over. Ask where a nation's character comes from, Turner says, and look at the ground it lives on.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 120,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 8 h
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 14 other languages
Questions about La frontera en la historia estadounidense
What is the frontier thesis?
It is Turner's claim that the steady westward movement of settlement across free land shaped American democracy, individualism and national character more than European inheritance did. He first set it out in a paper in 1893.
When did Frederick Jackson Turner write The Frontier in American History?
The famous essay was read in 1893 at a meeting of historians in Chicago. The book collecting it with other essays, including those on sections and the Midwest, was published in 1920.
What did Turner mean by the closing of the frontier?
He drew on the 1890 census, which showed that settlement no longer formed a clear frontier line. For Turner this ended the first great period of American history, and he asked what would shape the nation next.
What is the safety valve theory?
It is the idea that free western land let discontented eastern workers move away, easing social conflict. Turner hinted at it, but later writers developed it, and many historians have since argued it was weak.
Why do historians criticize Turner's frontier thesis?
Critics say he ignored Native peoples, treating the West as empty land. They also say he gave too little weight to cities, industry, slavery and women, and that free land was often out of reach for the poor.