Frontier Thesis

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The Frontier Thesis, also known as Turner's Thesis or American frontierism, is an argument presented by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the settlement and colonization of the rugged American frontier was decisive in forming a culture of American democracy distinct from European nations. First published in "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", a paper delivered to the American Historical Association in Chicago, the thesis held that American culture was shaped by the pioneers' work in "winning a wilderness", which instilled discipline, self-sufficiency, and a break from the settled, deferential culture that emerged from European feudalism. Turner used ideas related to manifest destiny to explain various aspects of it: democracy, egalitarianism, and a disinterest in bourgeois or high culture, and an ever-present potential for violence. He wrote, "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream...It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength...

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