Turner's Thesis and Degler's Interpretation

Turner's Thesis and Degler's Interpretation

In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented a thesis that would challenge the widespread accepted view that the east, particularly New England was the true bearer of American culture. He attempted to explain this by theorizing that American advances on the westward frontier can be viewed as a major factor in explaining American development throughout the nineteenth century. He believed that historians who examined the importance of these urban centers as cultural beacons would discover that it was indeed the populace on the American frontier that had the largest effect on American society. This, he said, was due to the fact that while living on the frontier, one is returned to a primitive state of nature, one in which they are free to evolve socially and thus create a certain American Identity. Each time Americans expanded westward, they continued to shed more and more aspects of European society. The expansion also produced feeling...