Frontier in American History in Term Paper

Total Length: 560 words ( 2 double-spaced pages)

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were more responsible for development of American history and character than frontier line.

The most forceful charge levied against Turner's thesis was its blatant disregard and apparent ignorance of the grave consequences of American expansion. Turner argued that European expansion was a phenomenon widely different from American advancement but he clearly failed to see the cruel similarities between the two. Expansion in both cases had resulted in uprooting of old tribes and societies that had been the rightful owners of the land that Europe and later American forcefully occupied. How Turner could ignore something so important is beyond most critics and scholars.

Over the years, the thesis has been criticized so often and so vehemently that almost no part of it has managed to retain its popularity. It was mainly after 1930s that scholars, one after the other, launched an attack against Turner's frontier thesis discrediting everything from 'safety-valve' theory to the concept of 'frontier process'.
It doesn't really take a genius to see the flaws in Turner's arguments. The reason why they endured or gained fame for some time after its publication is simply because the timing was propitious. It was a time when Americans really wanted to believe their country was anything but a product of British colonialism. And Turner's thesis tried to reinforce that belief by offering something that deviated from conventional views of the time. This meant gradual but massive fame for the thesis but the document is no longer considered accurate in predicting the future or explaining the past and hence has lost its original impact….....

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