After reading Turner’s The Significance of the Frontier in American History you find that he put a lot of emphasis in the fact the there was no more frontier. Turner places a greater emphasis on the development of American republicanism than on territorial conquest. “In 1789 the States were the creators of the Federal Government; in 1861 the Federal Government was the creator of a large majority of the States” This concept makes more sense after you have read this paper. There are parts in this paper that make you wonder what Turner is talking about. You wonder whether he is saying the frontier of America is the physical expansion of America and this is what effected the government and laws or if it is the environment and culture of the areas that affected the way people started viewing the government and laws.
The idea of the frontier comes from people thinking that the exploration and settlement of America was endless. According to Turner, there were no more frontiers after the 1890 census. He believed this because “at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.” Turner believed this because there may have been areas that did not have many people and may have had only one or two but the area had had people explore it and know what was there. The people might not have wanted to stay there but the newness of the area was gone
In the chapter that we read from Tuner, he gives us his view of how America was shaped by the westward explanation and the exploration of the frontier. He shows us the reader that there were many influencing factors in the development of America as a nation. He tells us that the frontier is what has made this country what it is today. The quote in the reading that made me think this was when Tuner wrote, “At first the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe… Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.” “ Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.” We also see that Tuner believed that the frontier is what created Americanization. Americanization is when and how a person becomes an American not a German, or a English man or even a Irishman. The frontier strips the clothing away from a person and makes him put on different clothing that helps him start a new life as an American.
.
Cindy, I very much enjoyed reading your post to last week’s writings. I liked how you picked out one particular point of Turner’s essay and then expanded on it. I think that the concept of the frontier was the toughest to understand so it was good that you picked that to explain more. I also like how you used quotes to get your point across even more, for instance, “at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.” I think that using this quote really got Turner’s point across because with it he is saying that there are too many bodies of people for there really to be a frontier line because no matter where you go you are going to run into groups of people. Another really thing that I liked about your post is how you emphasized on Turner believing that the frontier is what created Americanization. Ending your post with the idea that stripping your clothes from the frontier and putting on different clothing helps start your new life as an American was a great ending. It helped me interpret some of what Turner was talking about the way you decided to write it with almost an analogy type description. That was defiantly a killer way to end you post. You did a great job with the whole post and how you used direct quotes from the essay. Thanks for your interpretation and I am looking forward to reading the rest of your posts!!!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog on Anzaldua’s “The Borderlands La Frontera” excerpt. I happen to completely agree with you on the part where you stated that people cannot belong to two different worlds at one time and consider themselves fully American. I think the difference in culture accounts for the reason that immigrants have to give up their prior values when coming here. In the case of Mexican immigrants coming to the United States I think it would be extremely difficult for them to completely integrate into our society mainly due to their society being a collectivist where they have a lot of national pride and American society being individualistic one composed of “patriots” as well as people hating the country. I think that Anzaldua’s point in the writing on Borderlands is that the American majority have to tolerate latin American immigrants as much as latin American immigrants have to develop tolerance for Americans.
ReplyDeleteAnother aspect of your blog that i found interesting is how you pointed out that ll minorities can be compared to La Frontera. I totally agree with that statement because looking at the history of the United States you can clearly see how the Irish were the minority when they first arrived in U. S. follow by the Italian immigrants, African Americans, and now geared more toward Latinos. Overall though I think that Latinos no longer represent the minority in think country because they pose 15% of the entire population. I think they are mainly viewed as minority because we have integrated all other ethnic group to represent the majority.