The Significance of the Frontier in American History

“Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West.”

Turner’s allusion to Marx’s opening line to The Communist Manifesto (1848)—“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles”—frames western expansion as a defining historical force, much as Marx presents class struggle as inevitable. This immediately centers Turner’s “frontier thesis” as an assertion that westward settlement shaped all aspects of American development. The grand tone elevates expansion beyond just migration to an inexorable national “manifest destiny.”

“The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people—to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life.”

This excerpt encapsulates Turner’s argument that adapting to the frontier rather than ossifying distinguished American institutions as flexible and democratic. The journey described from wilderness to complex city life embodies Turner’s view of frontier settlement propelling continual development and reflects a sense of American exceptionalism.

“This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.”

This quote poetically describes the frontier continually remaking society and generating American traits of adaptability. Turner’s positive framing of “primitive” conditions inspiring democratic spirit reveals the imperialist logic underlying his eloquent frontier paean. The nationalist and heroic tone of this passage is representative of the essay and partly helps to explain its warm reception by a wide popular