Research On Turner’s Frontier Theory And Its Impact

As the greatest historian of the United States in the end of19th century, Frederick Jackson Turner had been well known by his frontier theory."The significance of the frontier in American History", a paper in which Turner proposed a package of profoundly meaningful propositions of American History, today, still have inexhaustible value of study. This thesis attempts to study Turner’s frontier theory on both theoretical and practical aspects. Firstly, it will pick two significant concepts of frontier theory,"free land" and "movement of frontier", from the perspective of the clash of civilization and international relationship and discuss the ideological origins of these two concepts through the idea of international law and etymological meaning of the "frontier". As a result, a rule of "land-frontier-constitution" will be released as a framework of comprehension of frontier theory. Secondly, it will explore the reality of political influence of frontier theory by discussing the possibility that Turner provided an intellectual foundation for President Woodrow Wilson’s goal of political ambition and analysis the discourse diversion of frontier theory from academic to political.The thesis is divided into six parts:In the first part, it describes the significance of frontier topic, research methods, the results of previous studies and simply introduce a brief life of Turner.In the second part, it selects "Europeans-Indians" and "Americans-Colonists" as two groups of subject’s relationships from the perspective of clash of civilizations and international relationship in Turner’s frontier history context in order to explain the process and results of digestion of these subjects and explore how the concepts of "free land" and "movement of frontier" playing in this process.In the third part, by tracing back to "free land" concept in international law, it reveals the holistic outlook of land possession issue which occupied the center position in the debate of international law from the early of Great maritime era and analysis the meaning of combined concept "free land" and explains why Turner use this concept.In the fourth part, by discussing the usage of "frontier" in etymological aspect, it analyses the inheritance and development of Turner’s usage of "frontier" in order to find out the features of the moveable in "frontier" concept and explains theoretical orientation and significance of concept of "movement frontier".In the fifth part, the "frontier anxiety" which was prevalent at the end of19th century in American is as a clue to explain the era causes of the rise of frontier theory. Then, it gets into the idea connection between Turner and Wilson and tries to discuss the effect of frontier theory on Wilson’s historical view and political thought. Finally, focusing on the half century behind Turner, it makes a brief analysis of the influence of frontier theory on U.S. political discourse.As a conclusion, it comes to the rule of "land-frontier-constitution" of frontier theory and summarizes several practical influences of the frontier theory.