نطق چهارم

listen to part of a lecture in a united states history class.

i’d like to talk today about about an important paradigm in the history of the united states and how it came to be changed upon a second look in 1893, an eminent American historian by the name of frederick Jackson turner delivered a lecture at the American historical association. and his lecture was entitled the significance of the frontier in American history. now when he was talking about the frontier, he was referring to the part of the American west that wasn’t yet settled. the pouring term made in his lecture was that the 1890 US senses had provided new data about settlement.

and those data showed show that, well, there was no longer a frontier. this disappearance of the frontier seemed to him tremendously significant and prompted him to to gather ideas about how the frontier might have shaped American history. And the American character, turner asserted that the existence of a frontier with cheaper or virtually Free land for the taking available for individuals to sort of try their luck tended to promote certain ideals that were central to the American character ideals of economic self sufficiency, individualism, political independence, small town democracy, suspicion of large government, things like that. he saw these things being really shaped by the economic and social conditions of the frontier. and for turner, the end of the frontier in 1890 meant the end of this particular era of American character. and that americans would become less individualistic, less independent minded. and the frontier thesis was pretty much the accepted paradigm of the history of the American west until the 1970s.

then, for a variety of reasons, historians studying the American west began to question this thesis. And ultimately many of them ended up pretty much turning it on its head. and this is what fascinates me about this debate. the change that happened was not so much a matter of people finding new evidence that hadn’t been available to turner. it was more a question of people looking at the same evidence with a different eye with different emphases. there are two main areas of Challenge to turner that arose in what’s been called the new western history. one was that turner tended to overemphasize the importance of americans of european descent on the western frontier. this was somewhat of of an unconscious bias on his part. But you know if you look to turn as picture of the frontier, it was basically white men from europe who set the tone and define the culture. a new western historians took another look at the west and realized that it was actually a pretty culturally diverse place. you had, obviously, American indians, mexicans, Chinese, and others. so so the cultural uniformity of the frontier that turner saw, the new western historians look at it and and see something very, very different. the other main area of Challenge by the new western historians was that turner really, in their view, underestimated the role of the federal government and large corporations in shaping the economic life of the frontier?

I mean, just as a for instance, the federal government to this day is the largest landowner west of the mississippi river. and people’s lives when they got to the frontier were were really dictated by market forces beyond pretty much beyond their control. you know, you grow, wait, you exported it to europe. And whether you prosper or not depended at least partly on the price of wheat, which you had relatively little control over, ah, so these two main areas of Challenge result in a very different picture of the western frontier. the new western historians see a culturally diverse place, a place where people weren’t really in charge of their destiny. Even before the end of the frontier. people are, you know, their destinies were controlled by large impersonal forces, federal policy changes in the prices of agricultural products, things like that. for turner, the end of the availability of cheap land marks a crucial change in united states history. but for the new western historians, it’s really more of the same. A continuation of the same kind of conflicts that had gone on in the days before the so called closing of the frontier. so again, as I say, it’s so interesting because it’s a case of a shift in perception rather than a shift in the underlying evidence that that guy did the initial perception.