The American Frontier Thesis

Bitter Harvest

“…The popular shoot-'em-up and hang-'em-high approach to the US frontier in film and pulp fiction has long led historians of all ideological stripes to despair, though they too are deeply divided as to how much violence actually occurred, what it meant for frontier society of the time and what was the legacy for contemporary America. US historians who emphasize the positive side of frontiers tend to downplay the existence of violence between settlers even if they recognize and condone social violence against 'enemy' groups (Billington, 1971;Clark, 1959;Dykstra, 1968;Turner, 1963Turner, /1893. Critical historians, to the contrary, consider the existence of widespread violence against ethnic groups to have been one of the most negative aspects of frontier society whose poisonous effects are still felt today in the United States (Hine and Faragher, 2000;Slotkin, 1973Slotkin, , 1998aSlotkin, /1985Slotkin, , 1998bSlotkin, /1992White, 1991).…”

Settlement Frontiers Revisited: The Case of Israel and the West Bank

“…These dimensions, as well as several additional points, will be outlined in the following sections throughout the discussions on Israel. Since Turner's first presentation of his frontier hypothesis, numerous debates and assessments have evolved concerning the validity of the several elements and aspects of his hyposthesis (see e.g., Hofstadter & Lipset 1968 ;Billington 1971 ;Gulley 1959). However, these critiques did not "refute his basic contention that the frontier, in all vague meanings of the word, was a significant influence in American history" (Miliesell 1960, p. 64).…”

Terra Nova 2.0—The New World of MMORPGs

“…As Ray Allen Billington (1965) points out in his reconsideration of Turner's hypothesis, "modern technology has created a whole host of new 'frontiers'" (p. 41). In 1901, for example, Charles Horton…”

“…In fact, the concept of the American "frontier," which is attributed to the historian Frederick Jackson Turner, was introduced and theorized only after the announcement of its closure by the US Census Bureau in 1890. Turner formulated what came to be known as the "frontier hypothesis" (Billington, 1965) in a paper that was read at the ninth annual meeting of the American Historical Association, which was convened in Chicago at the same time as the World Columbian Exhibition's celebration of the 400 th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World.…”