Frederick Jackson Turner

Frederick Jackson Turner 1861-1932, American historian, b. Portage, Wis. He taught at the Univ. of Wisconsin from 1885 to 1910 except for a year spent in graduate study at Johns Hopkins Univ. From 1910 to 1924 he taught at Harvard, and later he was research associate at the Henry E. Huntington Library. At first he taught rhetoric and oratory but turned to U.S. history, soon focusing on Western history. His doctoral dissertation, The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin (1891; an enlargement of his master's essay), showed the trend of his interest. In 1893, at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, he delivered an address, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," which outlined brilliantly the history of the receding frontier and its effect in creating American democracy. Little noticed at the time, it was to prove epoch-making in American history writing. It supplied a large part of a generation of historians with a theme to investigate. Turner's ideas are now generally incorporated in some form in most American history texts; although a historical controversy has raged for decades over the validity of his frontier thesis, few critics reject it entirely. The address and various short papers were reprinted in The Frontier in American History (1920). He collaborated with Edward Channing and Albert Bushnell Hart in the revision of Guide to the Study and Reading of American History (1912). Though he produced few books— The Rise of the New West ( "American Nation" series, 1906) and two studies in sectionalism, The Significance of Sections in American History (1932) and the posthumously published The United States, 1830-1850 (1935)—his influence as a teacher and proponent of a new and important theory made him one of the most renowned of all American historians.

Bibliography: See The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner (1938, repr. 1969); R. Hofstadter, Progressive Historians (1968); R. A. Billington, Frederick Jackson Turner (1973).

Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861–1932), historian.Born and reared in Portage, Wisconsin, the son of a newspaper publisher and politician, he was educated at the University of Wisconsin (B.A. 1884, M.A. 1888) and Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D. 1891). Turner taught at Wisconsin, first rhetoric and later history, from 1885 to 1910, at Harvard from 1910 to 1924, and summer sessions at Utah State University (1924 and 1925). He was a senior research associate at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, from 1927 until his death. Turner played a key role in establishing Wisconsin as a major center for historical studies. His scholarly interests were broad, and he early understood that historians could benefit from cognate disciplines, especially geography and statistics. Although not the originator of this idea, he persistently and ardently advocated it. Active in the profession, his early publications and network of friendships, including Woodrow Wilson, Yale historian Max Farrand, and J. Franklin Jameson (editor of the American Historical Review), gave him positions of leadership. He was president of the American Historical Association (AHA) in 1910.

Turner helped shift the focus of American historical writing from the so‐called “germ theory,” which traced American institutions to Germanic tribal origins, to the effect of environment and experience in shaping American culture and national character. He strongly believed in “American exceptionalism,” the idea that the United States was not only different from other nations but also unique in its social evolution. His first major work, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893), delivered at the AHA's annual meeting at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, rejected the germ theory and urged the study of the influence of the West and the frontier on American institutions and character. It had an enormous impact on the profession and remains controversial. He proceeded to write a score of essays elaborating this theme. The Rise of the New West, 1819–1829 (1906), a pioneering analytical study that attempted to correlate and map voting districts and key issues, demonstrated the role of sections (regions) in American history. His essays on sectionalism, published as The Significance of Sections in American History, won the Pulitizer Prize posthumously in 1933. His final work, The United States, 1830–1850: The Nation and Its Sections (1935), appeared posthumously. Turner is unique among American historians, both for his frontier and sectional theses and as the founder of a school of scholarship.
See also Historiography, American; West, The.

Bibliography

Ray Allen Billington , Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher, 1973.
Martin Ridge , The Life of an Idea: The Significance of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, Montana: The Magazine of Western History 41 (Winter 1991): 2–13.
Allan G. Bogue , Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down, 1998.

Martin Ridge

Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861–1932), born in Wisconsin, taught history at the state university (1889–1910) and at Harvard (1910–24), and was later associated in his research with the Huntington Library. Before the American Historical Association (Chicago, July 1893), he read a paper on The Significance of the Frontier in American History (printed 1894), which inaugurated a new interpretation of the West. He wrote little, and when he published The Frontier in American History (1920) there were only a dozen short essays that he cared to reprint along with his original paper on the frontier. The Significance of Sections in American History (1932) was a posthumous recipient of a Pulitzer Prize. In the Rise of the New West, 1819–1829 (1906), a volume in A.B. Hart's cooperative work The American Nation, he disclosed the sectional unities of the period 1819–29. At his death he left incomplete a con‐tinuation of this work, published as The United States, 1830–1850: The Nation and Its Sections (1935). (For a brief survey of his theory, see Frontier.)