Historiography, Turner, and American Exceptionalism
HIST 102 — United States History Since 1877 Chapter 18, Lecture 3
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What Is Historiography?
History is not only about what happened.
History is about how we interpret what happened.
📖 Definition
Historiography refers to:
The study of historical interpretation
How historians frame questions
What they emphasize, explain, or ignore
How those choices shape historical meaning
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Historiography
Literally "the writing of history"—but in scholarly usage, it means the study of how history gets written.
Historiography asks questions like:
Why did historians in a particular era emphasize certain topics?
What assumptions shaped their interpretations?
How have interpretations changed over time?
Whose perspectives were included or excluded?
When you study historiography, you're not just learning WHAT historians said—you're analyzing WHY they said it and what that reveals about their own time and assumptions.
The Historian's Role
Facts do not speak for themselves. Historians organize facts into arguments.
Guiding question:
What happens when a historian turns a violent, unequal past into a single national explanation?
Part I
The Historical Moment
Why Turner Writes When He Does
The Moment of Writing: 1893
1890Census declares the frontier "closed"
1890Armed Indigenous resistance largely crushed
1887–Reservation and assimilation systems entrenched
1890sWestern land increasingly settled, fenced, commodified
The interpretive problem:
If the frontier is over, what role did it play? What does its end mean?
From Policy to History
🔑 Key Insight
Turner writes at the moment the frontier becomes history rather than policy.
When something is ongoing → we debate what to do
When something is "over" → we ask what it meant
Explanation replaces action.
Part II
The Frontier Thesis
Frederick Jackson Turner's Argument
Frederick Jackson Turner
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER 350x450px
Search: "Frederick Jackson Turner portrait" or "Frederick Jackson Turner historian"
Sources: Wisconsin Historical Society, Library of Congress
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932)
University of Wisconsin historian
Later Harvard professor
Delivered "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" in 1893
One of the most influential essays in American historical writing
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"The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)
Turner delivered this paper at the American Historical Association meeting during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
The context: The 1890 Census had announced that a continuous frontier line no longer existed—the West was now "settled." Turner asked: What did the frontier MEAN for American development?
The impact: This short essay became the most influential interpretation of American history for the next half-century. It shaped textbooks, public memory, and how Americans understood their national character.
Turner's Central Claim
"The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development."
— Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893
Notice the word: explain
Turner isn't just describing the frontier—he's claiming it explains what makes America different.
What the Frontier Produced
According to Turner, repeated westward movement created:
Individualism
Self-reliance forged in frontier conditions
Egalitarianism
Social leveling in new communities
Innovation
Necessity breeding new solutions
The "Safety Valve" Thesis
The frontier provided an outlet for social and economic tension—if you were poor or dissatisfied in the East, you could go West.
The Frontier as Transformation
"The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization."
— Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893
Crucial framing:
Turner is not writing primarily about Native peoples, cowboys, or railroads
He is explaining Americans becoming Americans
The West functions as:
A process, not a place
An engine, not a subject
Part III
American Exceptionalism
The Frontier as National Explanation
American Exceptionalism
📖 Definition
American exceptionalism: the belief that the United States developed differently from other nations—that its democracy and institutions are uniquely American, shaped by geography and experience rather than inheritance.
Turner's role: He provides a historical mechanism for exceptionalism
Explains democracy without monarchy
Explains opportunity without revolution
Explains unity without empire (rhetorically)
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American Exceptionalism
The idea that America is fundamentally different from Europe and other "Old World" societies.
Common claims of exceptionalism:
No feudal past, no aristocracy
Born in revolution for liberty
Classless or socially mobile
Uniquely democratic
A "city on a hill" with special mission
Turner's contribution: He gave exceptionalism a GEOGRAPHIC explanation. America wasn't different because of ideas alone—it was different because of the frontier EXPERIENCE.
Critical note: Most historians today are skeptical of exceptionalism claims, seeing them as ideology rather than analysis.
What Turner's Thesis Allows
The frontier lets Americans imagine their history as:
Natural — shaped by geography, not choice
Progressive — moving forward, improving
Self-generated — American character made by Americans
The transformations:
Conquest→Development
Violence→Adaptation
Empire→Settlement
Part IV
What Turner Leaves Out
The Analytical Center of the Lecture
What's Missing from Turner
Native Nations
Appear primarily as obstacles, not societies
Conquest
Abstracted into "advance"
Federal Power
Government role fades from view
Capitalism
Economic forces underdeveloped
Race
Largely invisible in the analysis
Violence
Transformed into "process"
Why These Absences?
🔑 Analytical Point
Turner explains outcomes while obscuring mechanisms.
This is not accidental. It reflects:
The priorities of late-19th-century professional history
The needs of a nation seeking coherence
The appeal of synthesis over conflict
Turner gives Americans a story that feels complete without confronting what completion cost.
📝 Check Your Understanding
Quick Question
When we say Turner "explains outcomes while obscuring mechanisms," we mean:
Turner didn't know about Native peoples or violence
Turner focuses on what the frontier PRODUCED while minimizing HOW it was achieved
Turner's sources were incomplete
Turner was writing propaganda, not history
Part V
Turner as Cultural Work
Academic History as National Mythology
Turner's National Work
Turner is not just doing academic history.
He is doing national work.
What the frontier thesis accomplishes:
Converts conquest into character formation
Makes dispossession productive rather than troubling
Resolves moral tension without confronting it
Offers unity at a moment of political and social anxiety
Three Forms of Mythmaking
Buffalo Bill
Turned conquest into spectacle
Photography
Turned conquest into evidence
Turner
Turned conquest into explanation
All three:
Stabilize meaning
Reduce moral discomfort
Transform history into identity
Part VI
After Turner
Why He Persists
Turner's Lasting Influence
Turner's thesis:
Dominated much of 20th-century U.S. historiography
Shaped textbooks, curricula, and public memory
Reinforced narratives of American exceptionalism
Later historians—especially the New Western History—challenged:
Triumphalism
Exceptionalism
The omission of conquest and continuity
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The New Western History
A movement beginning in the 1980s that challenged Turner's frontier thesis and offered alternative frameworks for understanding the American West.
Key figures:
Patricia Limerick — The Legacy of Conquest (1987): Argues we should speak of "conquest" not "frontier"
Richard White — It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own (1991): Comprehensive reinterpretation centering federal power and capitalism
Donald Worster — Environmental history of the West
Key arguments: The West involved conquest, not just settlement. Federal government was central. The story didn't end in 1890. Race, gender, and environment matter.
Why Turner Persists
Despite decades of critique, Turner's framework remains influential.
Why?
Elegant
Simple, powerful explanation
Optimistic
Flattering to American identity
Teachable
Easy to summarize and transmit
Good stories are hard to replace—especially stories that make us feel good about ourselves.
Conclusion: Across Chapter 18
Synthesis across the chapter:
Lecture 1
How the West was conquered
Lecture 2
How it was remembered
Lecture 3
How it was explained
Final Takeaway
Turner matters not because he was correct, but because he was convincing.
The Cost of Explanation
Historiography is not about choosing the "right" story.
It is about understanding why certain stories become powerful—
and what they require us to forget.
This is the cost of explanation.
Looking Forward
The same decades that mythologized the frontier also created modern industrial America—with all its conflicts, inequalities, and transformations.
Next: The Gilded Age and Industrial Transformation
From conquered land to industrial capital—the other face of the 1880s–1890s.