Frederick Jackson Turner

American historian whose 1893 'Frontier Thesis' argued that the American frontier experience was the formative force in American democratic character — one of the most influential and most debated theses in American historiography.

The Frontier Thesis: Turner argued (in 'The Significance of the Frontier in American History,' 1893) that the American character — individualism, democracy, practical ingenuity, anti-intellectualism — was forged by the continuous experience of the frontier. The closing of the frontier (announced by the 1890 census) therefore represented a civilizational crisis. Enormously influential in American self-understanding. Subsequently contested by New Western Historians (Patricia Limerick, etc.) who emphasized violence, conquest, and the non-white experience. Still the organizing framework against which American frontier history is defined.